A wrenching prank at Caltech

May 25, 1956: Pranksters at Caltech pulled off a major coup, disassembling an engineering student’s small foreign car and reassembling it in the basement of Throop Hall in a place where it blocked a stairway and the doors to two laboratories. “Cunningly, they placed the car in a spot where it would have to be almost completely disassembled again for removal,” The Times reported.

Caltech officials said that wasn’t by any means the best prank in the school’s rich, prank-filled history, the newspaper noted. “Once pranksters assembled a Model T in the upstairs bedroom of a residence hall, and it took a week to remove the vehicle,” The Times said. “And more recently, students borrowed an Air Force aircraft from the campus and deposited it on the Arcadia front lawn of the Air Force commandant of a Caltech aeronautical training program.”