This month in Harvard history

April 1965 — For the first time, Harvard’s endowment exceeds the $1 billion mark, thereby realizing a long-held goal of Treasurer Paul C. Cabot.

April 14, 1965 — The Vietnam War inspires Harvard’s first teach-in, in Lowell Lecture Hall and Sanders Theatre.

April 23, 1966 — At her own insistence, Natalie Wood — dubbed “Worst Actress of the Year” by “The Harvard Lampoon” — comes to Cambridge to pick up her dubious distinction before a throng of enthusiastic onlookers.

April 1968 — Showing up unannounced on the plaza in front of Lehman Hall (Dudley House), Spanish students from Barcelona serve up an impromptu lunchtime Iberian serenade in the Yard.

April 20, 1968 — New York Mayor John V. Lindsay visits Harvard as the Republican Club’s Man of the Year.

April 16-18, 1970 — More than 600 geophysicists from around the world come to Cambridge for “The Nature of the Solid Earth,” a symposium honoring Geology Professor Francis Birch for his 40 years of teaching at Harvard.

April 18, 1971 — At 12:30 p.m., the Lowell House Society of Russian-Bell Ringers tolls a memorial ring (nine strokes of the Great Bell followed by 88 strokes, one for each year of life) for Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky, who died on April 6.

April 1972 — Anne L. Garrels ’72 becomes the first woman to take first prize in the annual Boylston Prizes for Public Speaking. The win is doubly significant, since 1972 is the first year in which Radcliffe students are allowed to compete for the prize.

April 11, 1972 — By near-unanimous vote, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves the creation of an undergraduate concentration in East Asian Studies.

April 27, 1972 — At the annual Research Banquet of the School of Dental Medicine, UCLA Anatomy and Oral Biology Professor Reidar F. Sognnaes describes his discovery of potentially definitive X-ray evidence for Adolf Hitler’s death.

April 30, 1975 — In Sever Hall, legendary Chaucer scholar B. J. Whiting gives the final lecture of his 49-year Harvard career.

From the Harvard Historical Calendar, a database compiled by Marvin Hightower