50 Fun Facts About University of Michigan

Which nickname is given to Michigan Stadium, where the Wolverines play their home football games?

The Big House is the largest stadium in the United States: it officially seats 107,601 and has held crowds of more than 115,000.

Which program did John F. Kennedy first propose in a 2 a.m. campaign speech at the University of Michigan in 1960?

The Peace Corps began as an early-morning challenge to students from the steps of the Michigan Union, and Kennedy signed the executive order creating it on March 1, 1961.

Which quarterback started for Michigan before going 199th in the 2000 NFL draft?

Tom Brady was the seventh quarterback picked that year, taken by the New England Patriots in a choice now called the biggest steal in NFL draft history.

The University of Michigan's Thomas Francis Jr. announced in April 1955 that a vaccine for which disease was safe?

Polio was the target of Jonas Salk's vaccine, which Francis had tested in a $17.5 million nationwide trial before giving his verdict in Rackham Auditorium.

Which future U.S. president played center on Michigan football teams that won national titles in 1932 and 1933?

Gerald Ford turned down offers from two NFL teams after graduating, and Michigan retired his No. 48 jersey in 1994.

Which rival do the Michigan Wolverines play each year in a football showdown that followers simply call The Game?

Ohio State first met Michigan in 1897, and in 2000 ESPN ranked the series the greatest rivalry in North American sports.

Which nickname was given to the all-freshman lineup that started for Michigan in the 1992 college basketball final?

The Fab Five reached the national title game again as sophomores in 1993, and an ESPN documentary about them later drew record ratings for the network's films.

Which book series did University of Michigan students parody in a 2009 stage musical that went viral on YouTube?

Harry Potter was spoofed in A Very Potter Musical, staged on campus in April 2009. The students behind it went on to form the theater company Team StarKid.

Which pop star gave up a University of Michigan dance scholarship in 1978 to pursue a career in New York City?

Madonna had won the scholarship after graduating from high school in January 1976, and she left Ann Arbor without finishing her degree.

In which city was the University of Michigan founded in 1817, two decades before its move to Ann Arbor?

Detroit housed the young school in a building on Bates Street, which it shared at first with the city's library.

Which shade of yellow pairs with blue as the University of Michigan colors celebrated in its alma mater song?

Maize and blue give the alma mater its title, The Yellow and Blue, with words by Charles M. Gayley about late-summer grain fields and skies.

Which University of Michigan fight song did student Louis Elbel write on a train after an 1898 football win?

The Victors followed a 12–11 defeat of Chicago that sealed an unbeaten season, and John Philip Sousa's band played it in Ann Arbor the next spring.

Veritas, the last word of the University of Michigan's Latin motto Artes, Scientia, Veritas, means what in English?

Truth follows the arts and sciences in the three-word motto, and the same Latin word on its own serves as Harvard's motto.

Which form of protest was invented at the University of Michigan in 1965 by faculty opposing the Vietnam War?

The teach-in was anthropologist Marshall Sahlins's alternative to a faculty strike, and the first one ran overnight and ended with a speech in the early morning.

Which domestic program did Lyndon B. Johnson lay out in a May 1964 speech at the University of Michigan?

The Great Society had been named in a speech two weeks earlier, but the Ann Arbor address set out its goals, and 14 task forces began work almost at once.

Which name is given to the oldest part of the University of Michigan campus, a green crisscrossed by sidewalks?

The Diag was first called the Diagonal Green, after the slanting paths that cross it. It hosted spring commencement in 2008 while the football stadium was under construction.

Nichols Arboretum at the University of Michigan holds North America's largest collection of which heirloom flowers?

Peonies came to the arboretum in 1922, when W. E. Upjohn donated his personal collection, and the garden built around them opened in 1927.

The University of Michigan runs regional campuses in Dearborn and which other city, where classes began in 1956?

Flint's campus opened as the Flint Senior College, a remote outpost that at first taught only upper-division undergraduate courses.

In 1869 the University of Michigan became the first American university to own and operate which kind of facility?

A hospital opened that year in an Ann Arbor home first built as a professor's residence, and it grew into the health system now called Michigan Medicine.

Which architect, famed for automobile factories, designed the University of Michigan's Burton Memorial Tower?

Albert Kahn designed many of the university's classic buildings, among them Hill Auditorium and Angell Hall. His Burton tower holds a carillon of 53 bells weighing 43 tons.

Which coach won 194 games with Michigan Wolverines football from 1969 to 1989 but never a national title?

Bo Schembechler's teams won or shared 13 conference titles, and he had both played for and coached under his great rival Woody Hayes.

Which coach's Point-a-Minute Michigan Wolverines teams outscored opponents 2,821 to 42 from 1901 to 1905?

Fielding Yost's squads went 55–1–1 in that span and claimed four straight national championships.

Which coach brought the winged helmet to Michigan Wolverines football in 1938, having first used it at Princeton?

Fritz Crisler wanted to dress up Michigan's plain black helmets, and the winged version has been worn ever since its debut in the 1938 season opener.

Which former Michigan quarterback coached the Wolverines to the 2023 national championship, then left for the NFL?

Jim Harbaugh had finished third in the Heisman Trophy voting as a Michigan senior in 1986, and his 2023 title was the school's first since 1997.

Which Michigan cornerback became the first primarily defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy, in 1997?

Charles Woodson also returned punts and caught passes on offense that season, and he was the third Michigan player to take the award.

Which Michigan receiver won the 1991 Heisman Trophy and was later named Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XXXI?

Desmond Howard took 85 percent of the first-place Heisman votes, then earned his Super Bowl award with a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown.

The Michigan Wolverines play which rival for the Little Brown Jug, the oldest trophy game in top-level college football?

Minnesota kept a 30-cent water jug that the Michigan team left behind after a 6–6 tie in 1903, and it became college football's most regularly exchanged rivalry trophy.

The Michigan Wolverines beat which school 49–0 in the first Rose Bowl, played on New Year's Day 1902?

Stanford's captain asked to stop the game with eight minutes left on the clock, and the next Rose Bowl was not played until 1916.

Which lower-division school stunned the fifth-ranked Michigan Wolverines 34–32 in Ann Arbor in September 2007?

Appalachian State sealed the upset by blocking a last-second field goal, and Michigan dropped out of the national rankings altogether in a single week.

Which Indiana school played its first-ever football game in 1887 against a visiting Michigan Wolverines team?

Notre Dame's players were so new to the sport that the Michigan team was credited with teaching them the game before play began.

Which Michigan Wolverines star called a timeout his team did not have late in the 1993 NCAA final?

Chris Webber's mistake drew a technical foul that sealed the title for North Carolina, and he later named his charity The Timeout Foundation.

Which Olympic champion swimmer trained at the University of Michigan under Bob Bowman after the 2004 Games?

Michael Phelps followed Bowman to Ann Arbor, took classes for four years without pursuing a degree, served as a volunteer assistant coach, and then won eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympics.

Which sprinter broke several world records within 45 minutes at the University of Michigan's Ferry Field in 1935?

Jesse Owens was competing through a lower back injury that afternoon, and a plaque outside Ferry Field now marks what has been called the greatest 45 minutes in sport.

The University of Michigan helped found which athletic conference, the oldest in NCAA Division I, in 1896?

The Big Ten voted Michigan out in April 1907 for refusing to follow its limits on football schedules, and the Wolverines played as independents for a decade.

Which University of Michigan graduate, who arrived as a pre-med student, became an actor famous for his deep voice?

James Earl Jones grew up on a Michigan farm with a stutter so severe that he refused to speak, and he went on to voice Darth Vader and Mufasa.

Which Death of a Salesman playwright twice won the University of Michigan's Hopwood Award as a student?

Arthur Miller first majored in journalism and wrote for the student newspaper before switching to English, and the university opened a theatre in his name in 2007.

Which future tech billionaire built a Lego inkjet printer as a University of Michigan engineering student?

Larry Page graduated in computer engineering in 1995, three years before he co-founded Google, and he also worked on the university's solar car team.

Which CNN medical correspondent earned both his undergraduate and medical degrees at the University of Michigan?

Sanjay Gupta finished medical school in Ann Arbor in 1993 and became a neurosurgeon as well as a broadcaster, winning multiple Emmy Awards for his reporting.

Which 1983 film follows University of Michigan alumni who reunite after the funeral of a college friend?

The Big Chill was directed and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan, who had won the university's Hopwood writing award four times as a student.

Which bookstore chain was founded in Ann Arbor in 1971 by two brothers studying at the University of Michigan?

Borders began as a single shop on South State Street run by brothers Tom and Louis, and it stayed headquartered in Ann Arbor after Kmart bought it in 1992.

Which Moon mission of 1971 had a three-man crew who had all studied at the University of Michigan?

Apollo 15 carried David Scott, Alfred Worden and James Irwin and was the first mission to use the Lunar Roving Vehicle. Michigan also supplied the whole crew of Gemini 4.

Which poet, the only winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, took up a University of Michigan fellowship in 1921?

Robert Frost made Ann Arbor his home for several years in the 1920s, and the university gave him a lifetime appointment as a Fellow in Letters.

Which Swedish diplomat, a 1935 University of Michigan architecture graduate, saved thousands of Jews in wartime Hungary?

Raoul Wallenberg was made an honorary citizen of the United States in 1981, only the second person so honored after Winston Churchill.

Which particle detector did physicist Donald Glaser invent in 1952 while teaching at the University of Michigan?

The bubble chamber won Glaser the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics. He denied that a glass of beer inspired it, though he did fill early prototypes with beer.

Which architect of the Gateway Arch devised the 1950s master plan for the University of Michigan's North Campus?

Eero Saarinen also designed several North Campus buildings himself, including the music school, on farmland the regents had begun buying in 1949.

Which 1936 University of Michigan graduate is known as the father of information theory?

Claude Shannon, born in Petoskey in northern Michigan, earned two bachelor's degrees that year, and his later work laid the foundations of the Information Age.

Which Michigan Wolverines halfback, nicknamed Old 98, won the Heisman Trophy in 1940?

Tom Harmon scored four touchdowns on his 21st birthday and served as a military pilot in World War II. His son is the actor Mark Harmon.

The University of Michigan's original 1817 name, Catholepistemiad, loosely translates as a school of what?

Universal knowledge was the promise of a name coined from Greek and Latin roots, for a school modeled on the imperial university Napoleon had founded in France.

Which executive who later signed Jackie Robinson coached Michigan Wolverines baseball as a law student?

Branch Rickey asked every alumnus he knew to write to the athletic director on his behalf, and the law dean was persuaded that he could manage both jobs.

In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the Supreme Court upheld which University of Michigan Law School admissions policy?

Affirmative action survived because the school weighed race as one factor for each applicant, while a companion case struck down a points-based admissions system.