 Welcome back to Mysteries of the Library. Today we're discussing a scavenger hunt with a spectacular prize, a guarantee of free tuition from the University of Tennessee. Stick around. If you've been to the first floor of Hodges, to the archives room specifically, any time over the past few decades, there's a decent chance that you ran into the one armed man. Now we got there because of a contest the University of Tennessee held in 1931. They invited sculptors from all around the world to see who could create the best image of a volunteer. The winner was a student named Theodore Andre Beck from Yale. Now although his original design caught a few eyes at the university, it would ultimately fail to live up to Tennessee's very high standards. If you haven't guessed it yet, we are talking about the iconic Tennessee torch bearer statue that currently sits in front of Circle Park. Now, there's no photographic evidence that I could find of Beck's original design, but it is very well documented that he had the torch bearer holding a lantern instead of a torch and holding it at waist height rather than above his head. You know, it's easy to see where the backlash comes from, but just never forget what they took from him. Anyway, in 1940, after nearly a decade of redesign and adjustments, Beck sent his final model to the University of Tennessee for their approval. And to his surprise, it got approved. Okay, we have officially hit the point where history starts to turn into dark speculation. So here's what we know for sure. At some point, after being delivered to the University of Tennessee, Beck's original plaster model tragically lost its arm in an explosion. The explosion was caused by a buildup of gas in the fully functional torch, and that's where stories start to differ. If you look to an article published in the University's information database, you'll find the cause of the explosion attributed to a simple design failure, purely mechanical. Nothing more, nothing less. However, if you've talked to someone in the University archives, you'll uncover a far more nefarious story. A story about a group of rival college students who came to the University of Tennessee and brought a pumpkin of all things. They took the pumpkin, and they stuck it on the outstretched hand of the torch bear, intentionally causing the gas buildup that led to the fatal explosion. The severed plaster arm of one of our University's first volunteers remains missing to this day. But legend tells, and the University Archives employee tells, that the student that finds it won't have to pay a dime for their education. This has been Mysteries of the Library. We'll see you next time.