Collegiate historians last week were ready to record the months of March and April, 1939, as among the maddest in the annals of U. S. undergraduates. On campuses throughout the land, the nation's reckless collegians madly gulped almost every conceivable object. Beginning with goldfish (TIME, April 10), they went on to swallow worms, magazines, snakes (see p. 2), footballs, gunpowder.
Finicky collegians started more appetizing games. At San Jose (Calif.) State College, for example, Jack Baldwin wagered he could catch and kiss 20 co-eds in 30 minutes, fell six short. Soon San Francisco State College's Marshall Blum claimed a record: 40 kisses in five minutes. At New York University Co-ed Dorothy McDonald kissed 36 boys in four and a half minutes. San Diego State College's Joseph Arthur Pranis staged a three-day hunger strike to bring gulpers "to their senses." At week's end he was thwarted by what seemed an ultimate -horror -in -gulping, which was perpetrated at University of Illinois. Pi Kappa Phi's John Poppelreiter, surrounded by admiring fraternity brothers, wrapped in lettuce and swallowed five live baby white mice.