Cornell University is located in Ithaca, USA. On October 8, 1997, someone managed to pin a pumpkin on the 52-meter high spire of McGraw Tower without anyone noticing.
No one knows who did it, no one knows why, but most importantly no one knows how it happened. Hardly did it with drones because it was 1997. If the first two questions about who did it and why could remain unanswered, how it was possible seems to plague many minds even now.
Image from: media.npr.org
In fact, for a while, no one even knew for sure if it was a pumpkin. Suspicions grew when the pumpkin remained there month after month, but some students identified it using a drill attached to a remote-controlled balloon that removed a sample. (Seriously.)
Farad Manjo, a former editor of the university newspaper, calls the pumpkin beautification of the Tower Tower "the biggest prank in Cornell history." he has asked those in the know to reveal the details and claim his glory.
"As far as I know, the reason they didn't confess at first was because it was a huge thing, they were university students and it was probably illegal,"
"I thought it was illegal, and it was dangerous, and they were worried they might get in trouble. But it's all gone now. Now it's just legends."
It became very famous in its time and even got a webcam. It was talked about from the Associated Press to MTV. students wrote a vletite poem for the pumpkin in the university song.
The pumpkin was on the tower until March 13, 1998, when it was planned to finally be removed with the help of a crane. It didn't go as planned as the wind blew the frozen pumpkin away and it was then removed from the scaffolding 6m below.
A board of biology professors later conducted morphological, chemical and DNA analysis, which after 2 weeks confirmed that it was indeed a pumpkin.
On October 20, 2023, during the reconstruction of the tower, a pumpkin was put back on the spire, but the original authors of this joke have remained unknown.
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