History
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April 30, 2018
Michigan in Detroit
Close to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Public Library in downtown Detroit is U-M’s Rackham Educational Memorial. Built in 1941, the building is noteworthy for its reliefs crafted by acclaimed Michigan sculptor Marshall Fredericks.
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April 23, 2018
Cadaver collector
Gregor “Doc” Nagele was a janitor at the U-M Medical School from 1849-1900. His official duties consisted of ringing the bell to awaken students, however his more important and surreptitious role was to collect cadavers for use by the Medical School.
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April 16, 2018
Women’s Studies
The first women’s studies course at U-M, one of the first of its kind in the country, was organized by a group of volunteer female professors in 1971.
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April 6, 2018
Feminine ideal
Alumna Marian Van Tuyl is “perhaps the only Michigan student ever depicted in a permanent piece of campus architecture.”
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March 28, 2018
Concerts to mark 50th anniversary of MLK Jr.’s assassination
Three concerts presented by the School of Music, Theatre & Dance will honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in observance of the 50th anniversary of his assassination.
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March 26, 2018
Homecoming queen controversy
In 1967, a black U-M student, Opal Bailey, was named homecoming queen in the second year of a relatively new tradition at the university. But the honor was tinged with racial controversy — both that year and the next.
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March 19, 2018
Book burning
In the spring of 1973, local activists calling themselves Advocates for Medical Information charged that “Obstetrics and Gynecology,” a textbook written by the chair of obstetrics and gynecology, J. Robert Willson, was sexist and should be burned.
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March 12, 2018
Elizabeth Crosby
One of the early pioneers of anatomy and neuroscience, Elizabeth C. Crosby, was the first female faculty member to receive the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award and the university’s highest honor given to senior faculty, the Henry Russel Lecturer.
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March 5, 2018
Aunt Ruth
During World War II, Ruth Buchanan, a receptionist at the Exhibit Museum, had an unofficial second job: writing to U-M students, faculty, staff and alumni serving in the war.
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March 2, 2018
Flying saucers?
On March 20, 1966, Dexter Township resident Frank Mannor claimed to have investigated a UFO that landed in a swamp near his house. Over the next few weeks, police received hundreds of accounts of mysterious lights. One possible explanation offered by a U-M professor was swamp gas.
