Popular Culture
According to the fictional Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, Widener Library houses one of the few existing copies of the Necronomicon in the world, hidden somewhere among its endless stacks.
There is a legend at Harvard that in order to prevent what befell Widener from happening to another student, all students of Harvard College are required to prove that they can swim before they are allowed to graduate. While Harvard did implement a swimming test in the 1920s, it had nothing to do with Widener, and the swim test is no longer required of students.
The song "Dreamin'" by Weezer mentions the Widener Stacks.
Read more about this topic: Widener Library
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When women finally get liberated, they’ll do the same that men do—dog eat dog— that’s what our culture is.... Not cooperation but assassination. Women will cooperate until they attain certain goals. Then one will begin to destroy the other.”
—Alice Neel (1900–1984)