Heritage Project
-
November 21, 2022
Heritage Project — Vulcan’s muddy light
Astronomer James Craig Watson was U-M’s “brightest son.” After discovering 22 asteroids between 1863-77, during a solar eclipse in 1878, Watson was sure he’d observed the rumored intra-mercurial planet Vulcan.
-
November 14, 2022
Heritage Project — When heads rolled
When William W. Cook gave his alma mater an extraordinary financial gift to transform the U-M Law School, he imagined a setting so beautiful it would lure the nation’s brightest students to study law in Ann Arbor.
-
November 7, 2022
Heritage Project — Dr. Joy’s undoing
By all signs, the future was very bright for Douglas Joy in the summer of 1881. By June 1882, Douglas Joy was fighting for his job and, more important, his reputation.
-
October 31, 2022
Heritage Project — Mysteries at Michigan
You may never have heard of the Michigan law professor who was baked to a crisp in the oven of the Lawyers Club kitchen. Or the English professor presumed dead when his face suddenly went missing.
-
October 24, 2022
Heritage Project — Tom Harmon is missing
Three years after accepting the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in the land, Tom Harmon and his World War II fighter plane were shot down.
-
October 17, 2022
Heritage Project — Lost campus
Every alumnus carries a cherished memory of Michigan — then returns in 20 years and realizes that “my Michigan” is hard to find among the new construction of someone else’s Michigan.
-
October 10, 2022
Heritage Project — In the face of fascists
In the summer of 1936, a procession of scholars — including a junior professor from U-M — crossed the main plaza of the University of Heidelberg to celebrate the 550th anniversary of one of the great universities of Europe.
-
October 3, 2022
Heritage Project — Depression generation
The Great Depression tore a hole in the University of Michigan, and students who went to college in the 1930s lived in a realm of scarcity and fear.
-
September 26, 2022
Heritage Project — The first freshmen
Their names are nowhere on the U-M campus. But in 1841 they did what no other young person had ventured to do in Ann Arbor. These six young, white males enrolled.
-
September 19, 2022
Heritage Project — A different Diag
One day in June long ago, two lawyers and a politician were given the job of recommending exactly where to build the campus of the new University of Michigan. They had two sites to look at, both of about 40 acres.
