History
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February 6, 2023
Heritage Project — Rhapsodies in blue
The origins of U-M’s devotion to the color blue lie lost in the years before the Civil War. But a committee of students charged with choosing Michigan’s colors made their recommendation Feb. 12, 1867.
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February 2, 2023
Fish preserves earliest fossilized brain of backboned animal
A 319 million-year-old ray-finned fish fossil at U-M provides new information about early evolutionary history. The fossil was pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago.
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January 30, 2023
Heritage Project — The Great Rush
On Nov. 9, 1872, a squad of U-M medical students had been handed their hats in a rule-free game of football by a crowd of students from the Literary Department.
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January 23, 2023
Heritage Project — The fake news about James Neel
James van Gundia Neel died of cancer at his home in Ann Arbor on the first day of February 2000. He was 84. He was promptly memorialized as one of the greatest scientists in U-M’s history.
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January 16, 2023
Heritage Project — No laughing matter
“Tickled to Death,” a musical comedy written, staged and performed by U-M students, generated a buzz in the weeks before Christmas 1924.
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January 9, 2023
Heritage Project — The scientist of peace
J. David Singer was a pioneer in a new, scientific way of studying war, believing a way to lasting peace might be found if only humankind truly understood how war and peace are made.
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December 5, 2022
Heritage Project — The Michigan scientist who was ‘Arrowsmith’
When the new novel “Arrowsmith” reached the nation’s bookstores in 1925, the author, Sinclair Lewis, was already the most celebrated American writer of the day.
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November 21, 2022
Heritage Project — Vulcan’s muddy light
Astronomer James Craig Watson was U-M’s “brightest son.” After discovering 22 asteroids between 1863-77, during a solar eclipse in 1878, Watson was sure he’d observed the rumored intra-mercurial planet Vulcan.
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November 14, 2022
Work begins on U-M’s Inclusive History Project
Twenty-two members from U-M’s three campuses have joined the committee to frame and design the Inclusive History Project, a multifaceted, years-long effort to study, document and better understand U-M’s history.
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November 14, 2022
Inclusive History Project Framing and Design Committee membership
The Inclusive History Project’s Framing and Design Committee is led by co-chairs Earl Lewis and Elizabeth Cole.
