Caltech–MIT rivalry
)[6] The most notable of these pranks include the 1961 Great Rose Bowl Hoax, where a card stunt was altered to display "Caltech" rather than the name of one of the competing teams.
Many hacks involve placing an item on MIT's Great Dome or otherwise altering, such as moving a campus police cruiser to its roof,[14] placing full-sized replicas of the Wright Flyer and a firetruck on top of it to acknowledge the anniversaries of first powered controlled flight and the September 11th attacks respectively,[15] and converting it into R2-D2 and a large yellow ring to acknowledge the release of Star Wars Episode I and Lord of the Rings respectively.
[17] In recent years, pranking has been officially encouraged by Tom Mannion, Caltech's Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Campus Life.
[24] MIT students counterpranked the Lobby 7 dome to read "The Only Institute of Technology", and had to resort to pulling the blimp down using helium balloons covered in sticky tape.
Campus Preview Weekend was chosen because the Caltech students would blend in with the unfamiliar prospective freshmen, and to increase the pranks' visibility.
It was then given by the French to the United States where it was re-bored to fit American shells and the carriage constructed, but this work was completed too late for it to see use in the Spanish–American War.
The cannon soon became obsolete and was donated to Southwestern Academy in San Marino, California, where it was displayed on the front lawn starting in 1925.
[14] On March 28, 2006, the cannon disappeared from the Caltech campus, having been taken by people posing as contractors, fooling a security guard with a phony work order.
The identity of the perpetrators was initially unknown, and there was speculation that it had been stolen by nearby Harvey Mudd College, who had been responsible for a well-known theft of the cannon almost twenty years prior.
Once off Caltech's campus, a local resident called in a noise complaint, and the Pasadena police arrived but did not recognize the then-disguised cannon.
Hires Rising Star Matt Damon", referring to 1997 film Good Will Hunting, and "Infinite Corridor Not Actually Infinite", referring to MIT's iconic main thoroughfare, and a mock advertisement for sperm donation offering more money for Caltech students than MIT students.
The Caltech students then turned to distributing the papers individually on the sidewalk outside of Lobby 7, a location outside the jurisdiction of the MIT Police.
[34] In 2008, Caltech students provided a "Puzzle Zero" in the MIT Mystery Hunt that when solved, told solvers to call a specific number in the 626 area code immediately.
Caltech students intended to deploy two large banners that were designed to be easy to place, but removal would require a cherry picker or a rappel.
Another fake edition of The Tech was released, stating that students would be required to take a core of literature, history, philosophy, and economics, but science subjects would be eliminated.
"[43] In more recent developments, for April Fools' Day 2024, Caltech and MIT engaged in a collaborative prank, continuing the tradition of friendly rivalry between the two institutions.
Caltech students, with assistance from The Tech’s editors, produced a spoof issue containing anti-MIT satire, which was distributed on MIT’s campus.
Concurrently, MIT students created a mock newspaper titled "The Massachusetts Tech," filled with anti-Caltech content, which was circulated at Caltech.
[45] On a more intimate scale, a contingent of Caltechers put a 6-foot-tall mural of one of their house logos into MIT’s Tomb of the Unknown Tool over Martin Luther King Jr weekend, 2014.
