History

  1. November 13, 2023

    It Happened at Michigan — Lessons in reading, writing and the Bible

    In 1818, young people in the village of Detroit made their way into the new academy built by the University of Michigania for the inaugural class of the first Sunday school in the Territory of Michigan.

  2. 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.

  3. November 2, 2023

    Elephants: Earth’s giant climate change canaries

    U-M researcher Bill Sanders has devoted his 40-year research career to tracking 60 million years of Afro-Arabian proboscidean — elephants and their ordinal relatives — evolution.

  4. 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.

  5. October 25, 2023

    How do we remember? Let us count the ways

    U-M is driving an in-depth, cross-disciplinary audit of its campus: the land it sits upon, the historical figures it commemorates and how the campus community remembers.

  6. October 23, 2023

    It Happened at Michigan — Making waves with engineering innovation

    When a new engineering building opened on campus in 1904, it featured an innovation never seen on a college campus: a naval tank.

  7. October 16, 2023

    Museum’s snake specimens form world’s largest research collection

    The Museum of Zoology recently acquired tens of thousands of scientifically priceless reptile and amphibian specimens, including roughly 30,000 snakes preserved in glass jars.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.