News and Stunts
- 1954 - On March 6, the band took to the ice for the first time to skate and play for the Yale Hockey game.
- 1968 - The band is invited to play graveside at the internment service for Senator Robert F. Kennedy at Arlington Cemetery.
- 1970 - To celebrate the integration of the (female) Racliffe students into the traditionally all-male Harvard Houses (upper class dormitories), the band suggested that language study would be particularly improved by these "cunning linguists." Ever since all half-time shows have been reviewed by administration officials.
- 1971 - Director Thomas Everett founds the Harvard Jazz Band
- 1972 - Members of the Brown University Band, posing as an ABC News crew complete with blazers, jump suits, camera and truck, persuades a band freshman to help them transport the "Big Bass Drum" down to Soldiers Field for pre-game filming whereupon they absconded with the drum. A friendly Massachusetts judge (and Band alumn) issues a bench warrant and the malefactors are soon caught by State Troopers. Future band manager Sam Coppersmith remains the only person ever to be awarded "Turkey of the Year" by TWO separate Ivy League Bands.
- 1975 - At the Princeton game, student conductor Tom McGrath, in a tribute to the Boston Pops, led the audience in a mass sing-along of the "Ode to Joy" from the Finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in the original German.
- 1976 - At the Brown game, student conductor Jack Barbash lands in a helicopter on the field dressed as Leonard Bernstein, and the impersonation is said to have been believed by the audience.
- 1979 - Diane Wasserman is the first woman named manager of the band.
- 1994 - At the 75th Reunion, the 1812 Overture was performed on the field with the explosion of hydrogen balloons serving as cannon fire. (ref) The idea was inspired by Harvard residence Lowell House's traditional courtyard rendition of the same song using the same method.
- 2006 - At the Lafayette game, student conductor Kenton Hetrick '07 conducted the HUB with a 12' 6" baton, which broke the Guinness World Record for largest baton. This has since been broken by the Harmonie Amicitia Roggel of the Netherlands, with a baton measuring 13' 11". On October 20, 2007 The University of Pennsylvania Band unveiled a 15' 9" baton nicknamed "The Maestro" in an attempt to one-up the Harvard Band. Despite video evidence, its world record status is pending confirmation by Guinness.
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