https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/great-goldfish-swallowing-craze-1939-180954429/
One of the weirdest, most revolting fads of the last century, started with a boast and a bet.
In 1939, a freshman named Lothrop Withington, Jr., reportedly bragged to his friends that he had once eaten a live fish. So, they bet him 10 bucks he couldn’t do it again. Like most young college students would, he took the challenge.
The moment of truth came on March 3, within the hallowed halls of Harvard. Standing in front of a crowd of grinning classmates and at least one Boston reporter, Withington dropped an ill-fated 3-inch goldfish into his mouth, gave a couple chews and swallowed. “The scales,” he later remarked, “caught a bit on my throat as it went down.”
It could have just been a gag-inducing footnote in Harvard’s yearbook—Crazy Coed Gulps a Guppy!—but the presence of the press meant that word of the stunt spread far and wide. Even LIFE magazine covered the story. The result was a goldfish-swallowing competitive craze that swept the nation’s colleges.
In April 1939, University of Missouri School of Journalism student Marie Hensen became the first woman widely known to join the goldfish swallowing craze. Bettmann/CORBIS
Over at the University of Pennsylvania, a student downed 25 while a guy at MIT briefly became the “new Intercollegiate Goldfish Swallowing Champion” with a count of 42. As the spring progressed, some girls joined in, and rivalries emerged between schools. According to one source, the final winner may have been Clark University’s Joseph Deliberato, who in April of that year gulped up a stomach-turning 89 goldfish in one sitting.
Thanks. The name Lothrop Withington sounds like a parody of a WASP name. Like Chatsworth Osborne (Tucker Carlson).