It Happened at Michigan

December 4, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — ‘You’ve got to be excellent’

Willie Hobbs first stepped foot on U-M’s campus as an 18-year-old first-year student in 1952. Twenty years later she was the first African American woman in the U.S. with a Ph.D. in physics.
November 20, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — ‘I’m just like everybody else’

Marina Oswald was left widowed when her husband was shot and killed in 1963. Two years later, she enrolled at U-M for classes at the English Language Institute.
November 6, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — Sharing more than a birthday

Joan and Janice Ottenbacher were always close as sisters. A lifesaving operation at University Hospital in 1964 made their bond extraordinary.
October 30, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — Breaking barriers and making gay rights history

U-M student Kathy Kozachenko, who campaigned in residence halls and student neighborhoods, made history in 1974 by becoming the country’s first openly gay elected official.
October 16, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — Teaching farmers in Ann Arbor

No one will mistake today’s U-M for an agricultural college. But for a few years before the Civil War, leaders were determined to teach the art and science of farming.
October 9, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — Powered by the sun

When the student-driven Solar Car Team and its car, Sunrunner, won the first Sunrayce USA in 1990, it propelled a legacy of leadership in competitive vehicles fueled by the sun.
October 2, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — ‘The finest sports building in the country’

With a $745,000 price tag, Michigan’s intramural sports building was rising along Hoover Avenue in early 1928 and opened later that fall.
September 18, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — ‘Jazz Goes to College’

A University of Michigan audience helped make Dave Brubeck an icon of 20th-century jazz. Brubeck, a pianist, made national headlines in 1954 with the release of “Jazz Goes to College.”
September 11, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — Physics, Ann Arbor and J. Robert Oppenheimer

What began as a modest university summer lecture program featuring notable physicists in 1923 evolved into an extraordinary series of appearances by some of the greatest minds in theoretical physics.
September 5, 2023
It Happened at Michigan — A dentist’s silent world

When George Gregor William Andree entered University Hall to receive his U-M diploma in 1908, he did not experience were the sounds of the June ceremony.