It Happened at U-M

  1. May 5, 2025 Bob Woodruff as keynote speaker at the 2009 Spring Commencement on the Diag

    Spring Commencement on the Diag

    Seventeen years ago, Spring Commencement was moved to the Diag due to construction at Michigan Stadium. That was the first and, so far, only time it’s been there. To accommodate the crowd, the university installed a temporary floor to keep the seating level and brought in 30,000 folding chairs and 20 bleachers.

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  2. April 28, 2025 Irving K. Pond

    Irving K. Pond left his mark on U-M

    Irving K. Pond and his brother Allen B.Pond, well-regarded principals of the Chicago architecture firm Pond & Pond in the early 1900s, grew up in Ann Arbor, attended U-M — and designed the Michigan Union, the Michigan League and the Student Publications Building. He also scored U-M’s first football touchdown in 1879.

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  3. April 21, 2025 A hockey game at Yost Ice Arena

    A century of Yost

    When Yost Field House opened its doors on South State Street in 1923, it was the largest indoor collegiate athletic complex in the U.S. In 1973, the university converted the field house into an ice arena and is well known to be an intimidating environment for visiting teams.

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  4. April 14, 2025 an old hot air balloon

    Aero Club and hot air balloons

    In 1914, the first aeronautics class was offered at U-M, launching what would become the country’s first collegiate aeronautics program. U-M students were also learning about aeronautics outside the classroom as they took to the skies in gliders, simple planes — and, by the 1920s, hot air balloons.

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  5. April 7, 2025 A photo of people rollerskating in front of a building in 1927

    One hundred years of Angell Hall

    Angell Hall, one of the Ann Arbor campus’ most iconic academic buildings and home to the Fishbowl was developed in the 1920s to address overcrowding on campus. The 152,000-square-foot building was completed in 1924 at a cost of just over $1 million.

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  6. March 31, 2025 A photo of U-M football players and a Block M flag

    How maize and blue became U-M’s colors

    Blue had been an unofficial color of U-M since the school’s founding, and maize was chosen by students because it provided a nice contrast to the blue. With no standards initially implemented, the hues of the colors varied until a committee commissioned in 1912 by the Board of Regents settled on the current colors.

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  7. March 24, 2025 Rensis Likert

    Founder of famed survey scale was U-M alum

    Rensis Likert, a U-M alum, groundbreaking researcher and co-founder of the university’s Institute for Social Research, created the Likert scale. Likert scales have been used in research surveys in a wide variety of industries, from academics to the government to private research.

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  8. March 17, 2025 A photo of action from the 1989 NCAA men's basketball championship game

    When the Wolverines won it all in 1989

    When March Madness begins, and 68 Division I men’s basketball teams will vie to become national champion. The U-M men’s team has made it to the championship game seven times since the NCAA Tournament began in 1939, winning it all in 1989 — its first and, so far, only national championship.

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  9. March 10, 2025 A photo of two actors laying on the floor in a Shakespeare play

    The Royal Shakespeare Company came to town

    In 2001, the Royal Shakespeare Company performed an historic 27-hour marathon at the Power Center for Performing Arts, presented by the University Musical Society. The performance was so successful and popular it kicked off an 11-year relationship between the RSC, U-M and UMS that included three residencies.

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  10. February 24, 2025 Cleveland Abbe

    First weather report’s creator had U-M roots

    Cleveland Abbe, a U-M employee who studied astronomy in the late 1850s, eventually turned his focus to the weather and in 1869, created a regional weather service, based in Cincinnati. Not long after, newspapers across the country were printing Abbe’s daily reports called “probabilities,” and weather forecasts were born.

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