<p>A police car with its lights flashing balanced on top of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Great Dome. A balloon reading MIT appearing out of the ground, midfield, during the 1982 Harvard-Yale football game. A perfectly recreated upside-down lounge room, complete with billiard table and snoozing cat, installed on the underside of an arch during MITs 2010 Campus Preview Weekend. These hacks, as they are known in MIT lore, showcase a combination of meticulous science and anti-authoritarian whimsy, both of which are synonymous with the university. MIT pranks have been memorialized in various sanctioned galleries around campus as an integral part of the universitys history, and rightly so. Although the terminology and ethos of the hacks were only formalized after World War II, pranks at MIT have been around since the university opened in 1865.</p>
<p>[MIT</a> pranks: From giant torpedoes to stolen police cars. - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2012/02/mit_pranks_from_giant_torpedoes_to_stolen_police_cars_.html]MIT”>MIT pranks: From giant torpedoes to stolen police cars.)</p>