It Happened at Michigan

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.
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.
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.
June 24, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — The winning ways of ‘Hutch’

Carol Hutchins’ final coaching record stood at 1,707-551-5 and a career winning percentage of .755. She is the winningest coach in U-M history.
June 10, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — The roots of U-M’s peony garden

In 1922, as he neared his 70th birthday, William E. Upjohn approached the U-M Board of Regents with an offer of “a very valuable collection of peonies.”
April 29, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — Family trees and the ‘striking incidence’ of cancer

For years, U-M pathologist Aldred Scott Warthin studied the lives — and deaths from cancer — of an extended Ann Arbor family.
April 22, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — College Republicans and their U-M roots

In mid-May of 1892, hundreds of students from universities around the country gathered on the U-M campus. When they departed it was as the newly christened American Republican College League, a national group that continues today as the College Republicans.
April 15, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — The ‘rare and curious’ Stearns Collection

Frederick Stearns had never purchased a musical instrument, but a small guitar caught his eye. It was called a quirten and dated to 1807.
April 8, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — The ‘harrowing experience’ of meeting Robert Frost

Robert Frost came to campus in the fall of 1921 to be U-M’s inaugural Creative Fellow in the Creative Arts, an experiment carried out by President Marion L. Burton.
April 1, 2024
It Happened at Michigan — ‘Michigan is not to be outdone’

When U-M established a course in the principles of aerodynamics in 1914, the seven young men who gathered before a professor in the West Engineering Building quietly made history.