Wikipedia:Main Page history/2011 May 11

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A Shimer College class

Shimer College is a small, private, undergraduate liberal arts college in Chicago. Founded by Frances Wood Shimer in 1853 in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, it was a women's school for most of its first century. It joined with the University of Chicago in 1896, and became one of the first junior colleges in the country in 1907. In 1950, it became a co-educational four-year college, took the name Shimer College, and adopted the university's curriculum of the Hutchins Plan of Great Books and Socratic seminars. In 1958, Shimer separated from the university and enjoyed national recognition and strong growth in the 1960s but was forced by financial problems to abandon its campus in 1978. It then moved to Waukegan, IL, remaining there until 2006, when it moved to the National Register of Historic Places-listed campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the Douglas community area of Chicago. Classes are exclusively small seminars in which students discuss original source material rather than textbooks. The Early Entrant Program, in place since 1950, allows students who have not yet completed high school to start college early. Shimer has the highest rate of doctoral productivity of any liberal arts college in the country. (more...)

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  • On this day...

    May 11

    Head of Constantine the Great

  • 330 – The city of Byzantium was consecrated as Constantinople, the new capital of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine the Great (bust pictured).
  • 1812 – In the lobby of the British House of Commons, Spencer Perceval became the first, and to date only, British Prime Minister to be assassinated.
  • 1813William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth departed westward from Sydney on an expedition to become the first Europeans confirmed to cross the Blue Mountains.
  • 1880 – A land dispute between the Southern Pacific Railroad and settlers in Hanford, California, turned deadly when a gun battle broke out, leaving seven dead.
  • 1946 – The United Malays National Organisation, today Malaysia's largest political party, was founded, originally to oppose the constitutional framework of the Malayan Union.
  • 1997Deep Blue became the first computer to defeat a world chess champion, when it bested Garry Kasparov in six games.
  • More anniversaries: May 10May 11May 12

    It is now May 11, 2011 (UTC) – Refresh this page

    Today's featured picture

    Big White Fog

    A poster advertising Big White Fog, a play by Theodore Ward. The play follows the Masons, a fictional African American family struggling through the Great Depression. Ward completed the play in 1937, and it debuted at the Great Northern Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, in 1938. The play received its European premiere on May 11, 2007, at the Almeida Theatre in London.

    Image: Works Progress Administration; Restoration: Jujutacular

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