It Happened at Michigan

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. September 16, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — A lab for future chemists

    Shortly after becoming U-M’s first president, Henry Tappan declared in December 1855 that there was a strong need “to erect a chemical laboratory for the analytical courses” on campus.

  7. September 9, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — Dermatology dawns

    More than two decades after U-M established the nation’s first university hospital, William Fleming Breakey approached the Medical School with a petition to start courses in dermatology and syphilology.

  8. September 3, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — The first practical holograms

    The first breakthrough in practical holography came in 1964 — a 3D image that replicated a toy train courtesy of U-M researchers Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks.

  9. August 26, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — The first university hospital

    Shortly after U-M’s Medical School opened in 1850, students started clamoring for the hands-on clinical instruction they lacked in their lectures.

  10. August 12, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — Exploring Islamic art in the Midwest

    Mehmet Aga-Oglu was the first professor of Islamic art at an American university and founded the first academic journal to focus on art and architecture from Islamic nations.