#weirdlywednesday

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Still need costume ideas on this #WeirdlyWednesday Halloween? Look no further than your local archive where you can find Cinderella complete with feather duster or a Cutlery Crusader! (I just made these up... any guesses to what the costumes are?)

PG 10-606 Merchant's carnival, Moscow, Idaho, Clara Ransom and Margaret Bryan McCallie in costumes, 1892.  

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Welcome to #WeirdlyWednesday of Homecoming Week! Mark your calendars for this year’s Latah Credit Union Firework Extravaganza at 9:15 pm in the Kibbie Dome parking lot this Friday, 10/19, followed by the TowerLights LED light show at the Theophilus Tower presented by the Association of Computing Machinery. We’re celebrating today with re-imagined fireworks of years past. 

Photos in no particular order include: PG 2_084-39 homecoming fireworks at MacLean field, 1960, Photographer: Arden Literal, U of Idaho Photo Center; PG 2_084-73a fireworks, homecoming,1961; PG 2_084-73b, fireworks, homecoming, 1961. Gif created by U of I Library Special Collections staff. 

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Quarantine Cake

Today’s #WeirdlyWednesday coincides with our ongoing exhibit of campus involvement in WW1, when just as the war effort came to a close, the Spanish Flu began wreaking havoc on the students and town. Here in 1957, another flu scare threatened quarantine on campus. Hopefully after it was lifted, Student Union Building manager Gale Mix awarded Gamma Phi members with a cake reading “Happy Quarantine, Sub.” (PG 101-2381)

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Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year, so for each Wednesday in October we will post a photo on the wonderfully weird side! Was it just me or is this every child’s dream to go to college and work in an ice cream laboratory? I wonder if they are brewing up a vat of pumpkin-flavored ice cream...

PG 1-205-17, students operate ice cream machinery in ice cream laboratory, dairy science program, University of Idaho, 1925. 

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One final #WeirdlyWednesday as we finish up our Halloween candy and look towards the season of cookies and pie, please remember to take care of your teeth! In this undated photo, Dr. R.T. Witty extracts a tooth from Tony Peterson (PG 12-129).

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Radioactive Trees

For our next #weirdlywednesday post, we’re showing evidence of the Atomic Age research of introducing radioisotopes to trees in the hope of studying how individual trees behave physiologically and how their absorption, translocation, and similar metabolic processes work. Field studies were conducted to study pole blight, a disease of western white pine trees, where a scientist would enable a solution consisting of either radioactive calcium or radioactive phosphorus, or both, to be absorbed by the tree, then examine the entire tree from trunk to tip of foliage with a Geiger counter to see where and how fast the radiation had traveled. 

Thank you to @uwmarchives for the inspiration behind this post with your #Terrifying Tuesday post on unshielded radiation. Terrifying indeed! 

University of Idaho Bulletin, Vol. 50 (yes, I did check, it is volume 50), No. 2, November 1954.