MIT awards a certificate in piracy.
Earning the right to call yourself a pirate once meant living a rough-and-tumble life on the seas, robbing ships, and dodging naval law. However, modern swashbucklers enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a much easier go of it. Students who attend the esteemed university can earn a certificate in piracy by completing four classes — sailing, fencing, pistol shooting, and archery — and then taking the school’s secret pirate oath.
MIT began offering the optional certificate in 2012 as a way for students to enjoy fulfilling the school’s physical education requirements, though the idea also stems from a decades-long joke. Campus lore claims that students who completed the four courses began calling themselves pirates in jest sometime between the late 1990s and early 2000s, though it took years for the school to make the campus caper into an official award. (At one point during the program’s creation, receiving a commemorative eye patch was up for consideration in place of a formal certificate.) Today, MIT’s Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation issues the awards, and the school — which traditionally abstains from giving out honorary degrees — has even bestowed a pirate certificate upon actor Matt Damon for his “swashbuckling appreciation for science, engineering, and space exploration.” However, the university maintains that the program is all in good fun — the pirate certificate doesn’t actually give students license to engage in any pirate-y business.
One of history’s most notorious pirates has a legacy that’s lasted hundreds of years longer than his actual pirating career. Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, began his time at sea in the early 1700s, originally sailing as a British privateer during the War of the Spanish Succession. The job, which included stealing from Spanish ships on behalf of the British government, introduced the future pirate to the unscrupulous profession. By 1716, Teach had become captain of his own ship, and rumors quickly spread about his ruthless thefts on both land and sea. However, Blackbeard’s seafaring ended in November 1718 when forces directed by Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood ambushed him on North Carolina’s Ocracoke Island, ultimately cutting short his life and ending his career after two years.
