History

  1. June 5, 2017

    A summer with Shakespeare

    Now an undeniable Ann Arbor summer tradition, Shakespeare in the Arb began in 2001, when Katherine Mendeloff, lecturer IV in Residential College, LSA, was asked to direct an outdoor production as part of a three-year Ford Motor Co. grant for arts in the Nichols Arboretum.

  2. May 22, 2017

    The iconic Burton Memorial Tower

    The first suggestion for a campanile — a usually freestanding bell tower — arose in an editorial in the Michigan Alumnus in May 1919. According to The University Record archives, the editorial writer suggested “a new clock tower ‘set high in the center of campus, to be at once a landmark and a thing of beauty.’” 

  3. May 1, 2017

    The beloved professors of U-M

    Joseph Whiting and George Palmer Williams taught the first entering class of the University of Michigan.

  4. April 24, 2017

    The first commencement

     By the time of the university’s first commencement on Aug. 6, 1845, the first days of the entering class must have seemed like ancient history. Enrollment had grown nearly tenfold, to 52 students, with a full complement of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. 

  5. April 17, 2017

    The first freshmen

    Lyman Norris, George Parmelee, Judson Collins, William Wesson, Merchant Goodrich and George Pray can lay claim as the first entering class at the University of Michigan. 

  6. April 17, 2017

    Preservation Clinic to help people save personal pieces of history

    As the university celebrates its bicentennial year, the U-M Library wants to help members of the campus community preserve their own pieces of history at a Preservation Clinic April 27.

  7. April 17, 2017

    Bentley project uncovers untold history of African-Americans at U-M

    The Bentley Historical Library is working to uncover and collect the names and life stories of all the African-American students who attended U-M from its founding to the Black Action Movement in 1970.

  8. April 12, 2017

    Museum celebrates U-M bicentennial by featuring 200 objects in 200 days

    To celebrate the U-M’s bicentennial year, every day for 200 days through Oct. 16,  the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology will feature an artifact from its collections in a news post on its home page. 

  9. April 10, 2017

    U-M’s Uncle Jimmy

    James Ottley, the University of Michigan’s custodian and “hatman,” was known to scores of U-M students as Uncle Jimmy.

  10. April 10, 2017

    U-M professor’s book on Attica uprising wins Pulitzer Prize

    Professor and historian Heather Ann Thompson’s book “Blood in the the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy” has won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for history.