A History of MIT Pranks, In Glorious Pictures...

Posted by Brian Fairbanks

 

What can we say, we're a sucker for pranks, practical jokes, and general harmless merriment.

It's the only reason we would have considered going to a school like MIT (not that we would've gotten in or even wanted to.) You know, to carry out that fantasy of college life we first saw in Real Genius... the smart asses venting their energy not by farting and chanting "USA! USA!" at frat parties but by disassembling the dean's car and reassembling it in the Yukon Territories...

The Boston Globe has a brilliant and hysterical photo essay of pranks captured by still photographers over the years... all the photos are worth checking out...

But these are our faves, starting with the first annual piano launch!

 

 

 

Send us your prank photos and we'll post 'em... even if you didn't attend MIT.

Via the Boston Globe.

 

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Comments

Racer X said:

I almost got kicked out of RPI for putting the deans car in a bell tower...

October 16, 2008 3:06 PM

blondage said:

Hahaha - I actually have a few keen picks of MIT pranks. My favorite is when they managed to remotely reprogram the light board on the street in front of the campus to go from reading "construction ahead" to "nerd crossing".

October 16, 2008 3:35 PM

profrobert said:

The weather balloon hack at the 1983 Harvard-Yale game is the all-time classic.

My favorite non-visual hack was a change to the "you've reached a non-working number at MIT" outgoing phone message.  The replacement was, "The MIT number you have dialed is imaginary.  Please multiply by i and dial again."

October 17, 2008 1:05 AM

cha said:

someone hacked the crossing light audio signals to make star wars sounds instead of beeping (for visually impaired people).  this also happens in elevators in the newer buildings.  

October 19, 2008 3:07 PM

About Brian Fairbanks

Brian Fairbanks, the Senior National Political Correspondent for Nerve, is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn or New Orleans, depending on the season. He is a heavily-armed advocate of gun control.

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