125 years ago: Karl G. Maeser is granted Brigham Young Academy’s first honorary degree, a doctorate of letters and didactics, in May 1889.
100 years ago: The BYU debate team travels to California and wins its first out-of-state debate contest.
75 years ago: The BYU orchestra performs with renowned French pianist E. Robert Schmitz in the Provo Tabernacle.
25 years ago: Jeffrey R. Holland (BS ’65, MA ’66) is called to the First Quorum of the Seventy, which ends his tenure as BYU’s ninth president.
10 years ago: The movie Napoleon Dynamite premieres. Directed by Jared L. Hess (’02) and cowritten with Jerusha Demke Hess (BA ’10), it stars fellow BYU student Jon J. Heder (BFA ’10).
5 years ago: The BYU rugby team wins its first national title.
50 years ago: With encouragement from Cosmo, BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson (BA ’21) demonstrates his athletic prowess by performing 47 push-ups at a home basketball game in 1964.
Web: Read more about BYU’s history on the University Archives blog at lib.byu.edu/sites/byuhistory.
By J. Gordon Daines III (BA ’97), University Archivist
