MIT Dome Wins Gold Medal

Status: Prank
image Pranksters at MIT struck again last week. On Tuesday morning school officials discovered a massive Olympic gold medal hanging from the MIT dome. News reports state:

MIT officials said the medal was likely a prank, but they did not know how it was done or who did it. The school also said it never gave permission for the building to become a gold medal winner. The school has not said how long the medal will stay.

The MIT dome, of course, has been the focus of many, many pranks over the years. The first dome decoration dates back to 1961 when a giant Happy Birthday banner was hung from it. In 1962 it was made to look like a grinning jack-o-lantern. In 1979 it became a giant breast with a large nipple protruding from the top of it. Also in 1979, a fiberglass cow was placed on top of it. In 1986 a prefabricated house appeared atop it. In 1998 it grew a pair of giant Mickey Mouse ears. And in 2003, the Wright brothers plane mysteriously landed on top of it.

Pranks

Posted on Tue Mar 07, 2006


Comments

Sweet! Good to know that some traditions are alive and well!

Any word on what event the dome won?

My guess: The 100M Sitting Motionless.
Posted by Bobcat  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  01:42 AM
They should've made it a bronze. It would have been more believeable. It's a fake.
Posted by booch  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  10:23 AM
The medal is cute, but I don't think it beats the Mickey Mouse ears!
Posted by Sakano  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  11:28 AM
Well, they *would* have pulled Bronze, save for that rather bad bobble during the end of that piano tuning shop's Long Program, and the doping scanal, when it was found out that three of the athletes were actively using illegal pesticides to control termites...
Posted by Bobcat  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  07:23 PM
I like the way the article says, "MIT officials said the medal was likely a prank."

"Likely." Really? Likely? What other options are there? Could the dome really have won a medal?

"Likely a prank"... I love it.
Posted by karen  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  10:17 PM
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/ There's a link to all the MIT antics over the years..
Posted by Andrew  on  Wed Mar 08, 2006  at  10:26 PM
Wow, that's an impressive lists of stunts. Even if some of them are pretty small, they all take thought and effort.

I notice that the Mickey Mouse ears was in fact a hoax of a hoax. They never did put ears on the Dome, they just pretended they did and got it published. It looks photoshopped to me and there is no reference to it on the official link.
Posted by AussieBruce  on  Thu Mar 09, 2006  at  07:20 AM
Doh, sorry. I cant edit my comment above. They do mention it on their page, but it's still a hoax of a hoax.
Posted by AussieBruce  on  Thu Mar 09, 2006  at  07:22 AM
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