Wednesday night’s World Series championship victory for the Chicago Cubs marked the end of the 108-year-long drought of the team’s title-free seasons. While the crazed fans of Chicago and the bandwagon fans of the rest of the country “partied like it’s 1908," complete with tears and social media documentation, it is unlikely that most were actually thinking about what the world was like 108 years ago. Here are some of 1908’s highlights at Penn and in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Phillies unfortunately did not have a stellar season like this year’s Cubs, finishing their season with a record of 83-71 and fourth in the National League. Penn athletes, however, excelled. John Baxter Taylor, Jr., a 1908 School of Veterinary Medicine graduate, became the first African American to win a gold medal while setting the world record for the 1,600-meter relay team. The Vet School Class of 1908 yearbook reads, “We of the Class of 1908 are proud and can boast of having one of the greatest athletes the world has ever known.” Additionally, the football team had an undefeated season and was crowned national champion by various athletic foundations.

Penn was also taking measures to expand its student body and broaden awareness of diversity on campus. Pauline Wolcott Spencer was the first woman to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from Penn and went on teach the history of education at the Philadelphia Normal School for Girls. Furthermore, 1908 saw the first conversation of many in creating an International House. After realizing that international students felt ostracized and isolated on campus, Reverend A. Waldo Stevenson created a safe space for foreign students to openly discuss similar concerns, relax and make friends. While the International House of Philadelphia, located at 37^th and Chestnut, is not officially a part of Penn’s campus, its integration of foreign students on campus will always remain a part of Penn's history.

1908 was also the beginning of a short-lived Penn tradition: “Push Ball Fight.” The freshman and sophomore classes gathered at Franklin Field to play Push Ball, a game similar to soccer or football involving an inflatable ball with a six-foot diameter. Specific rules of the game changed over time, but the basics remained the same; the object was to cross the ball over the goal line, but the ball could not touch the ground. The team with the most number of goals at the end of the game won. Despite sounding like an entertaining game, “the Push Ball contest was not very interesting to the spectators, nor to the participants,” and controversies arose such as the 1908 kidnapping of the freshman class president. Push Ball Fight was unfortunately halted five short years later.

After these 108 years, the Chicago Cubs have come full circle, while the Penn Quakers have continued their upward trend into the modern era.