Goldfish swallowing

Goldfish swallowing

Goldfish swallowing was a college fad of the late 1930s, consisting of exactly what its name implies.

A 1963 letter to the "New York Times" claimed that the fad began in late 1938 when Lothrop Withington Jr., a Harvard freshman with " [class] presidential aspirations," was encouraged by his "campaign managers" to do so as a publicity stunt: "Reporters and photographers were inadvertently present in the Harvard Freshman Union when Withington swallowed his live goldfish (with a mashed potato chaser) and started a nationwide fad in the spring of 1939." The editor replied that "unless the Editor's memory is deceiving him, the goldfish-swallowing craze among school and college boys had begun at least as early as 1930." [Newman, Harry, Jr. "The Goldfish Swallowers." Letter to "New York Times", February 27, 1963, p. 6] Apparently his memory "was" deceiving him, as "Time" magazine noted in a 1939 article, "Harvard Freshman Lothrop Withington Jr., son of a onetime (1910) Harvard football captain, started the fad sweeping U. S. campuses...". [cite web |url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760999-1,00.html|title= Goldfish Derby|accessdate=2007-10-04 |format= |work= Time]

ee also

*Panty raid
*Phonebooth stuffing

References

External links

* [http://www.badfads.com/pages/events/goldfish.html Swallowing Goldfish] at Bad Fads Museum
* [http://library.thinkquest.org/3205/SwalG.html Swallowing Goldfish] at ThinkQuest
* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100268 College Fads] from "The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture"


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