Fraternity initiations call to mind many images, some unpleasant, and likely none involving historical re-enactments that are elaborate, well-costumed, family friendly and even a tad educational. But in 1947 the pledges of Phi Signa Mu at Rider College in Trenton, N.J., re-enacted a defining piece of local history, George Washington crossing the Delaware River. The role of George Washington was played by George Chafey, a U.S. Army veteran. Chafey didn’t like horses, so that is why he leads his troops on a bicycle in the photo above.
The stunt did have its Animal House touches—the reenactment included drunken Hessians, and the showdown culminated in a massive pillow fight. But while Washington’s original crossing helped change the course of world history, the efforts of these Rider students didn’t rewrite fraternity culture. If modern-day pledges traverse a river, it sometimes seems to be a metaphorical river of liquor. But the re-enactment, documented by LIFE photographer Bernard Hoffman, did have one lasting echo: Five years later locals began staging their own re-enactments of Washington’s Crossing, in what has become an annual event.
The day began, as it did in 1776, with a boat ride across the Delaware River. Photo by Bernard Hoffman.
The re-enactment did have some conventional fraternity trappings, and Washington’s soldiers were able to stop off for a beer after reaching the Trenton side. Photo by Bernard Hoffman.
As happened back in 1776, the Hessians fighting in the service of King George were once again caught inebriated and napping. Photo by Bernard Hoffman.
The frat version of the battle was fought with fruits and vegetable, and it concluded with a massive pillow fight. Photo by Bernard Hoffman.
When the feathers from the pillowfight stopped flying, surrender was gracefully accepted. Photo by Bernard Hoffman.
In America’s most populous city, life teems not only on the streets, but below them as well. The New York City subway opened for business on October 27, 1904 and since then it has become more than a way to get around, but a place in which the city lives, standing clear of the closing doors, in chunks of a half-hour at a time (or longer, depending on delays).
It’s also a place where you can run into just about anyone—and not just the famous musicians who’ve been busking incognito with Jimmy Fallon. While the photos in this collection are heavy on famous faces and famous jewels, when pass through the turnstiles you are admittedly more likely to see commuters on the way to work, or school kids on the way to school, or a man with a parrot, or tourists on the way to one of the city’s unending list of attractions. A subway ride can contain its hardships (wi-fi is spotty at best, so bring a book), especially so if the machinery breaks down. But it’s also a way to beat the traffic, and as the photos show, noted New Yorkers such as John F. Kennedy Jr., Meryl Streep and Bernard F. Gimbel were not above going underground. They knew that this enduring monument to mass transit was a smart way to get where they were going.
Former police officer Paul Haase transporting the Hope Diamond in a wrapped box on the New York City subway, 1958. He is delivering it to the US Post Office to be mailed to the Smithsonian Institution.
Photo by Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock
Harry Winston Jewelers exhibiting the Hope Diamond before donating to the Smithsonian, 1958.
Photo by Donald Uhrbrock/The LIFE Images Collection via Shutterstock
Chess champion Bobby Fischer studied up on his game, 1962.
The first women who came to Princeton—in the autumn of 1969—applied without knowing if they were eligible to be admitted. On January 11, 1969, the trustees had voted 24-8 in favor of co-education, but it wasn’t until April that they decided to begin that same year Princeton had been losing men to co-ed colleges, and Yale had changed its admissions policy that year, so the Tigers were prompted to open their gates, but the change wasn’t welcomed by everyone. An opposition group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton pushed to make sure that adding women didn’t mean fewer slots for men, so that first class included 101 women and 820 men in the freshman class. LIFE covered the arrival of women on campus in 1969, and the magazine story included a waggish question about whether Princeton would now have to change the lyrics of the school song, which began, “In Praise of Old Nassau, my boys.” (It did, much later, when “my boys” was changed to “we sing” in 1987.) The decision to admit women has certainly added to the glory of Princeton’s history, as some of their most prominent alumni of recent years are female. Their ranks include Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, former first lady Michelle Obama, Queen Noor of Jordan, and many others who, like the members of that first class, made their mark in the world.
Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
In 1969 freshman June Fletcher wore with irony a protest button that had been distributed by unhappy alumni asking to “Bring Back the Old Princeton.” Fletcher, who had been named “Miss Bikini USA” in high school, went on to become a writer with the Wall Street Journal.
Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Beth Rom of Long Island, knew on arrival that she wanted to go into psychology. “One of the professors said to me, “You know, you’re going to have to be a lot better than any of the guys if you want to get into a graduate school,’. I just took it as `Okay, I will then.'” Rom (now Rom-Rymer) is currently a clinical and forensic psychologist in Chicago, on the board of directors of the American Psychological Association, and also the co-founder of a shelter that has been helping abused women since 1978. “Most of us felt very good about being pioneers, doing something exciting, opening up the campus to women.” That year, when a woman joined the student paper or joined the tennis team or did pretty much anything, it broke a barrier: “Everything was a first.”
Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
Kathleen Molony, here wheeling her bicycle below one the Princeton campus’ many gothic archways, in 1977 became the first Princeton alumna to teach at the school. She now directs the Fellows program at Harvard University.
Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt
The female freshmen were housed together in Pyne Hall, outside of which these students sat. The woman to the left, Marcia Boraas became a surgeon and breast cancer specialist, and Elaine Chan, at right, became an attorney and had a long and impressive career that included stints at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FEMA.
Chan says that as a member of Princeton’s first female class, she felt pressure to succeed, and in the process learned to speak up and assert herself. That was important as anything she learned in class, she says. For example when, working for FEMA, she advocated the radical solution of moving an entire town of Valmeyer, Illinois from a flood plain to a bluff after a massive flood in 1993. “Princeton taught me to not be shy about raising your hand and speaking up,” she says.
As a student, Chan worked a variety of jobs at Princeton, from modeling to cleaning out the bio-lab habitats of the Mexican axolotl. As a freshman her hair reached nearly to her knees, but she cut it her sophomore year, after her father passed away. Her father, who sold and repaired televisions in Miami and also ran fishing charters on the weekends, was the primary breadwinner, and while Chan wasn’t thinking it at the time, she now says that she cut her hair because it was time to be a more serious person.
Chan is now retired and living on an island about an hour north of Seattle, Washington, where she teaches marine biology to children as a volunteer. When her mother passed away about four years ago, Chan signed over her inheritance to Princeton, with one caveat. Back in ’69 Chan was one of only three women of Asian heritage in her class, which contributed to a sense of isolation. She asked that her donation be used as the seed money for a program in Asian-American studies, and the Princeton now offers a certificate in that field. Long gone from campus, she is still a pioneering there.
In 1957 the top-selling single in America was Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up,” and the top hairstyle in Grand Rapids, Michigan was a tribute to the man who sang it. America was so wild for Elvis at this time that when the singer made his debut on the Ed Sullivan Show, 82.6 percent of America’s televisions were tuned in. Glenwood Dodgson, who operated a chain of beauty salons in Grand Rapids, read the market and began offering women an Elvis hairdo. He knew what he was doing.
Photo by Grey Villet / LIFE Picture Collection (c) Meredith Corporation
In six weeks more than 1,000 women came to Dodgson’s shops and had themselves made over in the image of Elvis. The makeover cost the not-outrageous price of $1.50 (which would be about $14 today).
Photo by Grey Villet / LIFE Picture Collection (c) Meredith Corporation
This seventeen-year old sacrificed a foot-long pony tail to the altar of the King.
Photo by Grey Villet / LIFE Picture Collection (c) Meredith Corporation
Her father (above left), greeting her outside the shop, didn’t know quite what to make of the new ‘do, but if he had any criticism, he saved it for home. The group photograph below shows that there was some variety in the hairdo approach. While every woman was given Elvis’ sideburns, each took a different tack to the forehead locks, and some went all the way and dyed their hair black. LIFE’s headline on its story: “Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hairdo.”
Photo by Grey Villet / LIFE Picture Collection (c) Meredith Corporation
The Minnesota Twins entered their inaugural season of 1961 with more motivation than most sports teams to emphasize their team name. Calling themselves the Twins was more than just a simple reference to the Twin Cities. It was a call to unity for the baseball fans of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Before the Twins (formerly the Washington Senators) moved to Minnesota in ’61, the local baseball scene was defined by the fierce rivalry between two Triple A teams, the Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints. The Twins wanted to appeal to fans in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, and so the team name was chosen with care. For one, the team was named for Minnesota, rather than either city (unlike the Minneapolis Lakers of the NBA, who had moved to Los Angeles after the 1960 season).
To make no mistake about this, the logo on the cap was an interlocked T and C, rather than an M— which could be mistaken as standing for Minneapolis.
Also, the uniforms had a patch on the left arm which showed players in Millers and Saints gear smiling happily and reaching across the Mississippi river to shake hands.
To really hammer home the point, the team hired bat boys who were actual twins.
Photo by Francis Miller
Photo by Francis Miller
The bat boy auditions, which were held at Memorial Stadium and photographed for LIFE by Francis Miller, drew 74 sets of twins, and the young men were served hot dogs and milk as they waited to be interviewed for a chance to wear that beautiful new uniform.
Photo by Francis Miller
Photo by Francis Miller
Photo by Francis Miller
Richard and Peter King, above, were chosen as the winning twins. The team also selected a pair of twin ball boys, Jerry and James Dempster (not pictured). LIFE’s story on the auditions never ran in the magazine, but the King twins had a moment of national fame when, in May of that 1961 season, they appeared on the game show To Tell the Truth. The boys’ fielded questions from celebrity panelists such as Don Ameche and Betty White. As was the case in the auditions, on the show they are alongside other sets of twins, waiting to see if they will be picked.
In the decade following the end of World War II, tourism in the Rockies doubled as Americans took to the road to explore and enjoy the American West. In 1959 LIFE photographer Eliot Elisofon made his own trek through the Rocky Mountain, on a five-day journey that covered 1,800 miles. He trained his camera on natural landscapes and also on the area’s burgeoning manmade attractions, like the massive outdoor skating rink in Sun Valley, Idaho, above. The netting was placed over the rink to cut down on the glare of the mountain sun.
Welcome to the 50s, and also the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. The staff of lifeguards proved ready to channel their inner Esther Williams.
Colorado was full of all kinds of fun and games. At a rodeo in Ridgway, Colo., the action got a little wild, and a ride on an old-time looked a little hairy too. The train, which carried tourists along the canyon walls above the Animas River, also known as the River of Lost Souls, made the 90-mile round trip between Durango and Silverton daily, and had been featured in the filming of Around the World in 80 Days.
Looking back at car culture from those years can feel like its own kind of natural wonder—a parking lot becomes as attractive as the attraction. But then, the attractions on the trip were pretty darn good too. Below: Bryce Canyon in Utah, and then onto Yosemite, with its bears and Old Faithful.
In this last photo, below, a family from Louisville headed out into the Idaho hills with a crew that included a cook, a wrangler, and pack mules for a multi-day trek. Their deep dive underlines the appeal of the Western United States. It’s about the breathtaking scenery, but it’s also about a journey back to a time when this country was wild.
