St. Peter, MN- Sometimes we get a little bored of ripping on various faculty members and getting people upset over a joke about Sweet Martha’s Cookies, so we spend our free time awkwardly staring at one another pretending to be those guys from Mythbusters. 69 minutes ago, our photo guy, Steve, uncovered a truth that is actually worth looking at; Bacardi Rum and Gustavus Adolphus College were founded in the same year.  Coincidence? We think not.

In case you haven’t ever cared enough to know what you drink every weekend comes from, unidentified sources have told us that Bacardi Rum was founded in February 1862 when Don Facundo Bacardi Massó decided to break into an abandoned building filled with bats in the rafters to make a rum distillery because that just “made sense.”   Lots of people like alcohol, so naturally, Massó became super rich and powerful.

Meanwhile, according to a book entitled “Gustavus For Tommies,” pastor Eric Norelius was bribed 20 bucks in May of 1862 to start a business babysitting young adults who weren’t ready to go work out in the real world yet.  Only one brave couple was willing to leave their son in his hands come September, and this proved to be a problem for Norelius, who is quoted on a bathroom stall in Old Main saying he wanted to “get that ka-ching, bro.”

Luckily, entrepreneur Norelius didn’t have to wait for money much longer.  A lone bat, who is affectionately nicknamed “Dingus” and “Benedict Arnold” by descendants of the Massó family, had enough of all the constant shouting of “Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum” by all of the family’s pirate friends, so Dingus the Bat decided to steal the recipe out of a secret vault and fly all the way to what he thought was the North Pole to get rid of it.

Little did Dingus know that he dropped the recipe right in the hands of Eric Norelius in St. Peter Minnesota.  Norelius seized the opportunity to use the 20 bucks he was paid to buy the ingredients and equipment needed to make this concoction.  In December 1862, Norelius had perfected the drink and gave it to his lone student, Johan Magnus, who absolutely adored the beverage. Magnus has been quoted in several history books saying it made him feel, “like a huge dicken of a chicken.”

We don’t need to get in the rest of the details of this story, but it is worth noting that the real reason Anderson Hall was built in the 1940’s was to house Norelius’ booming rum factory that was needed to keep enrollment up.  This place was popping until it’s unfortunate closure in the 2000s, when a lone CHOICE student got lost and ended up dying after seeing a 64-ounce bottle get filled to the top with the golden-brown liquid. A note written in the back of a recently recovered physics textbook describes how “administration says that they have to follow the law and can’t let us drink underage, but we know that’s bullshit! ”  The note went on to describe how a traditional binge drinking day was to happen every February to commemorate the true founder of “Gustavo…Adolpho… Collage”- Bacardi, and how students were to drink the shittiest alcohols they could find so Administration would put the rum factory back.

While most CFs are now on the prowl for anyone trying to drink any form of anything, it is still possible to remember the founding history of the school that no tornado could ever touch.  A tribute to Bacardi and Norelius’s legacies still remain on campus today. If one takes a look at the haphazard layout of Coed, one will be reminded of the true effects that drinking too much rum can cause.