History

  1. 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.

  2. March 25, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — Saving Michigan’s forests from ‘the most appalling consequences’

    Volney M. Spalding, an 1873 U-M graduate who taught botany and zoology, worried about the fate of northern Michigan’s magnificent forests.

  3. March 18, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — Born to handle winning

    When Jim Abbott pitched his first Little League game as an 11-year-old growing up in Flint, he fired a no-hitter. It was a glimpse of the extraordinary career to come.

  4. March 11, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — Dr. Death comes to campus

    Nicknamed “Dr. Death” early in his medical career because of his strong support of euthanasia, Jack Kevorkian was a 1952 graduate of the Medical School.

  5. March 7, 2024

    U-M part of multi-museum effort to scan natural history specimens

    Natural history museums have entered a new stage of scientific discovery and accessibility after creating 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and making them freely available online.

  6. March 4, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — Engineering a prominent career

    George Maceo Jones earned three degrees from U-M over a decade. When he received his doctorate in 1934, he became the first African American man in the country with a Ph.D. in civil engineering.

  7. February 20, 2024

    George Gershwin’s first musical rediscovered after nearly a century

    Last summer, U-M researcher Jacob Kerzner uncovered the complete musical orchestration of “La, La, Lucille,” making the musical possible to perform for the first time in nearly a century.

  8. February 19, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — ‘A project that will aid all mankind’

    In the wake of the terrifying atomic bomb that ended World War II, U-M students and alumni looked for ways to channel a destructive power into safe, beneficial uses.

  9. February 12, 2024

    Ross School of Business celebrating 100 years of firsts

    What started as U-M’s School of Business Administration in 1924 — and which was renamed for Stephen M. Ross in 2004 — has seen a lot of business-education firsts over the past 100 years.

  10. February 12, 2024

    It Happened at Michigan — ‘I really disliked writing papers’

    Thomas Knoll was trying to write his dissertation about the processing of digital images. But he found working on a software program he’d been noodling with far more interesting