<p>Pranking</a> Pride - The Biggest Pranks in Geek History - TIME</p>
<p>Thanks! Cool article. I just did not get why Star Simpson's airport mishap was labeled as a "prank" - ?</p>
<p>I was at the Harvard-Yale game in 1982 but honestly don't remember that prank. (And, yes, I was sober at the time!)</p>
<p>Excuse me aparent, but you should have titled your thread Top MIT & Caltech pranks.</p>
<p>Fair enough, oaklandmom!</p>
<p>When Stanford was at the 1971 (or was it 1972?) Rose Bowl, the scoreboard flashed a Caltech/MIT score instead of the Stanford/Ohio State (obviously a Caltech prank).</p>
<p>The article doesn't include the MIT kids stealing the Caltech cannon, and Caltech students taking it back.
Also doesn't mention how Caltech students gave out t-shirts during MIT's pre-frosh weekend in April. T-shirts said MIT on the front, and something about 'for those not admitted to Caltech" on the back.</p>
<p>I'm sure there are many more pranks I'm forgetting</p>
<p>MIT on the front, "Because not everyone can go to Caltech" on the back. </p>
<p>We also pranked their newspaper for april fools last year.</p>
<p>thank you, moderators for changing the title of this thread!</p>
<p>
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The article doesn't include the MIT kids stealing the Caltech cannon, and Caltech students taking it back.
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</p>
<p>Probably because MIT prank was a copycat of the original prank: </p>
<p>Harvey Mudd first stole the Fleming cannon from Caltech in 1986 when students from Caltechs closest rival Harvey Mudd stole the Fleming House cannon, gaining national news coverage, and undying glory, for their feat. The cannon was returned to Caltech after about two months.</p>
<p>Hackers</a> Have Blast With Caltech Cannon - The Tech</p>
<p>The</a> Caltech Cannon Heist</p>
<p>My favorite hack occurred in the early 70s when a wooden telephone booth was placed atop the Great Dome. When Campus Police went up there to investigate, the phone began ringing!</p>
<p>Also, S enjoyed his admissions tour there (he was a HS sophomore at the time and it was his first college visit) because a bunch of guys wearing nothing but Speedos and carrying helium balloons ran by (the MIT swim team) calling out to the tour group, "Come to MIT - you're going to love it here!" :)</p>
<p>My freshman year at Ohio State we had a grad student(astro-physics) living in one of the singles on our floor. A number of us collected Lanterns(the student daily paper) for several weeks. We managed to wrangle a master key "legally"(ie not stolen) from the front desk one nite when he was out and proceeded to fill his room floor to ceiling with crumpled up papers, anxiously awaiting his return. What followed was better than our prank.</p>
<p>Opening his door he coolly commented, "Anyone got a match?" And then more seriously told us to call up an elevator. We proceeded to fill it with all the newspapers and pushed the down button. BTW there was 2-3 elevators in Stradley but the filled vator coursed the floors of Stradley until the next morning.</p>
<p>Ugh. This is a horrible article. Every MIT person I know (including quite a lot of hackers) who has read it has hated it.</p>
<p>"Hack" != "prank". Some hacks are pranks, but not all hacks are pranks. Pranks are tricks, jokes. They are often (usually?) intended to one-up others. The point of hacks is that they are Awesome, not that they are a joke on anybody. Small ones are often about being cute and clever, large ones are about making the impossible, possible. A cool thing on the dome is a cool thing on the dome, not a prank.</p>
<p>The taking of the Caltech cannon was both a hack and a prank. Pretty much any MIT hack on Harvard is a prank. The firetruck on the dome was a hack, but not a prank, and the same is true for most dome hacks.</p>
<p>The DVD-unscrambling thing could possibly be considered a prank, but it was not a hack. The Star Simpson case was an unfortunate, nearly-disastrous misunderstanding...neither a prank nor a hack.</p>
<p>Caltech's tradition is different from MIT's. It is school-sanctioned, and much more prank-based.</p>
<p>And nobody that I know at MIT has any idea what the heck this "prank fund" is that Time alludes to. There is a humor fund, the Peter De Florez '38 humor fund, but it is not a hack fund. Hacks are funded by the people who create them.</p>
<p>Or (to a small extent) by the people who purchased the attractive Howe</a> & Ser t-shirts after the cannon heist.</p>