Popular Culture
According to the fictional Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, Widener Library houses one of the few existing copies of the Necronomicon in the world, hidden somewhere among its endless stacks.
There is a legend at Harvard that in order to prevent what befell Widener from happening to another student, all students of Harvard College are required to prove that they can swim before they are allowed to graduate. While Harvard did implement a swimming test in the 1920s, it had nothing to do with Widener, and the swim test is no longer required of students.
The song "Dreamin'" by Weezer mentions the Widener Stacks.
Read more about this topic: Widener Library
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead-drunk in the street, carried to the duke’s house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke’s bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.”
—Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)