Alice Louise Pond

Alice Louise Pond was not the first nor even the second woman to receive a Columbia diploma. Those honors belong to Winifred Edgerton, the first woman to receive a degree from Columbia, a PhD in Mathematics in 1886, and to Mary Parsons Hankey, who completed the Collegiate Course for Women and became the first woman […]

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William H. Donald’s Account of the Xi’an Incident

The Xi’an Incident/西安事變 is also known as one of the most controversial historical events in 20th Century Chinese history. This event led to the united forces between the Chinese Nationalists and the Communists in 1936 December prior to the all war against Japan aggression in China during WWII. In the midst of the incident, William […]

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Low Library by Cake Man Raven

All birthday parties need a cake and Columbia’s 250th Anniversary in 2003 was no different. Harlem native Patrick De’Shaun Dennis III, better known as Cake Man Raven, made a 13-foot-tall replica of Low Library in his signature flavor: red velvet. While this massive 3.5-ton cake was impressive, Cake Man Raven’s masterpiece was yet to come. […]

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Extras Between The Sheets

The work of archival and rare book processors is truly fascinating and never-ending. At RBML, we take great pleasure in exploring beyond the obvious and discovering curious and surprising artifacts left behind between pages and amidst letters for years, decades, and even centuries.  These treasures come in varying formats, subjects, and meanings, some of them […]

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