I have no specific recall of any hilarious or disastrous occasions (owing to a failing memory and possibly out of self-preservation) but here are a few random memories.
The thing that most impressed me as an undergraduate was the intellectual caliber of the professors, and some of the students, and also some of the famous personages which Yale attracted during our time in the 50s.
One of my professors, for a European history seminar, was Thomas Mendenhall, an ebullient and charismatic teacher and speaker, who enlivened the discussion of, inter alia, the French Revolution by seeing it from the participants’ perspective, something that had not occurred to me or my cohorts in the seminar who were mainly focused on lunch or football. Mendenhall then became the president of Smith College around 1959. Another great teacher was Bernard M.W. Knox, for Roman and Greek studies. He was the first person I encountered with three first names and taught in a wonderful space above Phelps Gate filled with antiquities as I recall. Both professors were great eminences in their fields but, more importantly, wonderful teachers who actually made the subjects interesting.
Among the famous people Yale attracted during our time there were William F. Buckley, a perennial favorite of mine given his eloquence and wit. In 1959 he debated Norman Thomas, sometime socialist candidate for President of the U.S. Needless to say Buckley outshone Thomas but lost the debate, which was about nuclear power. Buckley later ran for mayor of New York City (against John V. Lindsay, a classmate of his or close to it). When asked what would be the first thing he would do if he were elected, he said “I’d ask for a recount.”
Also during our time, William Sloane Coffin became the university chaplain and transformed the perception of religion at Yale. Martin Luther King also spoke later, with great conviction and eloquence.
The main thing which changed during our years there was the feeling that, after Yale, we were capable of achieving anything.