Firing Blanks: Cannon Story Falls Apart

The great cannon-under-the-football-stadium mystery continues to get, as they say, curiouser and curiouser.

Not long after the story first broke about a cannon under the stadium that supposedly once belonged to a veterans home in southern Vermont, a story began circulating that the college had once owned a similar cannon, given to the school by France. Now the Daily Dartmouth is reporting that the artillery carriage found under the home stands at Memorial Field is part of the second cannon and that the barrel has been located in the back yard of a professor's son.

From the story:

It was not stolen from the veteran’s home as part of a prank, but was owned by the College and had been given to Dartmouth by France after World War I.

and ...

The connection to the veteran’s home, which had been the primary theory behind the cannon’s existence, seems to be an urban legend, (earth sciences professor Leslie) Sondor said, and nobody knows where the veteran’s home cannon might be.

Left unsaid is the answer to the question: How did a dying alum know there was part of a cannon under the stadium and why would he say he'd stolen it from the veterans home? (Find the original story and video report about the cannon here.)

I gave a talk last fall about blogging and the Internet and shared a couple of secrets about how and where I find stuff. (Not that it's all that hard – it's just time-consuming.) Anyway, now that the recruiting class has been announced, here's one of the recruiting pages I kept tabs on. This one wasn't available to the public if you didn't know a certain code to use. If you take a look, you'll see some familiar names, but also some names that probably didn't belong on the list.

Speaking of recruits, one of the players on that list, corner back Shawn Abuhoff, has been honored by the South Florida Touchdown Club as the 3A-1A Defensive Player of the Year according to the Miami Herald.

Sticking with South Florida, former Dartmouth quarterback Jay Fiedler is quoted in this Hartford Courant story on the Spygate scandal.

Another Dartmouth alum who went on to a long and successful professional career is Houston Astros catcher Brad Ausmus. Yesterday, the 1991 graduate who signed a contract before ever wearing the Dartmouth green became the eighth catcher in major league history to record 1,500 hits and 100 stolen bases. Find a note about that here.

Interestingly, the brother of a Harvard basketball player is following Ausmus' career path to an extent, signing a contract while attending Stanford. Ausmus gets a mention in this San Francisco Chronicle story.

The Daily Dartmouth has the numbers and analysis of the incoming freshman class. From the story:

Following the most competitive admissions year in the College’s history, 1,120 students plan to matriculate in the Class of 2012, according to Maria Laskaris, dean of admissions and financial aid.

The matriculating group — 560 men and 560 women — represents a 51 percent yield from the 2,190 admitted students, (Maria Laskaris, dean of admissions and financial aid) said, compared to the 53 percent matriculation rate of those admitted to the Class of 2011.