99 Fun Facts About Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor was founded in 1824 by which two land speculators?

John Allen and Elisha Rumsey were both escaping money troubles when they met in January 1824; within weeks they had bought 640 acres of federal land for $800 and laid out a town.

By tradition, the 'Ann' in Ann Arbor honours what?

The founders' wives, both named Ann, get the credit in most tellings, but historian Russell Bidlack argued that the name honours only one of them: the other wife's middle name was Ann, and she was not called by it.

The 'Arbor' in Ann Arbor's name refers to groves of which tree?

Bur oak. In Virginia, where one founder grew up, 'arbour' meant a bower of trees, which suited the sunshine and shadow under the scattered oaks; local historians call the wild-grape arbor tale a myth.

Ann Arbor is the seat of which Michigan county?

Washtenaw. The speculators' brand-new village was picked for the county seat, a choice that all but guaranteed the young town would last.

Which city ranked second in Michigan in the 2020 census, three places above Ann Arbor?

Grand Rapids. It counted 198,917 people to Ann Arbor's 123,851, which was still enough for fifth place and well clear of Flint, a city that had outnumbered Ann Arbor as recently as 2000.

Ann Arbor lost a bid to become Michigan's state capital to which city?

Lansing. It was still wilderness when lawmakers picked it in 1847 as a compromise, after Ann Arbor, Jackson and other established towns had all lobbied for the prize.

The University of Michigan began in which city before moving to Ann Arbor in 1837?

Detroit. It was founded there in 1817 as the 'Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania', and moved after Ann Arbor offered 40 acres of land for a campus.

Which insect killed thousands of Ann Arbor's trees after 2002?

Emerald ash borer. Ash trees it killed were built into a new Ann Arbor library branch, with trunks stripped of bark so that visitors can see the beetle's tracks.

Which river runs through Ann Arbor?

Huron. Ann Arbor draws drinking water from the river and runs four dams on it, two of which generate hydroelectric power.

Which pizza chain is headquartered at a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired complex just outside Ann Arbor?

Domino's. When steelworkers building the complex in 1984 rang a Domino's store for pizza, they were told it was outside the delivery area, so rival Little Caesars fed them instead.

Tom Monaghan and his brother bought their first pizza shop in 1960 in which town next to Ann Arbor?

Ypsilanti. Within about eight months James wanted out, so Tom bought his brother's half of the shop with the Volkswagen they used for deliveries.

Which bookstore chain was founded in Ann Arbor in 1971 by two brothers?

Borders grew from one small Ann Arbor shop into a pioneer of the big-box bookstore, then was undone in the e-reader era: its last 399 stores were liquidated in 2011.

Which Ann Arbor eatery was days from opening in 1982 as Greenberg's when another Greenberg claimed the name?

Zingerman's. With days to go, founders Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig sat down with six-packs and phone books, hunting for a Jewish-sounding name that began with A or Z.

What is the central open space of the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus called?

The Diag. Students and professors cutting from corner to corner of the open ground wore diagonal paths across it, and the main path's nickname spread to the whole space.

Which US president's presidential library is in Ann Arbor?

Gerald Ford played centre for Michigan and had offers from two NFL teams, the Lions and the Packers, but took a coaching job at Yale, where he later studied law.

On the steps of which Ann Arbor building did JFK first float the Peace Corps in a 2 a.m. speech?

Michigan Union. Kennedy never said 'Peace Corps' on the steps: he asked how many future doctors would spend their days in Ghana, and gave the idea its name only later.

Michigan Stadium's official capacity ends in a '1', an extra seat said to honour which namesake of Michigan's basketball arena?

Fritz Crisler. As athletic director he oversaw the expansion to 101,001 seats in the 1950s, and every official capacity since has kept his odd seat, though nobody knows where it is.

What is Michigan Stadium's nickname?

The Big House was built in 1927 as a 72,000-seat stadium that could grow past 100,000, because Fielding Yost foresaw crowds of up to 150,000.

Which team beat the Red Wings in a shootout at Michigan Stadium in the 2014 NHL Winter Classic?

Toronto Maple Leafs. They won 3-2 and set an NHL attendance record of 105,491, a year late: the game was first set for New Year's Day 2013 and lost to a lockout.

Michigan Stadium was formally dedicated in October 1927 with a win over which rival?

Ohio State. Michigan won, five years after spoiling the dedication of the Buckeyes' own stadium; the true first game had come three weeks earlier, a 33-0 win over Ohio Wesleyan.

In 2013, a crowd of 115,109, then an NCAA record, filled Michigan Stadium for a game against which team?

Notre Dame. The record stood until 2016, when 156,990 people watched Tennessee play Virginia Tech on a field laid inside a NASCAR track, Bristol Motor Speedway.

What is Ann Arbor's annual cannabis rally, held on the first Saturday of April, called?

Hash Bash began as a celebration of the campaign that freed John Sinclair, the local activist sentenced to ten years in prison over two marijuana joints.

The Ann Arbor Art Fair fills the downtown streets with artists' booths each year in which month?

July. The first fair, in 1960, was a sideshow to the merchants' Summer Bargain Days: volunteers strung wire between parking meters on South University for 132 artists.

The Ann Arbor Film Festival, founded in 1963, is North America's oldest festival of what kind of film?

Experimental. Filmmakers who screened early work at the festival include Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Gus Van Sant and George Lucas.

What tiny works of installation art are scattered around downtown Ann Arbor?

Fairy doors first turned up inside the home of illustrator Jonathan B. Wright; in April 2005 one appeared outside a downtown coffee shop, and he has played their 'fairyologist' ever since.

Endover, the 2,400 lb steel sculpture on U-M's campus that spins at a gentle push, has what shape?

A cube. Sculptor Tony Rosenthal, a 1936 Michigan graduate, stood it on one corner over a pivot sunk into the ground, which is why more than a ton of steel turns so easily.

Tony Rosenthal's spinning sculpture at U-M was commissioned after residents of which city petitioned to keep its twin, Alamo?

New York. Alamo was meant to move from Astor Place to Ann Arbor after six months, but locals petitioned to keep it, so Michigan's class of 1965 commissioned a new one instead.

Which proto-punk band was formed in Ann Arbor in 1967 by Iggy Pop and the Asheton brothers?

The Stooges made their debut at a Halloween party in 1967, when they were still calling themselves the Psychedelic Stooges.

Before he became a punk frontman, Iggy Pop played which instrument in his Ann Arbor high-school band, the Iguanas?

Drums. Jim Osterberg kept time for the Iguanas through high school, and the band's name gave him the nickname that became his stage name, 'Iggy'.

Which national left-wing campus group held its first major meetings in Ann Arbor in 1960?

Students for a Democratic Society held its first meeting at the University of Michigan in 1960 and elected Alan Haber president; two years later Tom Hayden drafted its famous manifesto.

Which student-backed 1970s Ann Arbor party won council seats pushing to decriminalise marijuana?

Human Rights Party. Its two councillors, elected in 1972, could not legalise marijuana under state law, so they settled for the next best thing: a $5 fine for possession.

A well-worn local joke describes Ann Arbor as a few square miles 'surrounded by' what?

Reality. The line pokes at the college town's left-leaning politics, like its other tongue-in-cheek nickname, 'The People's Republic of Ann Arbor'; the number of square miles changes with the teller.

Which Ann Arbor software startup did Cisco buy for $2.35 billion in 2018?

Duo Security. Founders Dug Song and Jon Oberheide started it in 2010 to make secure logins simple, and kept the headquarters in Ann Arbor after the sale.

Ann Arbor's Hill Auditorium, opened in 1913, was designed by which celebrated Michigan architect?

Albert Kahn worked with acoustical engineer Hugh Tallant on Hill Auditorium, a hall built around its sound that has hosted everyone from Leonard Bernstein to Bob Marley.

Which Ann Arbor movie palace was saved from demolition in the 1970s?

Michigan Theater. The volunteer organists who had brought its silent-film organ back to life led the fight that stopped the building being turned into a food court.

Nichols Arboretum, 'the Arb', is known for its century-old garden of which flower?

Peonies. The garden began in 1922, when William Upjohn, founder of the Kalamazoo drug company, gave the university his own collection; 196 of his varieties still grow there.

As of 2025, what is the tallest building in Ann Arbor?

Tower Plaza. When the 26-storey block was proposed in 1965, the city council answered by debating an 18-storey height limit, and no later building in the city has risen above it.

Which Ann Arbor neighbourhood, settled largely by German immigrants, became a national historic district in 1972?

Old West Side. Neighbours organised in 1967 to stop a block of its houses being replaced with apartments, and five years later the whole district was on the National Register.

Which camera maker, whose brick-shaped C3 sold over two million, began in 1931 as an Ann Arbor radio company?

Argus. Radios sold poorly every summer, so the International Radio Corporation launched a cheap 35 mm camera in 1936 to fill the gap, and the sideline soon took over the company.

Amtrak's train through Ann Arbor between Chicago and Pontiac is named what?

The Wolverine. Its trains no longer call at the city's grand 1886 stone depot: the railroad sold the building in 1970 to a restaurateur, who turned it into the Gandy Dancer.

Which polio vaccine pioneer served on the University of Michigan faculty?

Jonas Salk left Michigan for Pittsburgh in 1947, but the verdict on his polio vaccine was delivered in Ann Arbor: his old mentor Thomas Francis ran the trial and announced there in 1955 that it worked.

The University of Michigan's student newspaper, founded in 1890, is called what?

The Michigan Daily. The playwright Arthur Miller wrote for it as a journalism student in the 1930s, years before Death of a Salesman made his name.

KMS Fusion, a private Ann Arbor company, spent the 1970s trying to ignite tiny fusion fuel pellets with what?

Lasers. Founder Kip Siegel, a former Michigan professor, bet his own company on laser fusion, then the only privately funded effort of its kind in the United States.

Which rocker's 1977 hit 'Mainstreet' looks back on his teenage years in Ann Arbor?

Bob Seger. The street he had in mind was Ann Street, just off Main, where as a boy he would stand outside a smoky blues club to listen to the band.

In March 1965, University of Michigan professors opposed to the Vietnam War invented which kind of all-night campus protest?

The teach-in. The professors had first called a one-day strike; when the governor and legislators objected, they kept their classes and taught about the war all night instead.

Which automotive magazine moved its headquarters to Ann Arbor in the late 1970s?

Car and Driver. The editor who led the move, David E Davis Jr, walked out in the mid-1980s, took some of the staff with him and started a rival magazine, Automobile, in the same city.

Ann Arbor's oldest sister-city link, dating from 1965, is with which German university town?

Tübingen. The 1965 partnership honours Ann Arbor's Swabian roots: most of its 19th-century German settlers came from villages around Stuttgart, a short way north of the town.

Which Michigan architect, who once studied under Frank Lloyd Wright, designed Ann Arbor's city hall?

Alden B. Dow, the son of Dow Chemical's founder, turned his back on the family business for architecture after a teenage trip to Japan, and spent the summer of 1933 at Wright's Taliesin studio.

In 2003, Ann Arbor voters approved a tax to create what around the city?

A greenbelt. The city pays farmers on its edge for the development rights to their fields, so the land stays in farming and cannot be sold off for subdivisions.

Which sprinter broke a string of world records within 45 minutes at Ann Arbor's Ferry Field in 1935?

Jesse Owens did it at the 1935 Big Ten championships despite a lower back injury. A year later he won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

Which Michigan quarterback of 1995 to 1999 fell to the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL draft?

Tom Brady lasted until the sixth round, which earned him a reputation as the NFL's biggest draft steal. He went on to win seven Super Bowl titles.

Which domestic programme did Lyndon Johnson outline in a 1964 commencement speech at Michigan Stadium?

Great Society was Johnson's name for an America free of poverty and racial injustice. Almost at once, 14 task forces began turning the Ann Arbor speech into policy.

Which pop star took a dance scholarship at the University of Michigan before quitting college in 1978?

Madonna was born and raised in Michigan, and she headed east in 1978 to pursue a career in dance before music made her famous.

Which book series did University of Michigan troupe Team StarKid parody in a viral 2009 musical?

Harry Potter got the StarKid treatment in the troupe's first show, co-founded by Darren Criss, who went on to star in Glee and win Tony and Emmy awards.

Which actor, later the voice of Darth Vader, enrolled at the University of Michigan as a pre-med student?

James Earl Jones had overcome a childhood stutter so severe that for a time he refused to speak. He also voiced Mufasa in The Lion King.

In Parks and Recreation, which character played by Rob Lowe moves to Ann Arbor with nurse Ann Perkins?

Chris Traeger is offered a job at the University of Michigan, and the couple also want to be closer to Ann's family, who live in the state.

Which English club met Real Madrid at Michigan Stadium in 2014 before a US-record soccer crowd of 109,318?

Manchester United drew the biggest crowd ever to watch a soccer match in the United States, then won the summer tournament by beating Liverpool in the final.

Michigan gave up its claim to which city at the 'Frostbitten Convention', held in Ann Arbor in December 1836?

Toledo was the price of statehood: Michigan accepted Congress's terms and took most of the Upper Peninsula instead, land many thought a worthless wilderness.

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

Larry Page reverse-engineered an ink cartridge so that his machine of toy bricks could print large posters cheaply. He graduated in 1995 and went on to co-found Google.

Doctors around the world use the 'Ann Arbor staging' system to describe the spread of which cancer?

Lymphoma is graded from stage I, a single region, upwards under the Ann Arbor system, which was first drawn up for Hodgkin's disease.

Which nickname did Michigan's 1991 basketball recruits, led by Chris Webber and Jalen Rose, become famous under?

Fab Five players became the first all-freshman starting line-up to reach an NCAA championship game, and they got back to the final a year later as sophomores.

Which rival has Michigan's football team played for the Little Brown Jug trophy since the early 1900s?

Minnesota ended up with the 30-cent water jug Michigan left behind after a 6–6 tie in 1903, and the two teams have played for it ever since.

Michigan beat which university 49–0 in 1902 in the first Rose Bowl game ever played?

Stanford's captain asked to end the game with eight minutes left. Michigan's coach, Fielding Yost, had been in charge of the losing team only a year earlier.

Which former Beatle headlined a December 1971 rally in Ann Arbor to free a poet jailed over two joints?

John Lennon appeared with Yoko Ono, and the poet, John Sinclair, who had been given ten years for two marijuana cigarettes, was released shortly after the concert.

Which blockbuster cholesterol drug grew from a molecule identified in 1985 at Parke-Davis's Ann Arbor labs?

Lipitor, the brand name of atorvastatin, was the work of chemist Bruce Roth. By 2003 it was the best-selling medicine in the United States.

Which forecasting website, spun out of the University of Michigan in 1995, is named after a 1960s radical group?

Weather Underground grew out of a campus internet weather database called UM-Weather, built by meteorology doctoral student Jeff Masters under Professor Perry Samson.

Which 1971 Moon mission, the first to carry a lunar rover, had a crew who had all studied at Michigan?

Apollo 15 flew David Scott, Alfred Worden and Jim Irwin, giving the university its second all-Michigan space crew after Gemini 4 in 1965.

Which documentary maker of The Civil War graduated from Ann Arbor's Pioneer High School in 1971?

Ken Burns shot his first documentary in the city, about an Ann Arbor factory, after getting an 8 mm movie camera for his 17th birthday.

The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum opened in 1982 inside what kind of historic downtown building?

A firehouse built of brick was the city's central fire station from 1882 to 1978, and the science museum moved in with just 25 exhibits.

The University of Michigan began in 1817 under which name, loosely meaning 'School of Universal Knowledge'?

Catholepistemiad was a word invented for the occasion from Greek and Latin roots, and even the founding act offered an easier alternative: the University of Michigania.

Which 2012 romantic comedy sends a chef, played by Jason Segel, to Ann Arbor for his partner's university job?

The Five-Year Engagement shot scenes in the city in June 2011, and its hero, unable to find a kitchen to run in Michigan, ends up behind the counter of a real local deli.

Which Death of a Salesman playwright studied at the University of Michigan, which named a theatre for him?

Arthur Miller worked a string of menial jobs to pay his Michigan tuition and began as a journalism major. The theatre bearing his name opened in 2007.

Mcity, a 32-acre mock town on the University of Michigan's North Campus, was built to test what?

Driverless cars and wirelessly connected vehicles are put through their paces at Mcity, which opened in 2015 on land the university bought from a drug company.

A monthly survey by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research produces a famous index of what?

Consumer sentiment has been measured in Ann Arbor since the late 1940s, when Professor George Katona devised the first confidence measures.

The Signal of Liberty, a weekly newspaper published in Ann Arbor during the 1840s, campaigned to end what?

Slavery was the paper's target from 1841 to 1848. The idea for it came out of the founding meeting of Michigan's anti-slavery society, held in the city in 1836.

Which detective agency that once guarded Abraham Lincoln has its headquarters in Ann Arbor?

Pinkerton began around 1850 as the North-Western Police Agency, started by a Scottish-born barrel maker and a Chicago attorney.

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

Eero Saarinen also designed several of the new campus's buildings himself, among them the home of the university's music school.

The Blind Pig, the Ann Arbor club that has hosted Nirvana and Pearl Jam, is named after old slang for what?

A speakeasy was also known as a blind pig. The club opened in 1971 as a European-style café with live music, and one of its creators later started a record label under the same name.

Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf played a 1969 Ann Arbor festival devoted to which genre of music?

Blues, especially the modern electric kind, was the main attraction in 1969, and three years later the event widened into a festival that shared the bill with jazz.

Which Swedish rescuer of thousands of Hungarian Jews earned a University of Michigan architecture degree in 1935?

Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Ann Arbor to study in 1931, more than a decade before his work in German-occupied Hungary made him a hero of the Holocaust.

Which future domestic terrorist wrote the University of Michigan's best mathematics dissertation of 1967?

Ted Kaczynski, later known as the Unabomber, wrote a thesis so specialised that one professor guessed only 10 or 12 people in the country understood it.

Which Olympic swimmer trained at the University of Michigan for four years before winning eight golds in Beijing?

Michael Phelps followed his coach, Bob Bowman, to Ann Arbor after the 2004 Olympics, studied without pursuing a degree and served as a volunteer assistant coach.

Which four-time Pulitzer Prize poet lived in Ann Arbor in the 1920s on a University of Michigan fellowship?

Robert Frost's house in the city was later bought by a museum and moved away to an outdoor history village, where visitors can still tour it.

Who won an Ann Arbor city council seat in 1974 to become America's first openly gay candidate elected to office?

Kathy Kozachenko was a 21-year-old University of Michigan student when she won, more than three years before Harvey Milk's far better-known victory in San Francisco.

In which 2008 sci-fi film does Hayden Christensen play a teleporter who grew up in Ann Arbor?

Jumper's hero discovers his power after falling into the river that runs through his home town, and the crew filmed at Ann Arbor's Gallup Park in 2007.

Yost Field House, Michigan's basketball home until 1967, was converted in 1973 into an arena for which sport?

Ice hockey has been played there ever since. The 1923 building is named after Fielding Yost, the university's long-serving football coach and athletic director.

Which University of Michigan fight song did student Louis Elbel write on a train home from Chicago in 1898?

The Victors soon won over the 'March King', John Philip Sousa, who performed it at a concert in Ann Arbor in 1899 and praised the mastery of its harmony.

Burton Memorial Tower, built in 1936 on the University of Michigan campus, houses which 43-ton musical instrument?

A carillon of 53 bells sits at the top of the tower, the gift of Charles Baird, a lawyer who had been the university's first athletic director.

Ann Arbor's Kerrytown district, home of the farmers' market, is named after a county in which country?

Ireland's County Kerry gave the district its name. The area was part of the original village laid out in 1824, when the town's name was written Annarbour.

Which nickname did Fielding Yost's Michigan football teams of 1901 to 1905 earn while losing just one game?

Point-a-Minute teams outscored their opponents 2,821 to 42 across those five seasons, finishing with 55 wins, one defeat and one tie.

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

Charles Woodson also returned punts and sometimes lined up as a wide receiver that season, when Michigan won a national championship.

Which exiled Soviet poet, a future Nobel laureate, became the University of Michigan's poet-in-residence in 1972?

Joseph Brodsky settled in Ann Arbor with the help of W. H. Auden and Carl Proffer, a Michigan professor whose local press, Ardis, was devoted to Russian literature.

Which 'father of information theory' earned two University of Michigan bachelor's degrees in 1936?

Claude Shannon was a Michigan native from the small town of Gaylord. His 1948 paper on the mathematics of communication has been called a blueprint for the digital era.

University of Michigan students ran the 'Naked Mile' across campus each April from 1986 to celebrate what?

The last day of classes was first marked this way by six friends from the rowing and track teams, and the streak became an annual event until the early 2000s.

Which funk band, formed in 2011 by University of Michigan music students, played its first gig at the Blind Pig?

Vulfpeck went on to become one of the first bands to sell out Madison Square Garden without a manager or a backing record label.

Which original Saturday Night Live cast member enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1964?

Gilda Radner was one of the show's seven original players in 1975 and stayed until 1980. She later made three films with her future husband, Gene Wilder.

Which Ann Arbor school opened in 1972 as one of the first public magnet schools in the country?

Community was founded on a 'school-without-walls' idea, and its students can design their own courses for credit around projects in the city.

Which original 60 Minutes correspondent graduated from the University of Michigan with an arts degree in 1939?

Mike Wallace chose Ann Arbor at the urging of an uncle who chaired the economics department, and he worked as a reporter on the campus newspaper.

Which Ann Arbor restaurant, founded in 1953 and known for its onion rings, appeared on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

Blimpy Burger, in full Krazy Jim's, was started by Jim Shafer, and a student who took a job there in 1969 came back in 1993 to buy the business.