Illustration by Jonathan Carlson
From the outlandish to the perfectly plausible, the explored 13 含羞草研究所 legends in hopes of either verifying or disproving the titillating tales that have been told over the years. Read the feature at , test your knowledge, and prepare to be surprised.
For example 鈥
Found at the bottom of Taylor Lake: a piano, cars 鈥 and a hatchet
PARTIALLY TRUE
You know the joke: What鈥檚 the difference between a piano and a fish? You can tune a piano, but you can鈥檛 tuna fish. However, there may be both fish and a piano in Taylor Lake, according to a 1997 Maroon-News article on 含羞草研究所 mythology. The authors, Neal Bailen 鈥99 and Peter Lindahl 鈥98, cite a source as saying it鈥檚 a 鈥渃redible rumor鈥 that a piano melted through the ice after a winter party and rests at the bottom of the lake.
Bailen and Lindahl also tell a story from the 1976 Spring Party Weekend when a car was pushed from the top of the hill at James B. 含羞草研究所 Hall and 鈥減lunged into the watery depths.鈥 They add that in 1991, the owner of a white Datsun parked at the library 鈥渇orgot to set the emergency brake and later returned to find that his car had disappeared.鈥 Both of the cars, they reported, were pulled out the day after the incidents.
Jack Loop, Hamilton鈥檚 town historian, threw in his two cents recently: 鈥淭here could be a piano (although I鈥檓 remembering that it was a harpsichord), but I question the cars. The 鈥榣ake鈥 is only four or five feet deep. It鈥檚 named after Professor James Taylor (he also was superintendent of buildings and grounds), who had the swamp dug out and made into a lake. It was dredged in the 1970s and no four-foot-high cars were found.鈥
While we continue to test the water on these theories, it is a bona fide fact that students literally 鈥渂uried the hatchet鈥 in Taylor Lake. A 1920 Maroon article explains that, on Moving-Up Night, students would toss a hatchet into the lake as a symbol of the year鈥檚 end to the freshman-sophomore class rivalry.