Goldfish swallowing
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2008-06-28T22:05:07Z
Icarus3
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rm non-notable church youth group instance
'''Goldfish swallowing''' was a college [[fad]] of the late 1930s, consisting of exactly what its name implies.
A 1963 letter to the ''New York Times'' claimed that the fad began in late 1938 when Lothrop Withington Jr., a [[Harvard]] freshman with "[class] presidential aspirations," was encouraged by his "campaign managers" to do so as a publicity stunt: "Reporters and photographers were inadvertently present in the Harvard Freshman Union when Withington swallowed his live [[goldfish]] (with a mashed potato chaser) and started a nationwide fad in the spring of 1939." The editor replied that "unless the Editor's memory is deceiving him, the goldfish-swallowing craze among school and college boys had begun at least as early as 1930."<ref>Newman, Harry, Jr. "The Goldfish Swallowers." Letter to ''New York Times'', February 27, 1963, p. 6</ref> Apparently his memory ''was'' deceiving him, as ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine noted in a 1939 article, "Harvard Freshman Lothrop Withington Jr., son of a onetime (1910) Harvard football captain, started the fad sweeping U. S. campuses...".<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760999-1,00.html|title= Goldfish Derby|accessdate=2007-10-04 |format= |work= [[Time (magazine)|Time]]}}</ref>
==See also==
*[[Panty raid]]
*[[Phonebooth stuffing]]
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
*[http://www.badfads.com/pages/events/goldfish.html Swallowing Goldfish] at Bad Fads Museum
*[http://library.thinkquest.org/3205/SwalG.html Swallowing Goldfish] at [[ThinkQuest]]
*[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100268 College Fads] from ''The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture''
{{culture-stub}}
[[ko:금붕어 삼키기]]
[[Category:1930s fads]]
[[Category:Goldfish]]
[[Category:Practical jokes]]
[[Category:Student culture]]