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Satanic Tomatoes and Other Weird Details Not Taught in History Class

Khalid Elhassan July 4, 2020 33 min

South Lawn - Goat — Wilson's sheep. Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

33. Back When Ivy League Universities Used to Make Their Students Pose For Nudie Pics

ivy league photo subject. messy nessy chic — Ivy League photo subject. Messy Nessy Chic

In the late 1970s, a weird event occurred when a Yale University employee unlocked a long-unused room in one of the Ivy League institution’s buildings. Inside was quite the surprise: thousands upon thousands of photos of naked young men, showing their fronts, sides, and rears.

To add to the weirdness, there seemed to be sharp metal pins sticking out of the naked men’s spines. What could it be? Was it the trove of some weirdo with a niche fetish for B-D-S-M voodoo porn? As it turned out, it was nothing so juicy, but was still plenty weird in its own right: Yale and other Ivy League schools had been in the habit of taking naked photos of their students.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.