It Happened at Michigan

  1. March 31, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — 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.

  2. March 24, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — 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, widely used in surveys.

  3. March 17, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — When the Wolverines won it all

    The University of Michigan men’s team has made it to the championship game seven times since the NCAA Tournament began in 1939, winning it all in 1989.

  4. March 10, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — 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.

  5. February 24, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — 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.

  6. February 10, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — A novelist grows in Ann Arbor

    Years before Betty Smith published her best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” she gained her voice as a writer at U-M.

  7. January 27, 2025

    It Happened at Michigan — Athletics kicked off with cricket

    In 1860, students on U-M’s campus mobilized to form the school’s first official club sport, and it wasn’t football or baseball. It was cricket.

  8. October 28, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — An historic public health degree

    Paul B. Cornely graduated from U-M in 1934, making him the first African American to earn a Ph.D. in public health in the United States.

  9. October 14, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — A forest of knowledge

    Following a period in which Michigan’s logging industry cleared acres upon acres of densely packed forests, U-M became the first university in the nation to offer courses in forestry in 1881.

  10. September 23, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — An historic doctorate in botany

    Edavelth Kakkat Janaki Ammal made history in 1931 when she became the first Indian woman to receive a Doctor of Science degree in botany in the United States.