Heritage/Tradition

  1. A little spying & kidnapping among friends

    During World War Two, a University of Michigan professor joined a plot to take out his best friend and enemy, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Werner Heisenberg.

  2. Food riot, 1956

    The night the quaddies said no to corned beef and swiss cheese on lettuce.

  3. A tree grows on the Diag

    The beauty and peacefulness of the Diag derive in large part from its trees. Many were planted as long ago as the Civil War, some just last week.

  4. The wolverine that wasn’t

    Why the University of Michigan doesn’t have a mascot.

  5. One odd duck

    How the strange but brilliant Augustus Woodward created the University of Michigan…sort of.

  6. Before the G.P.A.

    For U-M’s first 50 years or so, grades were unknown. But the push for a rigorous letter-grade system came from an unlikely source.

  7. South Quad gaming frenzy

    A wild 1992 video hockey tournament highlighted the rise of personal technology in the average dorm room.

  8. Car craze

    Speeding and “moral decay” provoked a stern crackdown on student drivers in the 1920s.

  9. Summer school for geniuses

    The Summer Symposia in Theoretical Physics attracted the best minds in the world.