Most Scopes Trial Papers
Escape Bryan College Fire
A February 6 fire destroyed part of a building at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, that housed the school’s library, some classrooms and laboratories, and most administrative offices. Although the blaze caused at least $1 million in damage to the building and destroyed rare books, computers, and a natural history museum, most of the college’s papers from the famed Scopes “Monkey Trial” were unharmed.
English Professor Richard Cornelius told the Associated Press that “we probably lost no more than 5%” of the college’s memorabilia about the 1925 trial of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution. The most significant loss was the copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species owned by William Jennings Bryan, namesake of the nondenominational Christian college.
The fire began around 6 p.m., an hour after the library closed and an hour before the computer laboratory opened, so few of the school’s 550 students were in the building. The cause of the blaze, which took some eight hours to extinguish, remains unknown.
Posted February 14, 2000.
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