Timeline Michigan
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The state of Michigan owes its name to an Indian
word that means "great water." The word Michigan originates from the
Algonquian
Mishagamaw, meaning "great water" or "big lake."
(HN, 3/18/00)
570-230 Million Years Ago In
northern Alberta is the Peace River Arch; the Transcontinental Arch
extends from Minnesota to Arizona and in Montana is the Montana Dome.
The Ozark Mountains lie on the site of a dome and from Nashville,
Tennessee, north to Michigan lies the Cincinnati Arch. Between Peace
River, north-west Canada, and Montana and occupying much of
Saskatchewan is the Williston Basin. Michigan lies four-square upon the
Michigan Basin, while much of Illinois and Indiana is underlain by the
Illinois Basin. Most of these broad, gentle features developed during
Paleozoic time and have been dormant ever since.
(DD-EVTT, p.172)
500 Million A 30-mile size crater, a mile underneath
the bed of Lake Huron, just north of Port Huron, Michigan, marks the
impact of a meteor. It was discovered in 1990 by scientists from the
Geological Survey of Canada.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.31)
440 Million A five-mile size crater in Michigan in
Cass County by the village Calvin Center marks the impact of a meteor
the size of a football field. It was discovered in 1987.
(LSA, Spring 1995, p.31)
c430 Million In late Silurian times there was a
shallowing of the seas across North America and they may have withdrawn
completely from several regions. To the north-west and in the east
large expanses of the sea were cut off from the open water. Under the
hot, arid climate these giant lagoon-like areas acted as great
evaporating basins. In the Michigan basin and the New York area, for
example, as much as 900 meters of salt was laid down.
(DD-EVTT, p.174)
11000BC Scientists in 2005 said archeological sites
dating to this time in Michigan, Canada, Arizona, New Mexico, and the
Carolinas showed evidence, magnetic metal spherules, for a comet impact
that may have wiped out North American mammoths and many other animals.
(SFC, 9/24/05, p.B2)
9,000BC Fisher in the late 1980's, while he was
excavating an 11,000-year-old mastodon found at the Heisler site in
southern Michigan, found evidence of butchery and under water meat
caching by Ice Age hunters in North America.
(LSA, Fall 1995, p.38)
1420-1500 The Paston Letters comprise 1,000 documents
involving an English family over this period. The collection is held by
the Univ. of Michigan and is being made electronically available under
the Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) program that was begun in 1989.
(MT, 6/96, p.8,9)
1612 The French explorer Etienne
Brule is believed to be the first European to see the Great Lakes.
Brule, believed to have been born in 1592, journeyed to North America
with Samuel de Champlain in 1608 and helped found Quebec. Brule
explored Lake Huron in 1612 and is believed to have also explored Lakes
Ontario, Erie and Superior after 1615. Brule is the first European to
live among the Indians and was probably the first European to set foot
in what is now Pennsylvania. Brule was eventually killed by the Hurons,
for reasons never known, in 1632.
(HNQ, 6/29/98)
1615 Jul 28, French explorer
Samuel de Champlain discovered Lake Huron on his seventh voyage to the
New World.
(HN, 7/28/98)
1679 Louis Hennepin, a Catholic
priest, sailed up the Detroit River aboard the Griffon, through Lake
St. Clair, which he named, and into Lake Huron and beyond.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1679-1947 Some 8,500 vessels have been lost in Lake
Michigan over this period.
(Hem., 7/96, p.25)
1701 Jul 24, Antoine de la Mothe
Cadillac (d.1730), aged 43, established Fort Ponchartrain for France on
the future site of the city of Detroit, Michigan, in an attempt to halt
the advance of the English into the western Great Lakes region.
(HN, 7/24/98)(DFP, 7/24/01, p.2)
1701 Michipichy, a Huron chief,
agreed to let Cadillac settle his people in Detroit following the
construction of Fort Pontchartrain.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1760 Nov 29, Major Roger Rogers
took possession of Detroit on behalf of Britain. French commandant
Belotre surrendered Detroit.
(HN, 11/29/98)(MC, 11/29/01)
1763 May 7, Indian chief Pontiac
began his attack on a British fort in present-day Detroit, Michigan.
Ottawa Chief Pontiac led an uprising in the wild, distant lands that
later became Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
(HN, 7/24/98)(HN, 5/7/99)
1783 Sep 3, Mackinac Island,
Michigan, passed into US hands following the Paris Peace Treaty,
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.C5)
1788 St. Antoine’s parish was
established in Monroe, Mich.
(Arch, 9/00, p.20)
1797 Gabriel Richard came to
Detroit.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1805 Jan 11, The Michigan
Territory was created.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1805 A fire destroyed Detroit.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1809 Gabriel Richard brought in
Detroit’s 1st printing press.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1812 Jul, General William Hull
ordered the construction of a causeway at the western end of Lake Erie
to enable the 4th Infantry to pass over the mudflats to reach Detroit.
(AM, 7/00, p.19)
1812 Aug 16, American General
William Hull surrendered Detroit without resistance to a smaller
British and Indian forces under General Isaac Brock.
(AP, 8/16/97)(HN, 8/16/98)
1812 Oct 9, American Lieutenant
Jesse Duncan Elliot captured two British brigs, the Detroit and
Caledonia on Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Elliot set the brig Detroit
ablaze the next day in retaliation for the British capture seven weeks
earlier of the city of Detroit.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1812 Mackinaw Island, Michigan,
was recaptured by the British.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.C5)
1813 Jan 22, During the War of
1812, British forces under Henry Proctor along with Indian allies under
Tecumseh defeated a U.S. contingent planning an attack on Fort Detroit.
(HN, 1/22/99)(AM, 7/00, p.19)
1813 Jan 22, A combined British
and Indian force attacked an American militia retreating from Detroit
near Frenchtown, later known as Monroe, Mich. Only 33 men of some 700
men escaped the battle of the River Raisin. Over 400 Kentucky
frontiersmen were killed.
(Arch, 9/00,
p.22)(www.kdla.ky.gov/resources/KY_BRR.htm)
1813 Mar 21, James Jesse Strang,
King of Mormons on Beaver Is, MI. (1850-56), was born.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1813 Oct 5, U.S. victory at the
Battle of the Thames, in Ontario, broke Britain's Indian allies with
the death of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, and made the Detroit frontier safe.
(HN, 10/5/98)
1815 Mackinaw Island, Michigan,
was permanently signed over to the US.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.C5)
1817 The Univ. of Michigan was
founded by a Presbyterian minister, John Monteith, and a Catholic
priest, Gabriel Richard and Judge Gus Woodward. The Univ. of Michigan
was established by a Michigan Public Act under a Board of Regents.
(MT, 12/94, p.2-3)(LSA., Fall 1995, p.10)(MT, Fall
‘96, p.10)
1822 Jun 6, Alexis St. Martin, a
fur trader at Fort Mackinac in the Michigan territory, was accidentally
shot in the abdomen. William Beaumont, a US Army assistant surgeon,
treated the wound and St. Martin survived. The stomach wound did not
close and Beaumont undertook experiments in 1825 to study the digestive
system.
(ON, 1/02, p.6)
1823 The city of Ypsilanti, Mich.,
was initially named Woodruff's Grove and was founded by pioneers in
1823. It was re-named Ypsilanti in honor of a Greek war hero, Demetrius
Ypsilanti. The railroad came to the city in 1838, and it became a major
stopping point for travelers between Detroit and the west. The Michigan
State Normal School, now Eastern Michigan University, was founded here
in 1849.
(www.ypsilanti.org/welcome.html)
1825 Aug 1, William Beaumont, a US
Army assistant surgeon at Fort Mackinac in the Michigan territory,
began experiments to study the digestive system of Alexis St. Martin, a
fur trader who was accidentally shot in the abdomen in 1822.
(ON, 1/02, p.6)
1827 Aug, Judge John Sturgis &
George Thurston came to St Joseph County in August of 1827. They
cleared 10 acres & planted wheat, then returned to Monroe, MI until
the Spring of 1828. When Judge Sturgis returned, he brought his family
& built a log cabin in what is now known as Maplecrest. Sturgis
Township was originally an area of about 3,000 acres. It was divided up
into Fawn River and Sherman Townships. The Sturgis Township was part of
Sherman until 1845.
http://www.pe.net/~rksnow/
1829 Jul 23, William Austin Burt
of Mount Vernon, Mich., received a patent for his "typographer," a
forerunner of the typewriter.
(AP, 7/23/99)
1830 Stephen Simmons was found
guilty of murder and sentenced to be hanged. Thomas Knapp, Wayne County
Sheriff, refused to carry out the sentence and a saloon keeper carried
out the execution. This helped Michigan to abolish capital punishment,
the 1st democratic government in history to do so.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1831 John Farmer compiled and drew
for the governor and judges of Michigan the first and only map of
Detroit. His early maps are conceded to have been largely influential
in promoting the extensive emigration to Michigan that occurred between
1825 and 1840.
(www.famousamericans.net/johnfarmercartographer/)
1833 Dec, William Beaumont, a US
Army assistant surgeon, published his new book: “Experiments and
Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. It
was based on the digestive system of Alexis St. Martin, a fur trader
who was accidentally shot in the abdomen at Fort Mackinac in 1822.
(ON, 1/02, p.6)
1835 Ohio and Michigan engaged in
“The Toledo War” (1835–1836), also known as the Ohio-Michigan War, a
bloodless boundary dispute that was settled in 1836.
(WSJ, 5/31/08,
p.W9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War)
1836 A group of African Americans
broke from Detroit’s First Baptist Church and formed the Second Baptist
Church.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1837 Jan, 26, Michigan became the
26th state of the US.
(HFA, '96, p.22) (AP, 1/26/98)
1837 A Michigan Public Act
declared that the Univ. of Michigan would "provide the inhabitants of
the State with the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the
various branches of literature, science, and the arts... (and) be open
to all residents of this state." The Univ. of Michigan moved from
Detroit to Ann Arbor.
(LSA., Fall 1995, p.11)(MT, Spg. ‘99, p.23)
1837-1851 Dr. Zina Pitcher served as one of the first
regents of the Univ. of Mich. over this period. He was considered a
founder of the U of M Medical School and was an elected mayor of
Detroit. He also founded the Historical Society of Michigan.
(GEG, 6/97, p.5)
1839 Jun 6, Silas Farmer,
publisher and son of John Farmer, was born in Detroit, Michigan.
(www.famousamericans.net/johnfarmercartographer/)
1839 Dr. Zina Pitcher began
teaching students and practicing medicine at St. Mary’s Hospital in
Detroit. Although he had no medical degree, his private medical studies
entitled him to be called Doctor.
(MT, Fall/99, p.2)
1841 Fall, The 1st classes
commenced at the Univ. of Michigan at Mason Hall, its only building. 30
students attended.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.53)
1843 The Univ. of Michigan
enrolled its 1st international student. A Canadian joined the body of
43 students.
(LSA, Fall/03, p.38)
1845 George Pray was a member of
the first Univ. of Michigan graduating class. His diary was recently
acquired.
(MT, 3/96, p.14)
1846 May 4, Michigan ended its
death penalty.
(MC, 5/4/02)
1846 Moses Gunn (23), a graduate
of the Geneva Medical School in Upstate New York, began a course of
lectures in anatomy at the Univ. of Michigan. In 1867 he moved to Rush
medical College in Chicago.
(MT, Fall/99, p.4)
1847 Mar 1, Michigan became the
1st English-speaking jurisdiction to abolish the death penalty (except
for treason against the state).
(SC, 3/1/02)
1847 Nov 21, Steamer "Phoenix" was
lost on Lake Michigan. 200 people were killed.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1849 James Strang settled with 250
followers on Big Beaver Island in northern Lake Michigan.
(Smith., Aug. 1995, p.86)
1850 Oct 3, The Univ. of Mich.
Medical School received its first students.
(MT, Fall/99, p.3)
1851-1852 Zachariah Chandler served as mayor of
Detroit and later as US Senator.
(DFP, 7/24/01, p.5A)
1852 Feb 26, Dr. John Harvey
Kellogg was born.
(HNPD, 2/26/99)
1854 Feb 28, Some 50 slavery
opponents met in Ripon, Wis., to call for creation of a new political
group, which became the Republican Party. [see Mar 20, Jul 6]
(AP, 2/28/00)
1854 Mar 20, The Republican Party
was founded when former members of the Whig political party met to
establish a new political party that would oppose the spread of slavery
into the western territories. [see Feb 28, Jul 6]
(MC, 3/20/02)
1854 Jul 6, The Republican Party
was officially organized in Jackson, Michigan. The Republican Party was
formed in Ripon, Wisconsin, by a group of anti-slavery politicians at
the Little White Schoolhouse. [see Feb 28, Mar 20]
(Hem., 7/96, p.28)(HN, 7/6/98)
1854 Alexander Winchell offered
Univ. of Michigan’s 1st course for engineers in the “South College”
building. The class was English composition for prospective engineers.
He was soon replaced by Prof. DeVolson Wood, who designed a 4-year
engineering curriculum.
(MT, Summer/04, p.6)
1857 The Univ. of Michigan built
its chemistry building, the first chemical laboratory at a US state
university. It was eventually destroyed by an arson fire in 1980.
(LSA, Fall, 2007, p.6)
1858 Sep, Alice Dewey was born in
Michigan.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.15)
1859 Mar 24, John Farmer, New York
born cartographer, died in Detroit, Michigan.
(www.famousamericans.net/johnfarmercartographer/)
1859 Oct 20, John Dewey (d.1952),
philosopher, educational theorist and writer (Learn by doing), was born
in Michigan.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.15)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(MC,
10/20/01)
1860 Apr 7, William Keith Kellogg,
the brother of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (1852-1943), was born. Will
later founded the W.K. Kellogg company in Battle Creek, Mich., to
market the cornflakes invented by his older brother. [see 1895]
(HN,
4/7/99)(http://www.ivu.org/history/adventists/kellogg.html)(WSJ,
9/29/00, p.W17)
1860 Sep 7, The Excursion steamer
"Lady Elgin" sank and drowned 340 people in Lake Michigan.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1863 Jul 30, Henry Ford (d.1947),
founder of the Ford Motor Company and developer of the Model T, was
born in Dearborn Township, Mich. He led American war production with
the gigantic facility at Willow Run.
(AP, 7/30/98)(HN, 7/30/98)
1864 Feb 9, After a courtship that
began at a party on Thanksgiving Day 1862, Brevet General George
Armstrong Custer and Miss Elizabeth Bacon, both of Monroe, Michigan,
married. Until Custer died at the Battle of the Little Bighorn a dozen
years later, Libbie followed him to postings throughout the West
whenever possible. Libbie never remarried, even though she outlived her
husband by 50 years, preferring to keep his memory alive by lecturing
and writing books about their life together on the Plains. Elizabeth
Custer lived comfortably in New York City until her death on April 8,
1933, at the age of 91.
(HNPD, 2/9/99)
1865 Mar 20, Michigan authorized
workers' cooperatives.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1865 The Univ. of Michigan
celebrated its 25th birthday with 1,205 students and 32 faculty
members. It surpassed Harvard as the largest university in the US.
(LSA, Fall/04, p.53)
1866 James Vernor, a Detroit
pharmacist, began marketing a new soft drink.
(SFEC, 2/21/99, Z1 p.8)
1867 Nov 26, A refrigerated
railroad car was patented by JB Sutherland of Detroit. [see Jan 16,
1868]
(MC, 11/26/01)
1868 Jan 16, The refrigerated
railroad car was patented by William Davis, a fish dealer in Detroit.
[see Nov 26, 1867]
(MC, 1/16/02)
1868 John Davidson and Franklin
Hargo became the 1st African American students admitted to the Univ. of
Michigan.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.53)
1869 The first Univ. of Mich.
University Hospital opened in Ann Arbor. It was the only university
owned teaching hospital in the US.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.15)
1871 Oct 8-14, In Peshtigo, Wisc.,
some 1,500 people were killed in the nation’s worst forest fire, which
burned across six counties and into Michigan. Fires also broke out in
the Michigan communities of Holland, Manistee and Port Huron.
(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(WSJ, 8/4/04, p.B1)(SSFC,
9/4/05, p.A7)(AP, 10/8/08)
1871 Phil D. Beckwith founded the
Round Oak Stove Co. in Dowagiac, Mich.
(SFC, 1/4/06, p.G2)
1871-1909 James Burrill Angell (1829-1916) served as
the president of the Univ. of Mich.
(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9002271/James-Burrill-Angell)(MT, Fall.
‘97, p.23)
1873 Leon Czolgosz (d.1901),
anarchist and assassin of Pres. McKinley (1901), was born to Polish
parents in Detroit.
(AH, 10/01, p.25)
1873 Bonds were issued for the
Saginaw & Canada Railroad Co. The operation built 40 miles of track
and went broke in 1876. The worthless bonds were later found and given
to the Public Museum of Grand Rapids in 1992, where they were sold in
the gift shop for $22.95. Scam artists acquired a large quantity in
bulk and sold them as real bonds to investors for a total scam of some
$12 million.
(WSJ, 2/25/99, p.A1,8)
1873 James Edmond Scripps
(1835-1906), the son of a prominent British book binder, tapped the
growing class of working men and women by launching a newspaper, The
Evening News (later, The Detroit News).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Scripps)
1875 Mackinac Island, Michigan,
became the 2nd US national park.
(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.C5)
1876 Sep 19, The 1st carpet
sweeper was patented by Melville Bissell of Grand Rapids, Mich.
(MC, 9/19/01)
1876 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was
24 years old when he became staff physician at the Battle Creek
Sanitarium in Michigan--a position he held for 62 years. Dr. Kellogg, a
respected abdominal surgeon, ran "the San" as a health institute where
the wealthy could rejuvenate themselves with Kellogg's offbeat cures.
Illness was caused, Kellogg believed, by poor eating habits that left
poisons in the intestinal tract. Among Kellogg's solutions to the
dietary dilemma were "fletcherizing," or chewing food hundreds of times
before swallowing, and a vegetarian diet high in bran. It was the
bowels, however, that received Kellogg's undivided attention. Patients
at the San were subjected to regimens of "cleansing enemas" that cured
"ulcers, diabetes, schizophrenia, acne...and premature old age."
(HNPD, 2/26/99)
1876 In Battle Creek Dr.
John Harvey Kellogg became the director of the Western Health Reform
Institute, part of the 7th Day Adventist Network.
(WSJ, 9/29/00, p.W17)
1878 May 30, Michigan’s
all-University football team played its 1st game. It defeated Racine
College 7-2.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.53)
1881 Sep 5, A fire in the thumb of
Michigan killed 169 people and burned a million acres.
(SFC, 10/30/03, p.A15)
1881 The Michigan Legislature
required that the bodies of indigents, who would otherwise be buried by
the state, to be turned over to the Univ. of Michigan Medical School.
(MT, Fall/99, p.3)
1882 Silas Farmer was chosen
historiographer of the City of Detroit.
(www.famousamericans.net/johnfarmercartographer/)
1883 Nov 26, Sojourner Truth,
former slave and abolitionist, died in Battle Creek, Mich.
(AP, 11/26/08)
1884 John Dewey came to teach at
the U of M.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1885 The Detroit Institute of Arts
opened.
(WSJ, 9/30/97, p.A20)
1886 The Grand Rapids School
Furniture Company was founded in Grand Rapids, Mich. By 1899 the
company had merged with 18 others to form the American Seating Co. of
NYC.
(SFC, 1/14/09, p.G2)
1887 Mar 2, The American Trotting
Association was organized in Detroit, Mi., on this day.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)
1887 The Grand Hotel was built on
Michigan’s Mackinac Island. Its front porch was 880 feet long. The 1980
film "Somewhere in Time," starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour,
was filmed at here.
(SFC, 3/7/98, p.E3)(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.C1)
1890 The Michigan Daily, a campus
newspaper at U of M, began publishing.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.18)
1890 Silas Farmer published his
“History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan: A
Chronological Encyclopedia of the Past and Present.”
(www.cantonpl.org/specialc/detro300.html)
1890 Cook, Baker & Co was
founded in Allegan, Mich., to make wood architectural products. The
name changed to Baker & Co. in 1903 and later to Baker Furniture
Inc. In 1986 it became part of Kohler Co. of Kohler, Wis.
(SFC, 12/5/07, p.G2)
1891 John Dewey published
“Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics.”
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1891 Newberry Hall was completed
on the U of M campus. In 1928 it became the home to the Kelsey Museum.
(LSA, Spring/04, p.7)
1891 Alice Dewey founded the
Women’s League at the Univ. of Mich.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.18)
1891 John Dewey and Fred Scott
founded “The Inlander” journal at the U of M to promote literature and
the same year began to allow free discussion in one of his courses.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.17,19)
1891 The University Record was
founded at U of M as a record of the educational and scientific work at
the university.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.18)
1891-1932 In Grand Rapids The “Quaint Furniture” name
was used by Albert and John George Stickley, who founded the Stickley
Bros. Co. and produced furniture inspired by pieces made from their
brother Gustav.
(SFC, 1/14/98, Z1 p.2)
1892 May 19, Charles Brady King of
Detroit invented the pneumatic hammer. [see Jan 30, 1894]
(DTnet, 5/19/97)
1892 The Macey Furniture Co. of
Grand Rapids, Mich., opened as a mail-order operation. By 1900 it made
its own furniture and in 1905 merged with Wernicke Furniture of
Cincinnati. In 1907 the company became Globe-Wernicke.
(SFC, 10/24/07, p.G2)
1892 The Royal furniture Co. began
operating in Grand Rapids, Mich., and continued to 1931. In 1901 Robert
Irwin bought a controlling interest and in 1919 combined royal with the
Phoenix furniture Co., also in Grand Rapids, to form the Robert W.
Irwin Co, which closed in 1953.
(SFC, 1/7/09, p.G2)
1893 Feb 26, 2 Clydesdale horses
set a record by pulling 48 tons on a sledge in Michigan.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1893 Nov 20, The struggling
Western League of Professional Baseball Clubs, meeting in Detroit,
Michigan, elected Byron Bancroft Johnson (29), a former ballplayer and
Cincinnati sportswriter, as president. He had been recommended by
Charles Comiskey, a potential investor in the league and manager of the
National League’s Cincinnati Reds.
(ON, 6/09, p.10)
1894 Jan 30, Pneumatic hammer was
patented by Charles King of Detroit. [see May 19, 1892]
(MC, 1/30/02)
1894 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of
Battle Creek, Mich., filed for a patent for “flaked cereals and [the]
process of preparing same.” search for the perfect food led to
the development of breakfast food flakes made of wheat called Granose.
Will Keith Kellogg, John's brother, improved on the Granose idea and
founded the W.K. Kellogg Company in 1906.
(HNPD, 2/26/99)(SFEC, 8/15/99, p.A4)(ON, 2/05, p.9)
c1894 Philosopher John Dewey
transferred from the Univ. of Mich. to the Univ. of Chicago.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1895 May 13, The cornerstone
laying ceremony for Central High School was held.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1895 Marian Sarah Parker became
the 1st woman to acquire a Michigan degree in engineering as she
graduated from the Univ. of Michigan’s dept. of civil engineering.
(MT, Summer/04, p.6)
1896 Mar 6, Charles B. King rode
his "Horseless Carriage," the 1st auto in Detroit.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1896 Jun 4, Henry Ford made a
successful pre-dawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a
quadricycle, through the streets of Detroit. The Quadracycle consisted
of a simple motor mounted on a buggy frame. Before Ford began to
produce the automobiles that made him famous, he had been an
unimpressive student from a Michigan farming family. But he began to
demonstrate skill and interest in mechanical work, and left farming and
business school behind to work with machines. He learned about steam
engines at his job with Westinghouse, and later worked as an engineer
for Edison Electric Illuminating Company. As Ford Motors developed, he
hoped to emulate Edison.
(AP, 6/4/97)(HNQ, 6/4/98)
1896 Old Main began as the home of
Detroit Central High School.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1896 Orville H. Gibson founded his
Kalamazoo musical instrument manufacturing company. In 1904 it was
incorporated as the Gibson Mandolin Guitar Co.
(SFC, 10/5/05, p.G3)
1896 The Luce Furniture Co. began
operations in Grand Rapids, Mich., and continued to 1930. In 1912 it
claimed to be the largest shipper of Mission dining room furniture in
the country. The company reorganized and reopened from 1935 to 1938.
(SFC, 1/28/09, p.G2)
1896 Fred Macey opened his own
furniture factory in Grand Rapids, Mich. His company made rolltop desks
and other furniture. In 1905 he merged with Wernicke Furniture to form
Macey-Wernicke Co., which name was simplified in 1908 to Macey Co. It
went out of business in 1940.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.G3)
1897 In Grand Rapids the male only
Diamond Hall club was formed for Polish immigrants. In 2004 the club
voted to allow women full membership.
(USAT, 5/18/04, p.17A)
1897 Michigan passed a law
prohibiting the use of obscenities in front of women and children. The
law was challenged in 1999 after a canoeist, Timothy J. Boomer, hit a
rock on the Rifle River and was cited for swearing in 1998. A state
appeals court struck down the law in 2002
(SFC, 6/3/99, p.A8)(SFC, 4/2/02, p.A3)
1897 Ransom E. Olds started the
Olds Motor Vehicle Co. In 2004 the last Oldsmobile Alero rolled of a GM
assembly line in Lansing, Mich.
(SFC, 4/28/04, p.C1)
1897 Otto H.L. Wernicke moved his
Wernicke Furniture Co. from Minneapolis, Minn., to Grand Rapids, Mich.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.G3)
1898 May 6, Daniel Gerber, baby
food pioneer, was born in Freemont, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1899 Aug 15, Henry Ford (36) quit
his job with the Edison Illuminating Company. He soon found backers and
started the Detroit Automobile Company, with himself as chief engineer.
(ON, 3/03, p.1)
1899 Sebastian Spering Kresge
founded a store that developed into the Kmart Corp. The 1st Detroit
store sold merchandise for either 5 or 10 cents.
(Ind, 2/2/02, 5A)
1900 Nov, Henry Ford’s Detroit
Automobile Company failed. It was revived in 1901 as the Henry Ford Co.
(http://home.planet.nl/~nagte017/Cadillactext001.html)
1900 Joshua Lionel Cowen
(1877-1965), inventor, along with some partners founded Lionel Corp in
NYC. Operation were later based outside Detroit and Lionel grew to
become the world’s largest toy maker in the 1950s. [see 1901]
(WSJ, 11/17/04, p.B1)
1901 Jan 28, Byron Bancroft
Johnson announced that the American League would play the 1901 baseball
season as a major league and would not renew its membership in the
National Agreement. The new league would include Baltimore and
Washington, DC, recently abandoned by the National League. The league
would also invade 4 cities where National League teams existed: Boston,
Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. The 8 charter teams included: the
Baltimore Orioles, Boston Americans, Chicago White Stockings, Cleveland
Blues, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers, Philadelphia Athletics, and
Washington Senators.
(ON, 6/09,
p.11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_League)
1901 Apr 25, In last of 9th,
Detroit Tigers, trailing by 13-4, score 10 runs to win one of the
greatest comebacks in baseball (1st game in Detroit).
(SS, 4/25/02)
1901 Fielding H. Yost took over as
coach of Michigan’s football team.
(MT, Fall/03, p.7)
1901 Henry Ford founded the Henry
Ford Co. but soon left. In 1902 the remaining owners dissolved
operations and formed the Cadillac Co.
(http://home.planet.nl/~nagte017/Cadillactext001.html)
1902 Jan 1, In Pasadena the 1st
Rose Bowl football game was held and the Univ. of Michigan beat
Stanford 49 to 0. The next Rose Bowl game was held 11 years later.
(SFC, 9/25/99, p.A20)
1902 Feb 4, Charles Lindbergh
(d.1974), the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic (1927), was
born in Detroit and grew up in Minnesota.
(HN,
2/4/99)(www.charleslindbergh.com/history/index.asp)
1902 Mar 24, Thomas E. Dewey, a
governor of New York (1943-1955) and two-time Republican presidential
nominee, was born in Owosso, Mich.
(HN, 3/24/01)(AP, 3/24/02)
1902 Mar, Henry Ford (38) left the
Detroit Automobile Company and soon found backers for the new Ford
Motor Co., which incorporated in 1903.
(ON, 3/03, p.1)
1902 Aug 22, The Cadillac Company
formed from the Henry Ford Co. when Henry Ford left. Ford formed the
Ford Motor Co. in 1903.
(http://home.planet.nl/~nagte017/Cadillactext001.html)
1902 A new Engineering Building
was constructed at the Univ. of Mich. It was renamed West Engineering
upon construction of East Engineering in 1923.
(MT, Summer/04, p.6)
1903 Mar 23, The ritual
hair-cutting by sophomores against freshmen got out of control at the
Univ. of Mich. and President Angel put a stop to it.
(MT, Spg. ‘97, p.17)
1903 Jun 16, Ford Motor Co. was
incorporated.
(AP, 6/16/98)
1903 Jul 23, The Ford Motor
Company sold its first automobile, the Model A.
(HN, 7/23/98)
1903 Oct 31, The Michigan football
team tied with Minnesota 6-6. Michigan manager Thomas B. Roberts
purchased a 5-gallon, putty brown, water container for the game. It
cost him 30 cents in a Minneapolis variety store. Minnesota kept the
jug and in 1909 challenged Michigan to come back and get the “Little
Brown Jug.”
(MT, Fall/03, p.7)
1903 In Detroit the Gem Theater
was constructed. In 1997 the 2,750 ton building was moved 5 blocks
through downtown to make room for a new ballpark. It set a new record
as the heaviest building moved.
(SFC,10/23/97, p.A17)
1903 F. Stuart Foote founded the
Imperial Furniture Co. in Grand Rapids, Mich. The company was sold in
1954.
(SFC, 12/26/07, p.G3)
1903 David Mackenzie resigned as
superintendent of Muskegon schools.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1904 David Mackenzie began as
principal of the Detroit Central High School.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1904 The reference here depicts a
map of Detroit neighborhoods in 1904 by ethnicity.
(www.edcopublishing.com/activities/MOM55_57.pdf)
1904 Silas Farmer, historiographer
of the City of Detroit, created an Industrial Map of Detroit.
(www.famousamericans.net/johnfarmercartographer/)
1904 Otto H.L. Wernicke joined his
Michigan furniture business with the Ohio Globe Files Co. to form the
Globe-Wernicke Co. Around 1905 Wernicke Furniture purchased the Fred
Macey Furniture Co. and began making stackable bookcases.
Globe-Wernicke sued Macey in 1906 for using its patents. After years of
litigation Globe lost.
(SFC, 8/9/06, p.G3)
1906 Feb 19, W.K. Kellogg & Ch
Bolin incorporated the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Co. Will Kellogg
spent 2/3 of the company budget to advertise Corn Flakes.
(SFC, 11/16/96, p.E4)(ON, 2/05, p.10)
1906 Apr 16, In Michigan 2
freighters collided and sank in the Soo passage near Sault Ste. Marie.
The crews of the Sexonia and the Eugene Zimmerman escaped.
(SFC, 4/17/06, p.A9)
1906 An oil portrait of Pres.
James Burill Angell by William Meritt Chase, commissioned by the
Student Union for $4000, was presented to the Univ. of Mich.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.23)
1906 The Michigan State Telephone
Co. published a telephone directory using yellow paper for the first
time, thus producing the first Yellow Pages.
(WSJ, 11/24/07,
p.W7)(www.oldtelephonebooks.com/pages/varieties)
1906 Henry Ford used stock
purchases to acquire 51% of the Ford Motor Co. and concentrated on
producing inexpensive cars. His highest priced vehicle in 1906 cost
$750.
(ON, 3/03, p.2)
1907 Jul 8, George W. Romney,
later governor of Michigan, was born into a Mormon family in Chihuahua,
Mexico. He later was a candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination until he admitted that he had been "brainwashed" by the
military on the Vietnam War.
(HN, 7/8/98)(SSFC, 2/25/07, p.A4)(SSFC, 2/25/07,
p.A4)
1907 Oct 11, The freighter Cyprus
foundered during a storm on Lake Superior, while on its second voyage
hauling iron ore from Superior, Wis., to Buffalo, NY. All but one of
the Cyprus' 23 crew members died. The 420-foot shipwreck was found in
2007, 8 miles north of Deer Park, Mich., where a single survivor had
reached shore. The ship was built in Lorain, Ohio, and launched on Aug.
17, 1907.
(AP, 9/10/07)
1907 Nov 4, Faygo was founded in
Detroit as Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works by Russian immigrants Ben
and Perry Feigenson. The original flavors of Faygo were based on cake
frosting recipes used by the Feigensons in Russia. The brothers ran the
company until the mid-1940s, when they turned it over to their sons. In
the 1950s the company created a series of radio and television
advertisements featuring a fictional cowboy called the Faygo Kid, who
was portrayed in animation for television commercials for Faygo
Old-Fashioned Root Beer.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faygo)
1908 Mar 20, Frank Stanton,
broadcasting pioneer and the president of CBS for 26 years, was born in
Muskegon, Mich.
(AP, 3/20/08)
1908 May 25, Theodore Roethke
(d.1963), American poet, was born in Saginaw, Mich.
(AP, 5/25/08)(MT, Summer 01, p.3)
1908 Aug 12, Henry Ford's first
Model T rolled off the assembly line.
(HN, 8/12/98)
1908 Sep 16, General Motors was
formed in Flint, Mich., by William Durant.
(AP, 9/16/08)
1908 Oct 1, The Ford Model T, the
first car for millions of Americans, hit the market. Each car cost
$825. Over 15 million Model Ts were eventually sold, all of them black.
The Model T automobile cost $850 when it was first introduced to the
public. Ford lowered the price of automobiles—previously regarded as a
toy of the rich—by maintaining control of raw materials and using new
mass production techniques. The price of this two-seater,
affectionately known as the “tin Lizzy,” fluctuated over the years,
dipping below $300 in 1924. Electric lights and an optional electric
starter were among the few improvements over the years. The model was
discontinued in 1927 after more 15,000,000 had been produced.
(CFA, ‘96, p.56)(AP, 10/1/97)(HN, 10/1/98)(HNQ,
7/11/00)
1908 Oct 10, The Chicago Cubs won
Game 1 of the World Series with a 10-6 victory over the Detroit Tigers
at Bennett Park.
(AP, 10/10/08)
1908 Oct 11, The Chicago Cubs took
a 2-0 lead in the World Series, defeating the visiting Detroit Tigers
6-1 at the West Side Grounds.
(AP, 10/11/08)
1908 Oct 12, The Detroit Tigers
beat the Chicago Cubs 8-3 in Game 3 of the World Series, played in
Chicago.
(AP, 10/12/08)
1908 Oct 13, The Chicago Cubs won
Game 4 of the World Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers 3-0 to take a
3-1 Series lead.
(AP, 10/13/08)
1908 Oct 14, The Chicago Cubs won
the World Series as they defeated the Detroit Tigers in Game 5, 2-0, at
Bennett Park.
(AP, 10/14/08)
1908 In Detroit, Mich., Wayne’
State’s Old Main was expanded with a back wing for gymnasiums,
laboratories and shops.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1908 On the East Side of Detroit
St. George's Lithuanian parish on Westminster Avenue was organized by
Father Casimir Valaitis (1864-1941) and the St. George Society. In 1949
a new site was selected, due to newly planned freeway, on Schaefer
Road, near Grand River Avenue. Because of the fact that St. George's
was then being used as a 'Mission’, Chancery personnel chose "Divine
Providence" was their new name. A new freeway against forced a move and
on Nov 23, 1973, a new church was dedicated at West Nine Mile and Beech
Roads, in the western suburb of Southfield.
(www.lithuanian-american.org/bridges/iss799/detroit.html)
1909 Jul 8, The 1st official
evening baseball game was played in Grand Rapids. Mich. Grand Rapids
defeated Zanesville 11 to 10.
(SFC, 10/2/99, p.A20)
1909 The Pittsburgh Pirates, led
by pitcher Honus Wagner, defeated the Detroit Tigers 4-3 in the World
Series. This marked the last world series appearance by Ty Cobb.
(SFC, 10/2/99, p.A20)
1909 William L. Clements joined
the Univ. of Mich. Board of Regents.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.8)
1910 Henry Ford opened a new plant
in Highland Park, Mich., the largest plant in the world. The retail
price of the Model T dropped to $780.
(ON, 3/03, p.3)
1911 Feb 23, G. Mennen ("Soapy")
Williams, (Gov-D-Mich., 1949-60), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1911 Charles Kettering created the
first successful electric self-starter for Cadillac. It was introduced
in the 1912 model.
(F, 10/7/96, p.67)
1911 Michigan drew the first white
center line on a roadway.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.B1)
1911 General Motors Truck Co. was
formed.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1911 Chevrolet was established.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1911 Henry Ford reduced the retail
price of the Model T to $690.
(ON, 3/03, p.3)
1912 Jul 4, Detroit Tiger George
Mullen no-hits St Louis Browns, 7-0.
(Maggio, 98)
1912 Tiger Stadium opened as Navin
Field at Michigan and Trumbull. The stadium closed down in 1999.
(SFEC, 8/28/98, p.T4)(WSJ, 9/30/99, p.A24)
1912 The U of M established a
separate graduate school that in 1935 was named for Horace H. Rackham
for a financial contribution.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.19)
1912 Henry Ford doubled production
and reduced the price of the Model T to $600.
(ON, 3/03, p.3)
1913 Fall, Henry Ford (1863-1947)
introduced the moving assembly line at his Highland Park, Mich., plant.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(F, 10/7/96, p.67)
1913 Aug, Henry Ford began his 1st
large-scale automobile assembly tests.
(ON, 3/03, p.4)
1913 Oct 7, In attempting to find
ways to lower the cost of the automobile and make it more affordable to
ordinary Americans, Henry Ford took note of the work of efficiency
experts like Frederick Taylor, the "father of scientific management."
The result was the assembly line that reduced the time it took to
manufacture a car, from 12 hours to 93 minutes. Ford reversed the
slaughter house production process of removing parts from a moving line
to adding parts. Production more than doubled and the price of the
Model T was reduced from $600 to $550.
(HN, 10/7/00)(SFC, 6/13/03, p.B4)(ON, 3/03, p.4)
1913 Dec, In Calumet, Mich., at a
Christmas Party for families of copper miners, somebody yelled fire and
caused a panic that led to the death of 72 people, mostly children.
(SFEC, 4/13/97, Z1 p.4)
1913 In Detroit the Michigan
Central Depot railway station opened on Michigan Ave. The last train
departed from the station in January, 1988, after which the structure
was stripped by vandals. In 2009 it continued to stand, under owner
Manuel Moroun, a trucking and real estate mogul, as a dead body was
found at the bottom of an elevator shaft.
(LSA, Spring, 2009, p.66)
1913 David Mackenzie organized the
first public junior-college curriculum in Michigan at the urging of the
Detroit College of Medicine.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1914 Jan 5, Henry Ford astounded
the world as he announced that he would pay a minimum wage of $5 a day
and share with employees $10 million in last year’s profits. The wage
increase counter-balanced the increased demand on the workers from the
new assembly line production methods.
(HFA, ‘96, p.22)(HN, 1/5/99)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R28)
1914 Jan 14, Ford Motor Company
greatly improved its assembly-line operation by employing a chain to
pull each chassis along.
(AP, 1/14/01)
1915 Jan 21, The first Kiwanis
Club was formally founded, in Detroit, Mich. Allen Browne in Dec, 1914,
had proposed a fraternal club for business and professional men.
Kiwanis was established as an organization devoted to the principle of
service and to the advancement of individual, community, and national
welfare, and to the strengthening of international goodwill.
(AP, 1/21/98)(www.tcfn.org/kiwanistci/about.html)
1915 Jan 23, Potter Stewart, 94th
Supreme Court justice (1958-81), was born in Mich.
(MC, 1/23/02)
1915 Apr 10, Harry Morgan, actor
(December Bride, M*A*S*H, Dragnet), was born in Detroit, Mich.
(MC, 4/10/02)
1915 Jul 24, Excursion ship
Eastland capsized in Lake Michigan and 852 die.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1915 The Univ. of Michigan
underwent a reorganization and the engineering dept. acquired college
status.
(MT, Summer/04, p.6)
1915 August Freuhauf, a Detroit
blacksmith, invented the semi-trailer.
(SFEC, 7/27/97, Z1 p.7)
1916 Oct 24, Henry Ford awarded
equal pay to women. Industrialist Henry Ford helped lead American war
production with the gigantic facility at Willow Run.
(HN, 10/24/98)
1916 Walter Lay joined the Univ.
of Michigan faculty with a mandate to create a laboratory and an entire
slate of automotive courses.
(MT, Summer/04, p.6)
1916 The Univ. of Michigan
established the nation’s 1st Dept. of Aeronautical Engineering under
Prof. Felix Pawlowski.
(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1917 Jun 4, Charles Collingwood,
news commentator (CBS, Chronicles), was born in Mich.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1917 Fall, The Central High
junior-college program was expanded and became the Detroit Junior
College (DJC). It opened with 300 students.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1918 May 24, Coleman A. Young,
civil rights leader (Mayor-D-Detroit), was born.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1918 Oct 5, The Univ. of Michigan
played a home football game against Case Institute of Technology and
won 33-0. A number of fans in the stands were infected with influenza
and passed it on to fellow spectators. The first two local deaths
occurred on Oct 11. The local epidemic was declared over on Nov 4 with
117 deaths in Ann Arbor.
(LSA, Fall/06, p.58)
1919 Orchestra Hall opened in
downtown Detroit. The Detroit Symphony left in 1939 for the Ford
Auditorium, but returned in 1989.
(SFC, 10/9/03, p.F2)
1919 In Dodge v. Ford the Michigan
Supreme Court held that Henry Ford owed a duty to the shareholders of
the Ford Motor Company to operate his business for profitable purposes
as opposed to charitable purposes.
(WSJ, 1/14/08,
p.R2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company)
1919 Henry Ford sued the Chicago
Tribune for libel after the newspaper called him an "ignorant"
anarchist. Ford won the suit and was awarded 6 cents. He soon began
amassing material of historical value.
(WSJ, 11/21/03, p.A7)
1919 At DJC a night school program
was begun.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1919-1922 James Couzens served as the mayor of
Detroit.
(WSJ, 1/21/00, p.W10)
1920 Aug 20, Pioneering American
radio station 8MK in Detroit (later WWJ) began daily broadcasting.
(AP, 8/20/97)
1920 Dec 14, George Gipp (b.1895)
died in Indiana from pneumonia and a strep infection during his senior
year at Notre Dame. He was buried in northern Michigan. Gipp was the
school's first All-American and set a school career rushing record that
stood for more than 50 years. Ronald Reagan portrayed Gipp in the 1940
movie "Knute Rockne, All American," in which he made famous the phrase
"win one for the Gipper."
(AP,
11/10/07)(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1595)
1920 Michigan set up the first
four-way traffic signal.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A16)
1920 David Mackenzie, dean of
Detroit Junior College, was elected the first president of the American
Association of Junior Colleges.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1921 Feb 26, Betty Hutton, actress
(Greatest Show on Earth), was born in Battle Creek, MI.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1921 Sep 3, Ernest Hemingway
married Hadley Richardson, a wealthy debutante 8 years his senior, in
Horton Bay, Mich.
(ON, 7/05,
p.9)(www.boynecountry.com/media_kit/mediamain.html)
1921 Wyandotte Toys of Wyandotte,
Mich., was founded and initially concentrated on toy pistols.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.E7)
1922 Jan 30, Dick Martin, actor,
comedian (Laugh-In), was born in Detroit, Mich.
(MC, 1/30/02)
1922 Mar 3, WWJ-AM in Detroit, MI,
began radio transmissions.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1922-1936 James Couzens served as a US Senator from
Michigan.
(WSJ, 1/21/00, p.W10)
1923 Feb 9, Norman E. Shumway,
pioneer cardiac transplant surgeon, was born in Mich.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1923 The Clements Library opened
in Ann Arbor. Its first director was Randolph G. Adams. The library was
designed by Albert Kahn and was paid for by William L. Clements to
house his extensive book collection. The Univ. of Mich. agreed to pay
for its maintenance, staff salaries and fund acquisitions. It acquired
about this time the collection of Henry Vignaud, US Consul in Paris,
who had amassed a 50,000 piece collection of historic explorations and
discoveries.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.8)
1923 The Detroit Junior College
was renamed the College of the City of Detroit (CCD).
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1923 The Freer Gallery in
Washington was established as the nation’s national museum of Asian
art. The center of the collection was amassed by Charles Lang Freer
(1854-1919), a self-made railroad magnate living in Detroit.
(WSJ, 1/13/98, p.A20)(WSJ, 11/6/98, p.W10)(WSJ,
12/14/06, p.D6)
1923 Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
(1875-1966), a ball-bearing magnate, became president of a troubled GM
and brought in corporate management and tight financial controls. He
introduced the ideas of model changes and offering a car "for every
purse and purpose."
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(Econ,
6/6/09, p.61)
1924 Brothers J.B., Frank and
Herbert Book opened the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. It was the
city’s tallest building and the tallest hotel in the world. In 1951 it
was acquired by the Sheraton hotel corporation. It changes hands a
number of more times before plummeting demand forced it to close in
1984. In 2007 a developer planned to re0open it as a 455-room Westin by
fall of 2008.
(WSJ, 6/1/07, p.A11)
1925 Ossian Sweet, a black doctor
who had moved into a white neighborhood of Detroit, was indicted on
murder charges after defending his property and life against a mob
attack. In 2004 Phyllis Vine authored "One Man's Castle: Clarence
Darrow in Defense of the American Dream."
(SSFC, 4/18/04, p.M4)
1925 Clarence Cook arrived from
Maine to become president of the Univ. of Michigan (10,000 students).
(MT, Summer 01, p.4)
1926 Jan, Central High School was
moved from Old Main. College High School continued at Old Main.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1926 Apr 5, Roger Corman,
producer, director (Little Shop of Horrors), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1926 Sep 25, Henry Ford announced
8 hour, 5 day work week.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1926 Oct 31, Magician Harry
Houdini died in Detroit of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a
ruptured appendix.
(AP, 10/31/97)
1926 Betty Hutton, film actress,
was born in Battle Creek.
(SFEC, 8/6/00, DB p.59)
1926 Charles Stewart Mott
(1875-1973) established a family foundation that focused on social
enterprises around Flint, Mich. He had earlier sold the family’s wheel
and axle business to General Motors and become its largest shareholder.
(SFC, 6/16/08,
p.B3)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stewart_Mott)
1926 David Mackenzie, dean of DJC,
died.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1927 May 18, A schoolhouse in
Bath, Mich., was blown up with explosives planted by local farmer
Andrew Kehoe, who then set off a dynamite-laden automobile; the attacks
killed 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe, who had earlier
killed his wife.
(AP, 5/18/07)
1927 May 26, Ford Motor Company
manufactured its 15 millionth Model T automobile.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1927 Aug 17, Robert Moore, actor
(Marshall-Diana), was born in Detroit, Mich.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1927 Dec 2, Ford Motor Co.
unveiled its "Model A" automobile, the successor to its "Model T." The
Ford Rouge plant employed 70,000 men. A vehicle was assembled in 3 1/2
days and the price for a Model T dropped to $290 per vehicle, down 65%
from its original price. The Model A was introduced with a
revolutionary teaser campaign and the 1st one sold for $385.
Production for the Model T was shut down for almost 6 months to retool
for the Model A and compete with GM.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(AP, 12/2/97)(WSJ, 11/5/99,
p.A1)(MC, 12/2/01)
1927 James Couzens had an
English-manor-style house, designed by Albert Kahn, built in Bloomfield
Hills. Most of the Couzens fortune came from investing in the Ford
Motor Co.
(WSJ, 1/21/00, p.W10)
1927 Stephen Timoshenko,
Ukraine-born railroad engineer, arrived in Michigan and joined the
Univ. of Michigan where he became the world’s leading authority on
applied mechanics. His 18 textbooks were published in 36 languages.
(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1927 Henry Ford obtained a
Connecticut-sized land in the Brazilian jungle and began creating his
Fordlandia factory town for the creation of a rubber plantation and
processing facility to supply his factories with tires and gaskets. A
strike in 1930 wrecked Fordlandia. It was rebuilt and struggled on for
a decade until succumbing to leaf blight and insects. In 2009 Greg
Grandin authored “Fordlandia: The rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s
Forgotten Jungle city.”
(SSFC, 7/5/09, p.F7)
1928 Mar 31, Gordie Howe, NHL
right wing (Detroit Redwings), was born in Floral, Sask., Canada.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1928 Jun, College High School at
Old Main was closed.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.7)
1928 Jul 1, Avery Hopwood
(b.1882), US playwright, died in France. He left a bequest to the Univ.
of Michigan that established the Avery and Julie Hopwood Awards in
Creative Writing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avery_Hopwood)(LSA,
Fall/02, p.3)
1928 Philip Levine, poet, was born
in Detroit, Mich. He spent a good portion of his life teaching poetry
in Fresno, Ca.
(SFC, 10/19/04, p.E1)
1929 Mar 17, General Motors
purchased an 80% stake in Opel, a German car manufacturer, for $33.3
million. GM raised the stake to 100% in 1931.
(http://wiki.gmnext.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)
1929 Oct 15, Arthur Efimchick
(d.2004) was born in Dearborn, Mich. He later became the host of the TV
game show "Concentration" (1958-1973), NBC's longest running game show.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.B7)
1929 The Univ. of Mich. men’s
baseball team under Fielding H. Yost (1871-1946) won 11 of 13 games on
its first tour of Japan and brought back a Japanese suit of armor as an
award from Meiji Univ.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.24)
1929 The Henry Ford Museum and
Greenfield Village opened in Dearborn.
(WSJ, 8/7/03, p.D10)
1930 Nov 22, Elijah Muhammad
formed the Nation of Islam in Detroit.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1930 The Detroit Teachers College
moved into the already overcrowded Old Main.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1930 Will Kellogg of Battle Creek,
Mich., organized the W.K. Kellogg foundation to share his wealth.
(ON, 2/05, p.11)
1931 Jul 6, Della Reese, singer,
actress (Della Reese Show, Royal Family), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1931 The DeTour Reef Light, a
74-foot art-deco lighthouse, was built.
(SFEC, 8/28/98, p.T5)
1931 In Detroit, Mich., Wallace D.
Fard started a movement that later became the Nation of Islam. He was
succeeded by Elijah Muhammad, who stressed the evil of white people and
the need for black self-sufficiency.
(WSJ, 10/24/03, p.A8)
1932 Mar 7, Riots at Ford factory
in Dearborn, Michigan, killed 4.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1932 Mar 21, Joseph Silverstein,
violinist (Denver Symphony Orch), was born in Detroit, Mich.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1932 The new Student Publications
Building of the Univ. of Michigan, designed by UM alumni, opened.
(LSA, Fall/06, p.63)
1932-1947 Hank Greenberg (d.1986) was a baseball star
with the Detroit Tigers during this time. In 1999 the documentary film
“The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” was made by Aviva Kempner.
(SFEC, 7/11/99, DB p.43)
1933 Jan 30, The first episode of
the “Lone Ranger” radio program was broadcast on station WXYZ in
Detroit. The show was created by George Washington Trendle and Fran
Striker. The show ran for 21 years on ABC radio.
(AP, 1/30/98)(SFC, 12/29/99, p.A11)(MC, 1/30/02)
1933 Aug 8, The Colleges of the
City of Detroit reorganized as a University.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1933 Aug 25, Tom Skerritt, actor
(Ryan's Four, Alien, Big Bad Mama, Pickett Fences), was born in
Detroit, Mich.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1933 The U of M Gothic Law
Quadrangle was completed. A 150-page book by Kathryn Horste was
published on the quadrangle in 1997 by the U of M Press.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.9)
1933 The U of M won the national
football championship.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.C18)
1934 Jan 3, The Colleges of the
City of Detroit was renamed to Wayne University after Gen’l. Anthony
Wayne, Revolutionary War hero. The obsolete tower clock was replaced by
an electrically driven clock.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1934 Jun 30, Harry Blackstone
(d.5/14/1997), magician, was born in Three Rivers, Mich.
(SFC, 5/15/97, p.A26)
1934 The U of M had one of its
worst seasons with a record of 1-7. MVP of the year was future
president Gerald Ford. Pres. Johnson later said that Ford played too
many games without his helmet.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.C18)
1934 William L. Clements,
industrialist, U of M regent and benefactor, died.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.9)
1935 Feb 16, Salvatore Bono
(d.1998), vocalist (Sonny & Cher), (Rep-R-Ca, 1995-98), was born in
Detroit.
(SFC, 1/6/98, p.A11)(MC, 2/16/02)
1935 May 13, David T. Wilkinson
(d.2002), physicist, was born in Hillsdale, Mich. He became the driving
force behind the 1989 Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite. It provided
evidence for the “Big Bang” that spawned the universe 10-20 billion
years ago.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)(SFC, 9/16/02, p.A20)
1935 May 25, Jesse Owens set six
world records in less than an hour in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
(HN, 5/25/99)
1935 Gerald Ford (1908-2006), 41st
vice-president and 38th president of the United States, graduated from
the Univ. of Michigan, where he had been a star football player.
(SFC, 12/27/06, p.A11)
1936 Jan 15, The non-profit Ford
Foundation incorporated.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1936 Feb 11, Burt Reynolds, actor
(Evening Shade, Strip Tease, Cannonball Run), was born in Michigan.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1936 Dec 30, The United Auto
Workers union staged its first sit-down strike, at the Fisher Body
Plant No. 1 in Flint, Mich. Walter and Victor Reuther and other union
activists withstood violent confrontations with the police to force GM
to recognize and negotiate with the trade union.
(AP, 12/30/97)(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.A11)
1936 Arthur Miller (1915-2005) won
the Univ. of Michigan Hopwood Award for his play “Honors at Dawn.”
(SFC, 2/12/05, p.A12)
1937 Feb 11, In Flint, Mich., a
sit-down strike against General Motors ended after 44 days, with the
company agreeing to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union. The
UAW was victorious in a strike against GM. GM recognized the union and
agreed to a contract.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(AP, 2/11/97)
1937 Jun 5, Henry Ford initiated a
32 hour work week.
(MC, 6/5/02)
1937 Nov 21, Marlo Thomas, film
and TV actress, was born in Detroit, Mich. In 1980 she married Phil
Donohue.
(SSFC, 11/21/04, Par p.28)
1937 The Central High School sign
at Old Main was replaced and a Warren Ave. wing was added to Old Main.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.9)
1939 Apr 7, Francis Ford Coppola,
director (Godfather, Apocalypse Now), was born in Detroit.
(MC, 4/7/02)
1939 Sep 1, Lily Tomlin,
comedienne, actress (9 to 5, Laugh-in, All of Me), was born in Detroit.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1939 Fall, The Univ. of Michigan
played the Univ. of Chicago at Stagg Field in Chicago and won by a
score of 85-0. Football under UC Pres. Robert Hutchins (29) was very
much discouraged. The day after the game Hutchins banned football and
turned the stadium over to scientists and the first atomic pile was
later created there.
(LSA, Spg/97, p.25)
1939 Walter O. Stanton (d.2001 at
86) graduated from Wayne State Univ.’s School of Electrical
Engineering. As a student he set up one of the 1st student radio
stations in the country. In the late 1940s he developed the slide-in
stylus for phonographs.
(SFC, 4/23/01, p.A17)
1941 The first urban freeway was
constructed in Michigan.
(WSJ, 5/8/97, p.A16)
1942 Feb 28, There was a race riot
at the Sojourner Truth Homes in Detroit.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1942 Student expansion forced
Wayne Univ. to buy more land north of the building. 17 acres with 41
chief buildings were purchased one block at a time (from 1942-1945) for
$961,357.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.9)
1943 May 26, Edsel Ford, president
(49) of the Ford Motor Company, died.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1943 Jun 20, Race-related rioting
erupted in Detroit; federal troops were sent in two days later to quell
the violence that resulted in 34 deaths and 600 wounded.
(AP, 6/20/97)(SSFC, 12/17/00, Par p.5)
1943 Jun 22, Federal troops put
down race-related rioting in Detroit. 36 hours of rioting claimed 34
lives, 25 of them black. More than 1,800 were arrested for looting and
other incidents, the vast majority black. Thirteen murders remained
unsolved.
(http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=185&category=events)(AP,
6/22/03)
1943 Dec 14, Dr. John Kellogg (91)
died in Battle Creek, Mich.
(ON, 2/05, p.11)
1943 Preston T. Tucker (1903-1956)
of Ypsilanti, Michigan, developed an innovative new passenger car for
postwar America. The Tucker, of which only 51 were built, boasted disc
brakes, pop-out windshields, padded dashboards and front-passenger
crash compartments. It pioneered several automotive features that would
later become standard. Tuckers were capable of a top speed of 122 mph
and originally cost about $2,450. The last Tucker was manufactured in
1948, shortly before Preston Tucker faced charges of fraud by the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Tucker successfully fought off the
SEC charges and was at work on an automobile to be built in Brazil, the
Carioca, when he died in 1956.
(HNPD, 10/3/98)
1943 Lockheed Martin picked
Clarence Johnson, a Univ. of Michigan graduate (1932) to develop the
nation’s 1st jet fighter. He had already designed the P-38 Lightning.
Johnson and his staff developed a jet prototype, the Shooting Star, in
143 days.
(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1944 Mar 26, Diana Ross [Earle],
(Supremes, Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany), was born Detroit, MI.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1944 The NAACP meeting in Detroit
held a symbolic funeral for Jim Crow.
(SFC, 7/10/07, p.A3)
1945 May 6, Bob Seger, folk singer
(Silver Bullet Band-Shake Down), was born in Dearborn, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1945 May, The Wayne Victory, a
merchant marine ship, was commissioned with the Detroit Wayne Univ.
name.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.10)
1945 Grand Rapids, Mi., decided to
add fluoride to its water supply to reduce tooth decay.
(WSJ, 7/22/05, p.B1)
1946 May 11, Robert Jarvik,
physician: inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, was born in
Michigan.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1946 Jun 28, Gilda Radner
(d.1989), actress (Emmy Award-winning comedienne, actress: Saturday
Night Live [1977-78]; Haunted Honeymoon [w/husband Gene Wilder]), was
born in Detroit, Mich. "I wanted a perfect ending. ... Now I’ve
learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories
don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not
knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it,
without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
(AP, 5/20/98)(MC, 6/28/02)
1946 The new U of M Survey
Research Center, later the Institute for Social Research (ISR),
began with a monthly survey of consumer attitudes about the economy.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1946 Warren E. Avis (1915-2007)
founded the Avis Rent-A-Car System to bring rental cars directly to
airline passengers at Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti, Mich., and Miami
Int’l. Airport.
(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.A6)
1947 Apr 7, Auto pioneer Henry
Ford died in Dearborn, Mich., at age 83. Henry Ford died at the age of
84. Most of his personal estate, valued at $205 million, was left to
the Ford Foundation. In 2001 Neil Baldwin authored "Henry Ford and the
Jews - The Mass Production of Hate." In 2003 Douglas Brinkley authored
"Wheels for the World - Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of
Progress." In 2005 Steven Watts authored “The People’s Tycoon: Henry
Ford and the American Century.”
(AP, 4/7/97)(HN, 2/20/98)(SFC, 6/13/03, p.B4)(SSFC,
8/28/05, p.C2)
1947 Ed Lowe, a sand hauler in
Cassopolis, Mich., recommended some baked clay for a customer's cats
instead of sand. Lowe's father manufactured the clay absorbents for
factory oil messes. The customer's cats took a liking to it and Mr.
Lowe put it on the market as Kitty Litter and became very rich.
(SFC, 12/29/99, Z1 p. 1)(WSJ, 2/23/00, p.A1)
1948 Apr 14, Walter P. Reuther,
Pres (United Auto Workers), was shot at his home. [see Apr 20]
(MC, 4/14/02)
1948 Apr 20, United Auto Workers
president Walter P. Reuther was shot and wounded at his home in
Detroit. [see Apr 14]
(AP, 4/20/98)
1948 Sep 15, Gerald Ford upset
Rep. Bartel J. Jonkman in the Michigan 5th Dist Rep. primary.
(http://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov)
1948 CORE was founded in Detroit.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.15)
1948 Michigan passed a law that
prohibited women from serving alcoholic drinks in bars. In was
overturned by a 1971 Supreme Court decision on an Idaho case that
showed discrimination against one gender.
(SFC, 10/12/02, p.A21)
1948 The U of M Survey Research
Center, later the Institute for Social Research (ISR), began its
National Election Studies, a biennial survey and analysis of voter
behavior.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1948 General Motors agreed to
annual cost-of-living pay increases.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.61)
1950 Feb 18, John Hughes, director
(Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Weird Science), was born in Lansing, Mich.
(http://movies.yahoo.com)
1950 Mar 27, Maria Ewing, opera
singer, was born in Detroit, Mich.
(http://classicalmanac.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-27.html)
1950 May 13, Steveland Morris
Hardaway (AKA Stevie Wonder) was born prematurely, in Saginaw, Mi., as
Steveland Judkins. Too much oxygen in the incubator caused the baby to
become permanently blind. At the age of ten, Little Stevie Wonder, as
he was called by Berry Gordy at Motown, was discovered singing and
playing the harmonica. He had many hits during his teens including
"Fingertips" and as an adult he has earned an Oscar and at least 16
Grammy Awards. He has stood up for civil rights and campaigned against
cancer, AIDS, drunk driving and the plight of Ethiopians.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevie_Wonder)
c1950 Guitarist Kenny Burrell (19)
led a band at the Detroit Klein’s Showbar with Yusef Lateef and Tommy
Flanagan.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.8)
1950 Eero Saarinen designed the
General Motors Technical Center in Warren.
(WSJ, 4/13/01, p.W17)
1950 The Wayne State Univ. Council
of Deans renamed their former high school building to “Old Main.”
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.10)
1950 General Motors agreed to free
health-care coverage for life along with generous pensions. Chrysler
and Ford were forced to offer similar benefits.
(Econ, 6/6/09, p.61)
1950s Lawrence Payton (d.1997 at
59) began singing with a group called the Four Aims (Payton, Levi
Stubbs, Abdul “Duke” Fakir, and Renaldo “Obie” Benson). They sang
backup for Billy Eckstine and signed with Motown Records, run by Berry
Gordy, in 1963. Their songs included: “Baby I Need Your Loving,” “Reach
Out,” and I Can’t Help Myself.” In 2002 Geral Posner authored “Motown:
Music, Money, Sex, and Power.”
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A18)(SSFC, 1/12/03, p.M1)
1951 Oct 7, Will Kellogg (91),
founder of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, died in Battle Creek, Mich.
(ON, 2/05, p.11)
c1951 Kenny Burrell (20) played
with the Dizzy Gillespie band that included John Coltrane and Milt
Jackson for a month. He turned down an offer to tour with the band and
instead enrolled into Wayne State Univ. where he graduated with a
Bachelor of Music degree in 1955.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.8)
1951-1967 Harlan H. Hatcher served as the 8th
president of the Univ. of Mich. Under his tenure enrollment grew from
17,000 to 37,000 students. He had previously served as the
vice-president of Ohio State Univ.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.6)
1952 Apr 12, A telephone strike
was settled in Michigan but continued in Northern California for a 5th
day.
(SFC, 4/12/02, p.G6)
1952 Jul 3, Dr. Forest Dewey
Dodrill (1902-1997) of Wayne State Univ. used a mechanical heart pump
to operate on a patient at Detroit’s Harper Hospital. This was regarded
as the world’s first successful use of a mechanical pump in open-heart
surgery.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodrill-GMR)
1952 Oct 24, Republican
presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower declared in Detroit, "I
shall go to Korea" as he promised to end the conflict if elected. He
made the visit over a month later.
(AP, 10/24/07)
1953 Jan 17, GM introduced the
first American sports car, the two-seater Corvette at the annual NYC
Motorama Show at the Waldorf-Astoria. It was not made available for
sale to the public until June 30th.
(http://tinyurl.com/fdjur)(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)
1953 Jun 8, A killer tornado hit
Flint, Mich. It killed 116 people and injured more than 850 in Ohio and
Michigan.
(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par p.A11)(Hartford Courant, 6/9/63,
p.23A)
1953 Jun 30, The first Corvette
rolled off the Chevrolet assembly line in Flint, MI. The brainchild of
designer Harvey J. Earl sold for $3,250. GM made 300 Corvettes in 1953
and moved production to St. Louis for 1954.
(http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1953-corvette.htm)(WSJ, 7/12/02, p.W12)
1953 Dec 6, Thomas Hulce, actor
(Amadeus, Equus, Echo Park), was born Plymouth, Mi.
(MC, 12/6/01)
1953 Albert Cleage (1911-2000)
formed the Central United Church of Christ, which he turned into the
Shrine of the Black Madonna in the 1960s. Bishop Cleage changed his
name to Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman in the 1970s and helped elect Mayor
Coleman in 1973 through his Black Slate Inc. political organization.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A19)
1953 The Univ. of Michigan College
of Engineering launched a program to move the entire engineering
community to an outlying area that became known as North Campus.
(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1954 Feb 26, Michigan
Representative Ruth Thompson (R) introduced legislation to ban mailing
"obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy" phonograph (rock and roll records.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1954 Mar 22, The 1st shopping mall
opened in Southfield, Mich.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1954 Charles Diggs (d.1998 at 75)
was elected to the House of Representatives from the 13th district
(around Detroit) and stayed in congress for 25 years. In 1978 he was
convicted of 29 counts of operating a payroll kickback scheme and was
censured by the House. He was the first chairman of the Congressional
Black Caucus and served from 1969-1971 and 1973-1978.
(SFC, 8/27/98, p.C4)
1954 James Joseph Minder (24) and
an accomplice robbed a branch of Manufacturers National Bank of
$53,000. Minder later became known as the "Shotgun Bandit." Both were
arrested after buying a new Lincoln with the stolen money. In 2004
Minder became chairman of Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. until news
of his past became public.
(WSJ, 3/8/04, p.A1)
1955 The Detroit Red Wings won the
hockey Stanley Cup.
(WSJ, 6/12/97, p.A16)
1955 John Dingell (b.1926) won a
special election in Michigan, following the death of his father, and
succeeded him as a Democrat representative in the US Congress.
(SFC, 12/16/05, p.A27)
1955 Dr. Adolfas Damusis
(1908-2003), head of the American Lithuanian Roman Catholic Federation,
founded Dainava, a Lithuanian youth camp in Manchester, Mich.
(www.bernardinai.lt/index.php?url=articles/80541)
1956 Michigan State defeated UCLA
at the Rose Bowl 17-14.
(TOH, 1982, p.1956)
1956 Jerry Sacharski (1016-2009),
summer baseball instructor, created a T-Ball league for kids in Albion,
Mich.
(WSJ, 3/7/09, p.A12)
1956 In Michigan Wayne Univ.
became a full-fledged state university (WSU).
(WSUAN, V.52, p.6)
1957 Feb 25, The US Supreme Court,
in Butler v. Michigan, overturned a Michigan statute making it a
misdemeanor to sell books containing obscene language that would tend
to corrupt "the morals of youth."
(AP, 2/25/07)
1957 Feb, Basil Hirschowitz
(b.1925), South Africa born gastroenterologist, introduced the first
prototype “fiberscope.” He had begun work using glass fibers to
transmit light in 1954 while at the Univ. of Michigan. Fiber optics
later revolutionized telecommunications and surgery.
(www.case.edu/artsci/dittrick/site2/museum/artifacts/group-d/fiberscope.htm)(Econ,
10/18/08, p.92)
1957 Sep 4, Ford Motor Co.
introduced the 1958 Edsel. It was designed by Roy Brown and sold only
173,000 units through 1960.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, p.D12)(AP, 9/4/97)
1957 Jul 12, Charleszetta Waddles
(d.2001 at 88)) founded the Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission in Detroit.
(SFC, 7/13/01, p.D5)
1957 Nov 1, World longest
suspension bridge opened in Mackinac Straits, Mich.
(MC, 11/1/01)
1958 Jun 25, A four-day dedication
of the Mackinac Bridge linking Michigan's upper and lower peninsulas
began, even though the bridge had been open to traffic since November
1957.
(AP, 6/25/08)
1958 Nov 18, The cargo freighter
SS Carl D. Bradley sank during a storm in Lake Michigan, claiming 33 of
the 35 lives on board.
(AP, 11/18/08)
1958 The Lafayette Pavilion
Apartments, a part of the Lafayette Park development in Detroit, Mich.,
was completed. The 78-acre urban renewal project, planned by Mies van
der Rohe, Ludwig Hilberseimer and Alfred Caldwell, was originally
called the Gratiot Park Development. It was built over the old
neighborhood called Black Bottom. Chicago developer Herbert Greenwald
(d.1959) assembled the team to demolish the build the project, which
was completed in 1965. In 1966 the US national Park Service listed
Lafayette Park on the national Register of Historic Places.
(WSJ, 12/22/07,
p.W12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_Park,_Detroit)
1959 Mar 16, Michael J.
Bloomfield, Major USAF, astronaut (STS 86), was born in Flint, Mich.
(MC, 3/16/02)
1959 Apr 25, St. Lawrence Seaway
linking Atlantic, Great Lakes opened to shipping.
(AP, 4/25/97)(HN, 4/25/98)
1959 Motown Records was launched
when Gwendolyn Gordy Fuqua (d.1999 at 71) and her sister Anna talked
the Gordy family into loaning Berry Gordon $800 to make a master
recording of singer Marv Johnson.
(SFC, 11/13/99, p.A22)
1959 Al Haber organized “Students
for a Democratic Society.” SDS held its first organizational meeting in
1960 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Robert Alan Haber was elected
president. Its initial philosophy was embodied in the 1962 Port Huron
Statement, principally written by Univ. of Michigan student Tom Hayden.
In 2008 Harvey Pekar, Gary Dumm and Paul Buhle wrote, illustrated and
edited “Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History.”
(SFC, 1/8/08,
p.E2)(http://ma.essortment.com/sdsstudentsfo_rmsx.htm)
1959 The name Amway, an
abbreviation for "American Way," was coined by founders Jay Van Andel
(1924-2004) and Richard DeVos. They had begun their business in the
1950s using direct selling to market NUTRILITE TM Dietary
Supplements. In 1959 they incorporated in Michigan and introduced a
multi-purpose cleaner.
(www.amway.com/en/History/history-10362.aspx)
1960 Oct 14, The idea of a Peace
Corps was first suggested by Democratic presidential candidate John F.
Kennedy to an audience of students at the University of Michigan.
(AP, 10/14/97)
1960 The Old Main of Wayne State
Univ. was reverted to classroom use after $389,000 in renovations.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1960 Thomas S. Monaghan and his
brother bought a storefront pizza shop called Dominick’s in Ann Arbor.
The name was later changed to Domino’s and grew to become a billion
dollar operation.
(WSJ, 6/21/00, p.A8)
1960 Stanford R. Ovshinsky and his
wife Iris founded Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) in Rochester Hills,
Michigan. In the 1980s the company introduced a nickel-metal hydride
battery (NiMH) for consumer use and made it available for automobiles
in the early 1990s. The technology made hybrid vehicles possible. By
2006 sales for the solar division, United Solar Ovonic, reached $90
Million.
(WSJ, 10/13/04, p.C1)(WSJ, 11/27/06, p.A1)(Econ,
12/2/06, TQ p.33)
1961 Jan 15, The Supremes signed
with Motown Records.
(MC, 1/15/02)
1961 Jun 11, Norm Cash became the
1st Detroit Tiger to hit a ball out of Tiger Stadium.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1961 Jul 17, Ty Cobb (74),
baseball great (Detroit Tigers), died of cancer.
(MC, 7/17/02)
1961 Phil Frank began a daily
cartoon for the State News, the student newspaper of Michigan State
Univ.
(SFC, 6/16/05, p.E2)
1962 Jan 30, Two members of the
"Flying Wallendas" high-wire act were killed when their seven-person
pyramid collapsed during a performance in Detroit.
(AP, 1/30/98)
1962 Mar 1, The first Kmart, a
60,000-sq.-ft. store, opened in Garden City, Mich. It was originally
know as Kresge's, a five and dime store founded in 1899. The company
was modernized under Harry B. Cunningham and re-opened as Kmart less
than 30 miles from Kresge's headquarters in downtown Detroit.
(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3092/is_n4_v31/ai_11875088/)
1962 William Matney Jr. (d.2001 at
76) became the 1st black reporter and writer for the Detroit News. In
1963 he was recruited by NBC News as their 1st black correspondent.
(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.A27)
1963 Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr.,
former head of General Motors Corp., authored "My Life With General
Motors."
(F, 10/7/96, p.132)(Econ, 12/22/07, p.123)
1963 Profs. Emmett Leith and Juris
Upatnieks, engineers at the Univ. of Michigan, created the 1st working
hologram. Pieter van Heerden of Polaroid Research Labs pioneered the
holographic principle.
(MT, Summer/04, p.8)(Econ, 6/9/07, TQ p.28)
1963 Dinah Washington (b.1924),
known in the 50s as "Queen of the Harlem Blues," died of barbiturate
poisoning in Detroit. In 2004 Nadine Cohodas authored “Queen: The Life
and Times of Dinah Washington.”
(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.M1)
1963 GM introduced the Malibu,
named after the California city, as a top line option on various 1964
Chevelles.
(WSJ, 4/1/09, p.A20)
1964 Feb 6, The WSJ reported in
error that a group at Wayne State Univ. had begun a movement to "stamp
out the Beatles." The group was actually from the Univ. of Detroit.
(WSJ, 2/5/99, p.B1)
1964 May 22, Pres. Johnson (LBJ)
presented his “Great Society” speech at the Univ. of Mich.
(www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/640522.asp)
1964 Jul 22, David Spade, an
American actor, comedian and television personality, was born in
Birmingham, Michigan. He first became famous in the 1990s as a cast
member on Saturday Night Live, and from 1997 until 2003 starred as
Dennis Finch on Just Shoot Me!.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spade)
1965 Mar 24, The Univ. of Michigan
held the 1st "Teach-in" on the Vietnam war.
(http://library.thinkquest.org/C0129380/events/antiwar.html)
1965 Mar 25, Viola Liuzzo
(b.1925), a white civil rights worker from Detroit, was shot and killed
by the Ku Klux Klan on a road near Selma, Ala. The later trial of
Collie Leroy Jenkins, one of 3 men charged in the killing, ended in a
hung jury. Jenkins was also acquitted at a 2nd trial but was later
convicted along with Eugene Thomas of civil rights violations in
federal court and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Liuzzo)(SSFC,
7/20/08, p.B6)
1965 Consumer advocate Ralph Nader
published "Unsafe At Any Speed," a book criticizing the auto industry
for knowingly producing unsafe cars and not installing proper safety
devices. It specifically attacked the Chevrolet Corvair.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(SFEC, 10/13/96, Z1 p.3)
1966 Feb 17, Alfred P. Sloan Jr.
(b.1875) former president GM (1923-1956), died. As president of GM he
brought in corporate management, introduced the ideas of model changes
and offering a car "for every purse and purpose." In 2002 David Farber
authored "Sloan Rules."
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1966 Apr, The Regents of the Univ.
of Mich. approved the creation of the Residential College. A special
campus was envisioned but it opened in the East Quadrangle and stayed
there.
(LSA, Spg/97, p.11)
1966 Aug 7, There was a race riot
in Lansing, Michigan.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1966 Oct 5, A sodium cooling
system malfunction caused a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi
demonstration breeder reactor near Detroit, Mich. Radiation was
contained.
(HN, 10/5/98)
1966 Oct, The song “96 Tears” by
the Mysterians Chicano band of Michigan hit No. 1 on the Billboard
charts.
(SFEC, 1/25/98, DB p.36)
1966 Harry V. Mohney began his
adult entertainment business with a single theater in Battle Creek,
Mich. He built an empire on “peeps,” 90 seconds of video-taped sex acts
for a quarter.
(SFC, 8/13/97, p.A10)
1967 Feb 21, Ford recalled 217,000
cars to check brakes and steering.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1967 Jul 23-30, Racial riots in
the city of Detroit left 40 dead, 2,000 injured and 5,000 homeless in
the worst riot of the summer. The rioting, looting and burning was
quelled with the arrival of 4,700 paratroops dispatched by President
Lyndon Johnson. Nearly all of America's large cities were wracked by
racial violence during the 1965-'68 period. The event inspired Rev.
William Cunningham (d.1997 at 67) to found Focus: Hope, a volunteer
project that grew to become one of the largest programs in the country
dedicated to feeding and teaching job skills to the urban poor.
(SFC, 5/29/97, p.C4)(HNQ, 7/11/98)
1967 Jul 24, Race riots in Detroit
forced the postponement of a Tigers-Orioles baseball game. [see Jul
23-30]
(MC, 7/24/02)
1967 Sep 4, Michigan Gov. George
Romney told a TV interview he'd undergone a "brainwashing" by U.S.
officials during a 1965 visit to Vietnam, a comment that apparently
damaged Romney's bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
(AP, 9/4/97)
1967 Nov 18, A Detroit newspaper
strike began and shut down both daily papers for 267 days. The strike
ended on August 9, 1968.
(SFC, 9/18/97,
p.C2)(www.loc.gov/rr/news/chronological/exception_report.html)
1967 James M. Roche (d.2004)
became chairman and CEO of General Motors. He stepped down as chairman
in 1971.
(SFC, 6/8/04, B7)
1968 Aug 9, The 267-day Detroit
newspaper strike ended.
(www.loc.gov/rr/news/chronological/exception_report.html)
1968 James M. Roche, CEO of GM,
and philanthropist Max Fisher founded the New Detroit organization to
aid the city’s recovery from race riots.
(SFC, 6/8/04, B7)
1968 The U of M Institute for
Social Research (ISR) began its Panel Study of Income Dynamics, an
annual study of the wealth, health and behavior of American families.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1968 Newton Glekel (1913-2007),
NYC real estate lawyer and deal maker, purchased a controlling interest
in Detroit-based Hygrade Food Products Co., maker of Ball Park hot
dogs. He sold his stake to Britain’s Hanson Industries Inc. in 1976.
(WSJ, 8/4/07, p.A4)
1969 Apr 10, Harley Jefferson Earl
(1893-1969), American car designer, died. He was a Hollywood builder of
custom cars and became GM’s VP of styling from 1940-1959. He was the
first to introduce tail fins in 1948. His design philosophy was "You
can design a car so that every time you get in it, it’s a relief--you
have a little vacation for a while."
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv.
Supl)(www.motorera.com/corvette/1950/vet56-1.htm)
1969 Jun 22, Aretha Franklin was
arrested in Detroit for creating a disturbance.
(YarraNet, 6/22/00)
1969 The album “The Stooges” spent
11 weeks on the Billboard album chart peaking at No. 106. It included
the song “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” which became the group’s signature
number. The punk band formed in Michigan in 1967 and included guitarist
Ron Asheton (1948-2009), drummer Scott Asheton, singer Iggy Pop (born
as Jim Osterberg) and bassist Dave Alexander. In 2007 Paul Trynka
authored “Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed.”
(SFC, 1/8/09, p.B5)
1969 William Charles "Bill" Ayers
(b.1944) co-founded the violent radical left organization Weather
Underground Organization. As head of an SDS regional group in Detroit,
the "Jesse James Gang", Ayers made decisive contributions to the
Weatherman orientation toward militancy. He later became a professor at
the University of Illinois at Chicago, and was known for his work in
school reform and community organizing.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers)
1969 A year’s tuition at the Univ.
of Michigan was $480. By 2008 it reached $9000.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.18)
1970 May, Leonard Woodcock
(1911-2001) was named head of the UAW following the death of Walter
Reuther. He was elected to a full term at the union's 23rd
Constitutional Convention in April, 1972, and re-elected in 1974. He
retired in May 1977 and then served as US ambassador to China from
1979-1981.
(SFC, 1/18/01, p.C2)
1970 Jul, The U of M Board of
Regents approved the organization of the Center for Afro-American and
African Studies (CAAS). Prof. Harold Cruse was the 1st director.
(LSA, fall/98, p.19,22)
1970 Sep, Ford introduced the
compact 1971 Pinto. The car became infamous for its lethally exploding
gas tank. The car lasted to 1980.
(www.allpar.com/amc/gremlin.html)(SFC, 3/14/05,
p.A10)
1970 Sep, GM introduced the
compact 1971 Chevrolet Vega. The car was released in 1971 and lasted to
1977. The aluminum and cast-iron engine kept breaking.
(www.allpar.com/amc/gremlin.html)(SFC, 3/14/05,
p.A10)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1970 Dec 10, Ford elected Lee
Iacocca (b.1924) as president.
(www.stfrancis.edu/ba/ghkickul/stuwebs/bbios/biograph/leeic.htm)
1970s Janet Good led a drive make
sexual harassment illegal in Michigan. For this triumph she later won
election into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame.
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.E4)
1970-1994 Richard H. Austin (d.2001 at 87) served as
the Sec. of State. He created the nations 1st “motor voter” law (1975)
that allowed voters to register to vote in the same place that they
register to drive.
(SFC, 4/23/01, p.A17)
1971 Sep 9, Hockey legend Gordie
Howe of the Detroit Red Wings retired from the National Hockey League
(NHL).
(www.iosphere.net/~mtbailey/tbc/gordie_howe.html)
1971 Dec 9, Ralph J. Bunche
(b.1903), Detroit-born 1st black US diplomat and UN delegate, died In
NYC. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950.
(www.gale.cengage.com/free_resources/bhm/bio/bunche_r.htm)
1971 Dec 10, John Lennon made a
public appearance at a benefit concert for poet John Sinclair who was
in jail for possession of marijuana. Three days later Sinclair was
released.
(SFEC, 7/21/96, DB p.35)
1971 Dec 24, Jimmy Hoffa
(1913-1975), Teamster union leader, was released from prison after
President Nixon commuted his jail term.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa)
1971 Prof. Carl Cohen of U of M
published "Civil Disobedience."
(www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/MT/97/Fal97/mt10f97.html)
1971 Rev. Leon Sullivan
(1922-2001), a noted Philadelphia minister, became GM’s 1st black board
member. In 1998 Sullivan authored “Moving Mountains.”
(SFC, 6/8/04,
B7)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Sullivan)
1972 Jun 9, Joseph Brodsky
(1940-1996), Russian poet, arrived in Ann Arbor, Mich., after being
deported from the Soviet Union. He won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Poetry.
(LSA, Fall/02,
p.10)(www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/literature/1987a.html)
1972 Sep 7, The Commissioner of
Indian Affairs in a memorandum extended federal recognition to the
Chippewa tribe of Sault Ste. Marie in Northern Michigan. The meaning of
this federal recognition was further clarified in a memorandum by the
Associate Solicitor for Indian Affairs on February 27, 1974.
(http://tinyurl.com/5c8cfu)
1972 The first volume of Michigan
Flora by Dr. Edward Voss of the Univ. of Mich. was published.
(GEG, 6/97, p.5)
1972 Ford became the first company
to equip vehicles with air bags.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1973 Aug 7, Pat Halley
(1950-2007), a Detroit reporter for the Fifth Estate, tossed a pie in
the face of the teenage "Lord of the Universe" at a formal session of
Common Council in protest of the Guru's claim of divinity. A week later
Halley was savagely beaten and almost killed by two devotees of the
Guru Maharaj Ji (15). Halley was released from Detroit General Hospital
on Aug. 21 in good condition after undergoing surgery to repair a
caved-in portion of his skull.
(www.ex-premie.org/pages/fifthestate4.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/2w98lt)
1973 Oct 12, President Nixon
nominated House minority leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to succeed
Spiro T. Agnew as vice president.
(AP, 10/12/97)
1973 Nov 6, Coleman Young
(1918-1997) was elected the first African American mayor of Detroit,
Mich. He served 5 consecutive terms and chose not to seek re-election
in 1993. During WW II he served with the Tuskegee Airmen and after the
war founded the National Negro Labor Council. One of his major
accomplishments was the integration of the Detroit police force.
(SFEC,11/30/97,
p.C10)(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_23_98/ai_67185237)
1973 Old Main’s powerhouse,
obsolete since the 1930s, was demolished.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1974 Jan 2, Coleman Young
(1918-1997) was inaugurated as mayor of Detroit. In 1973 he narrowly
defeated Police Commissioner John F. Nichols, who would later become
Oakland County Sheriff, to become Detroit's first African American
mayor. Young won the four subsequent terms by very wide margins and
continued in office until December, 1993.
(WSJ, 5/28/98,
p.A20)(www.biographybase.com/biography/Young_Coleman.html)
1974 Apr 3, A series of 148 deadly
tornadoes struck wide parts of the South and Midwest before jumping
across the border into Canada; some 330 people were killed in 13 states
(Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi,
North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West
Virginia. Total property damage was estimated at $600 million. In 2007
Mark Levine authored “F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent
Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century.”
(AP, 4/3/99)(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(SSFC, 9/4/05,
p.A7)(WSJ, 6/16/07, p.P10)
1974 Knight Newspapers Inc. (Miami
Herald) merged with Ridder Publications (Detroit Free Press).
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A19)
1975 Feb 25, Elijah Muhammad
(b.1897 as Elijah Poole), US leader of the Detroit-based Nation of
Islam and Black Muslims, died in Chicago. His son W. Deen Mohammed
(1933-2008) was soon elected supreme minister of the Nation of Islam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah_Muhammad)(USAT,
2/13/97, p.6D)(SFC, 2/28/00, p.A3)(SFC, 9/11/08, p.B5)
1975 Feb 28, AMC introduced the
Pacer, the first wide, small car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv.
Supl)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Pacer)
1975 Jul 30, Former Teamsters
union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of the
Machus Red fox Restaurant in suburban Detroit. Although presumed dead,
his remains have never been found. He was scheduled to meet with Mafia
captain Tony Jack Giacalone (d.2001 at 82) and New Jersey Teamster boss
Anthony Provenzano. In 2004 Charles Brandt authored “I Heard You Paint
Houses,” in which he says Teamster official Frank Sheeran (d.2003)
claimed to have shot Hoffa. Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982.
(HFA, '96, p.34)(AP, 7/30/97)(SFC, 2/26/01,
p.A24)(SFC, 5/29/04, p.A2)
1975 Jul 31, In 2006 Donovan
Wells, a prisoner in Kentucky, said he witnessed a grave being dug for
Jimmy Hoffa at a horse farm in Milford, Mich., that was owned by
Rolland McMaster, a Teamster official. A search of the site proved
fruitless.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.A5)(SFC, 5/30/06, p.A2)
1975 Nov 10, The ore-hauling,
729-foot ship "Edmund Fitzgerald" broke in half and sank during a storm
at the eastern end of Lake Superior and its crew of 29 perished.
Oglebay Norton Co., the ship's Cleveland-based owner, filed for Chapter
11 bankruptcy in 2004. In 2005 Michael Schumacher authored “Mighty
Fitz,” an examination of debates over what happened.
(AP, 11/10/97)(SFC, 2/24/04, p.B2)(WSJ, 11/5/05,
p.P8)
1975 Nov 7, Hudson, Mich., High
School under coach Tom Saylor set a record for consecutive wins by a
high school football team at 72. In 1997 the Concord, Ca., De La Salle
High School football team under coach Bob Ladoucer won their 73rd
straight game and broke the 1975 record.
(SFC,11/8/97, p.A1)
1975 The U of M Institute for
Social Research (ISR) began a “Monitoring the Future” program. It was
an annual survey of lifestyles, attitudes and substance abuse among
teens and young adults.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1976 Feb 2, Susan LeFevre (21)
escaped from a Michigan prison, where she was serving a 10-year
sentence for a heroin conviction. In 2008 she was arrested in San
Diego, where she lived as a suburban mother under the name Marie Walsh.
In 2009 LeFevre (54) was released from prison in Michigan.
(http://quintessentialprocrastinator.blogspot.com/2008/08/susan-lefevre.html)(SFC,
5/19/09, p.A5)
1976 The first official
synchronized skating competition was held in Ann Arbor, Mich.
(SFC, 2/23/09, p.E7)
1977 Sep 13, General Motors
introduced 1st US diesel auto, the Oldsmobile 88.
(http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/09/today-in-hist-2.html)
1977 The Ford F-Series pickup
truck became the best-selling vehicle in the US.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1977 Industry experts in 1996
picked the 1977 Lincoln Versailles as the number 8 worst American-made
car.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1977 Jeep, a division of American
Motors, launched a 4-door Cherokee, a forerunner of the SUV boom.
(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1978 Jul 13, Lee Iacocca was fired
as president of Ford Motor Co. by chairman Henry Ford II. Iacocca later
joined Chrysler as its president.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl.)(AP, 7/13/97)
1978 Aug 28, Bruce Catton
(b.1899), US historian, died in Frankfort, Michigan. He won a 1954
Pulitzer Prize for history for his book “A Stillness at Appomattox,”
his study of the final campaign of the war in Virginia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Catton)
1978 In Detroit, Mich., the North
Cass Community Union, which organizes the Dally in the Alley every
year, formed to save the beautiful buildings in the Wayne State Univ.
area from demolition. “The Dally’s a great mix of old and new,” says
Alan Franklin of the Layabouts, a band that has played the festival
since the early years. The union bought a plot of land near Second and
Hancock and planned on rebuilding the Horace Dodge Garage, a Michigan
historic landmark built in 1904 where Dodge, Henry Ford’s chief
engineer, worked on his first motor car.
(www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=503)
1978 Thomas Bonner became
president of Wayne State Univ.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.6)
1979 Mar 26, In the 41st NCAA
Men's Basketball Championship the Michigan State Spartans beat the
Indiana State Sycamores, 75-64, as Magic Johnson outscored Larry Bird,
24-19; this snapped Indiana State's 33-game win streak. In 2009 Seth
Davis authored “When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed
Basketball.”
(http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/moments/9903.html)(WSJ, 3/20/09,
p.W10)
1979 May 19, The Regents of the
Univ. of California asked General Motors to stop doing business with
the police and military forces in South Africa.
(SFC, 5/14/04, p.F5)
1979 Sep 20, John Riccardo stepped
down as Chrysler’s chairman and was succeeded by Lee Iacocca.
(WSJ, 5/15/07,
p.A14)(www.scripophily.net/chcoca19.html)
1979 Oct 1, Henry Ford II stepped
down as Ford’s chairman and CEA and was succeeded by Philip Caldwell
(b.1920).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Caldwell)
1979 Oct 10, Paul Paray (b.1886),
French composer, died at age 93. He was the resident conductor of the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra (1951-1962) for more than a decade.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Paray)
1979 Oct 25, In Michigan US
District Court Judge John Feikens, in Glover v. Johnson, ruled in favor
granting women prisoners a constitutional right to court access and to
parity in educational and vocational training. He granted declaratory
and injunctive relief to the plaintiffs, holding: 1) that the
educational and vocational programs offered to women inmates were
markedly poorer than those offered to male inmates and this parity
denied equal protection; 2) that the record demonstrated the
constitutional inadequacy of the assistance given by the state to
ensure the free exercise of the women inmates’ right of access to the
courts; and 3) that the state’s use of a county jail as a temporary
overflow facility was prohibited by the mandate of the state
legislature setting the minimum conditions of confinement.
(LSA, Fall, 2007,
p.44)(http://clearinghouse.wustl.edu/detail.php?id=767)
1979 Nov, Ford bought a 25% stake
in Toyo Kogyo (later Mazda).
(www.performanceprobe.com/text/info/dates.htm)
1979 The 1980 film "Somewhere in
Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour was filmed at the Grand
Hotel on Mackinaw Island, Mich.
(SFEC, 11/22/98, Par p.24)(SSFC, 7/27/03, p.C1)
1979 The U of M Institute for
Social Research (ISR) began its National Survey of Black Americans
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1979-1980 A recession hit Michigan.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.6)
1979-1983 Ford Motors during this period closed 13
factories and dropped its work force from 191,000 to 101,000 people.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)
1980 Feb 25, Robert Hayden,
American poet and educator, died in Ann Arbor, Mich. Hayden had studied
under W.H. Auden at the Univ. of Michigan. In 1976 Pres. Gerald Ford
appointed him the 1st African-American consultant in poetry to the
Library of Congress, a post that later became known as Poet Laureate.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hayden)(LSA,
Fall/02, p.7)
1980 Jul 16, Ronald Reagan won the
Republican presidential nomination at the party's convention in Detroit.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1980 Jul 17, Ronald Reagan
formally accepted the Republican nomination for president.
(http://millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/digitalarchive/speechDetail/32)
1980 Rev. Jacob Yasso of Detroit’s
Sacred Heart Church on Seven Mile Rd. met with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Hussein soon sent $1.5 million to help cover debts, and to build a
social hall and day-care center.
(WSJ, 3/26/03, p.A1)
1981 Jan 1, Roger Smith (b.1925)
took office as chairman and CEO of GM.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(http://tinyurl.com/2pvqps)
1981 Mar 13, In the Poletown case
the Michigan Supreme Court allowed Detroit to take 1,000 homes and 600
businesses to make way for a General Motors Corp. plant. The decision
was overturned in 2004 when the court ruled that state and local
governments may not take property from one private owner and give it to
another purely for the purpose of economic development.
(WSJ, 7/30/04,
p.A6)(www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/2920831.html)
1981 Sep 18, The $11 million
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum was dedicated in Grand Rapids, Mich.
(SFEC, 5/11/97, p.T8)(AP, 9/18/01)
1981 The Layabouts of Detroit,
Mich., is not so much band as a community of musicians who hold similar
beliefs about the state of the World. They express this by composing
and performing music of their own making, meaningful lyrics set to a
beat that set your feet a-dancin'. Rock, reggae, ska - lyrics that'll
make you want to pull down the pyramid of authority while you gyrate to
a beat that is in harmony with the Universe.
(www.myspace.com/70951952)
1981 Primark Corp. was formed as a
holding company to diversify Michigan Consolidated Gas. Co. It acquired
a trucking co., a mortgage banking co., an aircraft leasing co. and
other operations. Exec. VP Joseph E. Kasputys joined the company in
1987 and spun off most of the operations and went into high powered
computer-system integration. In 1992 the company acquired Datastream
Int’l. of London, and in 1995 it acquired Disclosure Inc. Both
companies provided public company information.
(WSJ, 8/12/96, p.B6)
1982 Jun 10, The Jos. Schlitz
Brewing Company and the Old Milwaukee brand was acquired by Stroh
Brewing Company of Detroit. The Old Milwaukee brand was first brewered
by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company.
(http://tinyurl.com/rvxp4)
1982 Jun 19, In a case that
galvanized Asian-Americans, Vincent Chin (27), a Chinese-American
engineering student, was beaten to death outside a nightclub in
Highland Park, Mich., by autoworker Ronald Ebens. Two unemployed auto
workers mistook Chin for being Japanese. Each one was sentenced to 3
years probation.
(AP, 6/19/97)(SFEC, 2/6/00, Rp.10)
1982 David Adamany was selected as
the new president of Wayne State Univ.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.5)
1983 Brock Yates authored “The
Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry.
(WSJ, 11/5/05, p.P8)
1983 GM increased the focus on
trucks and discontinued the Malibu, introduced in 1963, after 6.5
million units were sold. The Malibu was reintroduced in 1997.
(WSJ, 4/1/09, p.A20)
1984 Jan 24, Michelle Jackson (16)
was raped and murdered. Eddie Joe Lloyd, a mental patient, confessed
and was sent to prison. Lloyd (54) was released after 17 years when DNA
evidence proved his confession to be false.
(SFC, 8/27/02, p.A4)
1984 Mar 20, Denny McLain, former
Detroit Tiger pitching star, was indicted on various charges of
racketeering.
(http://tinyurl.com/35zuwx)
1984 Jul 21, In Jackson, Michigan,
a male die-cast operator (34) was pinned by a hydraulic Unimate robot.
He died after 5 days. This was the 1st documented case of a robot
killing a human in US.
www.cdc.gov/niosh/face/In-house/full8420.html
(HFA, '96, p.34)(MC, 7/21/02)
1984 Oct 14, In the Baseball World
Series the Detroit Tigers beat the San Diego Padres.
(www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/yr1984ws.shtml)
1984 Chrysler introduced the Dodge
Caravan, its first Minivan.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1984 GM and Toyota established a
joint venture to build cars in Fremont, California.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.B2)
1984 GM helped originate a jobs
bank in which employees continued to be paid even though the company
did not need them. Volunteer activity or clocked-in presence in a
“rubber room” was required.
(WSJ, 3/1/06, p.A1)
1984 Chippewa Indians opened the
Kewadin Casino in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
(MT, Fall ‘96, p.20)
1985 Nov 12, The Unabomber mailed
a pipe bomb to Prof. James V. McConnell of Ann Arbor, Mich. 3 days
later research assistant Nick Suing opened the package and was injured
by the exploding bomb.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A3)(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1 p.4)
1985 The second volume of
“Michigan Flora” by Dr. Edward Voss of the Univ. of Mich. was
published.
(GEG, 6/97, p.5)
1985 Dr. Michael Aldrich (d.2000
at 51) established a Sleep Disorders Laboratory at the Univ. of
Michigan.
(SFC, 7/24/00, p.A21)
1985 At WSU the College of Labor,
Urban and Metropolitan Affairs was established. The College of Fine and
Performing Arts was separated from the Liberal Arts and later joined by
the dept. of communication.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.6)
1985 Ford Motor Co. premiered the
Taurus. Production of the car was terminated in 2006.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(SFC, 10/20/06, p.D3)
1986 Dec 17, A federal jury in
Detroit cleared automaker John DeLorean of all 15 charges in his fraud
and racketeering trial.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1986 In Detroit, Mich., Tyree
Guyton (30) began an art project covering a 2-block area on Heidelberg
Street. In 1991 the city ordered the demolition of 4 houses that he had
decorated. In 1997 45% of his work fell to a city demolition effort.
His work continued and attracted visitors from around the world.
(SFC, 9/1/06, p.E8)
1986 A monument to boxer Joe
Lewis, "The Fist," was installed in downtown Detroit. It consisted of
an 8,000-pound, 24-foot-long disembodied black forearm and clenched
hand.
(WSJ, 3/4/04, p.A1)
1986 David Barrett, East Lansing
musician, wrote the words and music to the song “One Shining Moment.”
It premiered in the 1987 NCAA basketball finals.
(WSJ, 4/4/03, p.B1)
1986 In Battle Creek public tours
were ended at the Kellogg Cereal plant due to safety concerns. A new
public museum was opened in 1998.
(SFEC, 8/2/98, p.T7)
1986 In Detroit the Olympia Ice
stadium was razed.
(WSJ, 6/12/97, p.A16)
1986 The zebra mussel was
introduced to the Great lakes by Russian freighters in 1986. [see 1988]
(WSJ, 9/27/00, p.A1)
1987 Mar 9, Chrysler Corp.
announced it had agreed to buy the financially ailing American Motors
Corp.
(AP, 3/9/07)
1987 Aug 16, 156 people were
killed when Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed while trying to take
off from a Detroit airport; the sole survivor was 4-year-old Cecelia
Cichan. The plane hit a freeway overpass following takeoff.
(AP, 8/16/97)(SFC, 11/13/01, p.A12)
1987 Sep 29, Henry Ford II (70),
longtime chairman of Ford Motor Company, died in Detroit.
(AP, 9/29/97)
1988 Jan 11, Alexandria, Danielle,
Erica, Raymond and Veronica L'Esperance, the first US test tube
quintuplets, were born in Royal Oak, Michigan.
(www.threebluestars.com/multiples/quintuplets.html)
1988 Mar 26, Jesse Jackson stunned
fellow Democrats by soundly defeating Michael S. Dukakis in Michigan's
Democratic presidential caucuses.
(AP, 3/25/98)
1988 Jun 21, The Los Angeles
Lakers repeated as NBA champions as they beat the Detroit Pistons,
108-105.
(AP, 6/21/98)
1988 Jul 31, The last US Playboy
Club closed in Lansing, Mich.
(www.michiganhistorymagazine.com/date/july03/07_31_1988.html)
1988 The Fox Theater reopened in
downtown Detroit.
(Econ, 2/4/06, p.27)
1988 The Detroit Pistons
basketball team opened their new Palace of Auburn Hills with 180 luxury
suites.
(WSJ, 10/10/97, p.B1)
1988 The zebra mussel first
appeared in the US. It is capable of laying up to 5 million eggs per
year. The European freshwater mussel was introduced into the Great
Lakes. It proceeded to spread to 18 states and 3 Canadian provinces
clogging water intake pipes at power plants and water facilities. [see
1986]
(SFEC, 8/3/97, p.A3)(SFC,12/11/97, p.A24)
1989 Apr 3, The University of
Michigan Wolverines won the NCAA championship by defeating Seton Hall
in overtime, 80-79.
(AP, 4/3/99)
1989 Jun 13, The Detroit Pistons
won their first National Basketball Association title, sweeping the Los
Angeles Lakers in four games.
(AP, 6/13/99)
1989 Dec 15, GM and SAAB agreed to
form a 50-50 joint auto-making company, called Saab Automobile A.B. GM
acquired the rest of SAAB a decade later.
(http://tinyurl.com/oktgl)(Econ, 1/31/09, p.72)
1989 Ford Motor Co. spun off its
Rouge steel complex.
(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.A8)
1989 General Motors under Roger
Smith began production at its free-standing Saturn division in Spring
Hill, Tenn.
(Econ, 4/22/06, p.62)(http://tinyurl.com/rtgoa)
1989 The U of M Institute for
Social Research (ISR), began its World Values Survey to be conducted
every 5 years.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1990 Mar 3, Carole Gist (20) of
Michigan was 1st black crowned 39th Miss USA.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1990 Mar, GM and SAAB completed
setting up a joint auto-making venture in Europe. They had agreed on
Dec. 15, 1989, to form a 50-50 joint auto-making company, called Saab
Automobile A.B.
(http://tinyurl.com/oktgl)
1990 Jun 4, Janet Adkins (54) of
Portland, Ore., became the first person to use a suicide machine
developed by Dr. Kevorkian.
(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1990 Jun 5, Authorities in Oakland
County, Michigan, moved to prevent Dr. Jack Kevorkian from continuing
to make available a suicide device that Janet Adkins, an Oregon woman
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, had used a day earlier to take her
own life.
(AP, 6/5/00)
1990 Jun, In Michigan Dr. Jack
Kevorkian asked Janet Good (d.1997 at 73) if he could use her house for
his first assisted suicide. She initially said ok but after conferring
with her husband, a retired police officer, declined the request on the
grounds that it might be illegal.
(SFC, 8/27/97, p.A9)
1990 Jul 30, GM’s first Saturn car
rolled off the line at Spring Hill, Tennessee. In the fall, GM
introduced its all-new Saturn cars to compete against the imports in
the small car market. Roger Smith, GM’s CEO, announced the secret
Saturn project in 1985 in order to "leap-frog" the Japanese car makers.
(www.gm.com/company/corp_info/history/gmhis1990.html)
1990 Aug 1, Robert Stempel took
charge at GM.
(WSJ, 6/19/96, Adv. Supl)(http://tinyurl.com/q8mqs)
1990 Aug 30, Edmund G. Love
(b.1912), Michigan-based writer, died in Flint. His book ''Subways Are
for Sleeping'' (1957) was the basis for the Broadway musical (1961).
(LSA, Spring, 2009, p.34)(http://tinyurl.com/c6rqnh)
1990 Dec 3, A Northwest Airlines
DC-9 collided on the ground with a Northwest Boeing 727 at Detroit
Metropolitan Airport, resulting in a fire that claimed eight lives.
(AP, 12/3/00)
1991 Feb 5, A Michigan court
barred Dr. Jack Kevorkian from assisting in suicides.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1991 May 14, General Motors ended
production of the Buick Reatta, a two-seater sports car that had been
introduced in 1988.
(WSJ, 6/23/08,
p.R2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_Reatta)
1991 Jun 28, In Detroit, a white
woman was attacked by a group of black women at a downtown fireworks
display in an incident captured on amateur video. Five women later
pleaded no contest to charges stemming from the assault.
(AP, 6/28/01)
1991 Oct 23, Dr. Jack Kevorkian
attended the suicide machine assisted deaths of 2 women in Michigan.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/chronology.html)
1991 Nov, Michigan suspended the
medical license of Dr. Kevorkian.
(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1991 Charles D. Moody, Univ. of
Michigan vice-president for minority affairs, led a delegation to
bestow an honorary doctorate to Nelson Mandela. It had been awarded in
absentia in 1990.
(MT, Fall/99, p.16)
1992 May 7, A 203-year-old
proposed constitutional amendment barring the US Congress from giving
itself a midterm pay raise received enough votes for ratification as
Michigan became the 38th state to approve it.
(AP, 5/7/97)
1992 Nov 5, Malice Green (35), a
black motorist, died when he was beaten by Detroit police officers
outside a suspected crack house. Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn were
convicted of second-degree murder, but the Michigan Supreme Court
ordered a new trial for Budzyn, saying jurors were improperly
influenced. Their convictions were overturned. Budzyn was retried and
convicted in 1998 and then sentenced to time served. Nevers was retried
in 2000 and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Nevers was sentenced
to 15 years in prison.
(AP, 11/5/97)(SFC, 3/28/00, p.A5)(SFC, 4/19/00,
p.A8)(SFC, 5/17/00, p.A8)
1992 Michigan voters passed a term
limits law that restricted state representatives to 6 years and state
senators to 8 years in office.
(WSJ, 6/30/99, p.A1)
1992 Michigan State began its
Michigan Political Leadership Program.
(WSJ, 6/30/99, p.A1)
1992 The U of M Institute for
Social Research (ISR) began its Health and Retirement study and the
study of Assets and Health Dynamics, biannual surveys that tracked the
health, wealth, work and family relationships of Americans over 50.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.4)
1993 Aug 2, In a dramatic scene
shown on national television, Jessica, a 2 1/2-year-old girl at the
center of a custody battle, was removed from the Michigan home of Jan
and Roberta DeBoer and turned over to her biological parents, Dan and
Cara Schmidt of Iowa.
(AP, 8/2/98)
1993 Aug 17, A prosecutor in Wayne
County, Mich., charged Dr. Jack Kevorkian under Michigan's ban on
assisted suicide for aiding in the death of Thomas Hyde, who suffered
from Lou Gehrig's disease. A jury later acquitted Kevorkian. Kevorkian
provided patients means and assistance in dying and Michigan’s
legislature moved to outlaw his work.
(TMC, 1994, p.1993)(AP, 8/17/98)
1993 Aug 23, Former Detroit police
officers Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn were convicted of second-degree
murder in the fatal beating of black motorist Malice Green. Both
convictions were later overturned. On retrial, Budzyn was convicted of
involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to time served; Nevers was
convicted of involuntary manslaughter in April 2000, but had that
conviction reversed by an appeals court in March 2003.
(AP, 8/23/03)
1993 Dennis Archer succeeded
Coleman Young as mayor of Detroit.
(WSJ, 5/28/98, p.A20)
1993 The Univ. of Michigan began
publishing its American Consumer Satisfaction Index. George Katona
began the consumer surveys began in 1946.
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.79)(http://tinyurl.com/33oozk)
1994 Jan 6, Figure skater Nancy
Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Cobo Arena in
Detroit. (Four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan's rival, Tonya
Harding, were later sentenced to prison.) Heavy snow fell on the city.
(AP, 1/6/98)(SFC, 1/4/99, p.A5)
1994 Jan 8, Tonya Harding won the
ladies' U.S. Figure Skating Championship in Detroit, a day after Nancy
Kerrigan dropped out because of a clubbing attack that injured her
right knee. The U.S. Figure Skating Assn. later stripped Harding of the
title because of her involvement in the attack.
(AP, 1/8/98)
1994 May 2, Dr. Kevorkian was
acquitted of violating a 1992 law against assisted suicide.
(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)(MC, 5/2/02)
1994 Aug 30, Rosa Parks, who
helped touch off the civil rights movement in 1955 by refusing to give
up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., was robbed and
beaten in her Detroit apartment. Joseph Skipper later pleaded guilty to
assault and robbery and was sentenced to prison.
(AP, 8/30/99)
1994 Nov 26, Margaret Garrish, a
72-year-old Detroit woman, committed suicide in the presence of Dr.
Jack Kevorkian.
(AP, 11/26/99)
1994 A $41.9 million budget for
renovation of Old Main was allocated by the state.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.11)
1994 A law was passed that said
school employees who strike lose a day's pay in addition to being fined
a day's pay.
(SFC, 8/31/99, p.A3)
1995 Mar, In Mich. Jonathan
Schmitz shot and killed Scott Amedure 3 days after the 2 appeared on
the "Jenny Jones Show," where Schmitz learned that his secret admirer
was Amedure. Schmitz was convicted of murder in 1996 but the verdict
was overturned due to an error in jury selection. Schmitz was sentenced
to a 25-50 year prison term. In 1999 a jury pronounced a $25 million
verdict against the producers of the show in a wrongful death suit by
the family of Amedure. In Aug 1999 a 2nd jury convicted Schmitz
of murder. Judge Wendy Pots sentenced Schmitz to 25-50 years in prison.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.A3)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A1)(SFC, 8/27/99,
p.A13)(SFC, 9/15/99, p.A6)
1995 Jul 13, In Michigan six union
locals, representing some 2,500 workers of the Detroit Free Press,
Detroit News and Detroit newspapers Inc., went on a strike that lasted
19 months.
(AP, 7/13/00)(www.pww.org/archives96/96-07-13-3.html)
1995 Jul 26, Former Michigan
Governor George W. Romney died at age 88.
(AP, 7/26/00)
c1995 Frederik Meijer, grocer and
entrepreneur, began his Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park in
Grand Rapids, Mich. In 2004 the park drew some 600,000 visitors.
(WSJ, 4/19/05, p.D8)
1995 Upjohn Co. of Kalamazoo
merged with Pharmacia AB of Sweden to form Pharmacia & Upjohn. Fred
Hassan was called in to lead the new company.
(WSJ, 2/2/99, p.B1)
1995 An Asian beetle, fatal to
North American ash trees, arrived in the US about this time. It was 1st
noticed in 2002 and by 2005 had killed some 15 million ash trees in
Michigan. Ohio, Indian, and southern Ontario were also affected.
Infested trees died within 4 years.
(SSFC, 12/25/05, p.A25)
1996 Feb 1, Lee C. Bollinger began
his term as the 12th president of the Univ. of Mich.
(LSA, Spg/97, p.36)
1996 Feb 14, The newspapers unions
in Detroit offered to return to work. The newspapers accepted the offer
5 days later but vowed to retain some 1200 replacement workers. A 1997
ruling ordered as many as 1,100 former strikers reinstated.
(SFC, 6/21/97, p.A4)
1996 Mar 8, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was
acquitted of assisted suicide for helping two suffering patients kill
themselves.
(AP, 3/8/01)
1996 May 14, A jury in Pontiac,
Mich., acquitted Dr. Jack Kevorkian of assisted-suicide charges, his
third legal victory in two years. The judge dismissed murder charges in
the same case.
(AP, 5/14/97)(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1996 Oct 31, In Pontiac, Mich.,
Dr. Jack Kevorkian was charged with assisting three suicides since June
1996. He was later acquitted.
(AP, 10/31/97)
1996 Oct 31, In Pontiac, Mich.,
Jenny Jones testified at the trial of one of her talk show guests,
Jonathan Schmitz, who was accused of killing another guest, Scott
Amedure in March, 1995.
(AP, 10/31/97)
1996 Nov 12, In Pontiac, Mich.,
Jonathan Schmitz, a guest on "The Jenny Jones Show," was convicted of
second-degree murder for shooting Scott Amedure, a gay man who'd
revealed a crush on Schmitz during a taping of the program. Schmitz was
later convicted and sentenced to up to 50 years in prison but the
conviction was thrown out due to a jury dispute and the trial was reset
for Aug, 1999.
(AP, 11/12/97)(WSJ, 5/10/99, p.B8)
1996 The third volume of Michigan
Flora by Dr. Edward Voss of the Univ. of Mich. was published.
(GEG, 6/97, p.5)
1996 Wayne State Univ. presented
Matel Dawson Jr. (76), a Ford Motor rigger/forklift driver, an honorary
degree after Dawson contributed $200,000 for scholarships. Since 1991
Dawson had contributed some $800,000 to colleges, churches and
charities from his earnings and investments.
(SFEC,11/9/97, Par p.20)
1996 Irwin H. “Sonny” Bloch
(d.1998), radio host, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for evading
taxes. He had bilked some $21 million from hundreds of radio listeners
by persuading them to buy worthless securities.
(SFC, 7/14/98, p.A17)
1997 Jan 9, A Comair Brazilian
made Embraer 120 commuter plane crashed 18 miles southwest of Detroit
and killed all 29 onboard. Icing was blamed for the crash.
(SFC, 8/28/98, p.A7)(AP, 1/9/99)
1997 Feb 19, Detroit's daily
newspapers accepted a back-to-work offer from employees who'd been on
strike for 19 months, but the strikers charged the conditions for
return amounted to a lockout.
(AP, 2/19/98)
1997 Apr 12, The new $38.4 million
Museum of African American History was scheduled to open in Detroit at
315 E. Warren Ave. with a 16,000-sq.-foot core exhibit. The building
was paid for by a city-backed bond issue but the collection was started
by Dr. Charles Wright.
(Sky, 4/97, p.28)(SFEC, 2/23/97, p.T7)(WSJ, 9/30/97,
p.A20)
1997 Jun 19, Three teenagers from
Highland Township and Davisburg hopped a train and got off in Flint.
They ran into some strangers who shot, raped and robbed them. One boy
(15) was killed. Six people were later arrested.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A2)
1997 Jun, The Detroit Red Wings
won the hockey Stanley Cup in 4 games against the Philadelphia Flyers.
(WSJ, 6/12/97, p.A16)
1997 Jun, Dr. Kevorkian was again
accused of assisted suicide. A mistrial resulted.
(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1997 Jul 3, Severe thunder storms
tore through Michigan’s lower peninsula and killed at least 7 people.
(SFC, 7/3/97, p.A3)
1997 Jul 22, Some 2,800 UAW
workers went on strike at a GM plant in Warren.
(SFC, 7/23/97, p.A3)
1997 Jul 27, The 6-day-old GM
strike in Michigan ended.
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.A3)
1997 Jul 29, In Concord Township 9
children and 2 women were killed in a collision between a pickup and
dumptruck.
(SFC, 7/30/97, p.A3)
1997 Aug 13, In Detroit Yolanda
Bellamy was slain with 2 young sons, a niece and a nephew. A suspect
was later arrested and jumped from a 5th floor police station window.
He was critically injured.
(SFC, 8/15/97, p.A3)
1997 Apr 18, The Wayne State Univ.
Alumni Assoc. handed Pres. David Adamany an endowment check for $1
million.
(WSUAN, V.52, p.4)
1997 Jul 27, United Auto Workers
approved a deal to end a six-day strike at a General Motors parts plant
that forced four assembly plant shutdowns and threatened GM's entire
North American production.
(SFC, 7/28/97, p.A3)(AP, 7/27/98)
1997 Aug 25, Dr. Irvin Reid was
selected as the next president of Wayne State Univ. to succeed David
Adamany.
(WSUAN, V.52, 1997, p.2)
1997 Sep 19, Lee C. Bollinger, the
12th president of U of M cited 5 principles to guide choices in the
years ahead: 1) Suspension of Belief 2) Publicness 3) Faculty Autonomy
4) Transparent Administration 5) Making Our History Visible.
(MT, Fall. ‘97, p.5)
1997 Sep 23, The Gilmore Artist
Award, a $300,000 prize given every 4 years to a classical pianist, was
awarded to Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at the Irving S. Gilmore
Int’l. Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo, Mich.
(SFC, 9/24/97, p.E5)
1997 Oct 22, In Detroit the Gem
Theater / 20th Century Club, a 2,750 ton building, was moved 5 blocks
through downtown to make room for a new ballpark. It set a new record
as the heaviest building moved.
(SFC,10/23/97, p.A17)
1997 Nov 29, Coleman Young (b. May
24, 1918 in Tuscaloosa, Ala.- d. Nov 29, 1997), former mayor of Detroit
(1973-1993), died. The city's first black mayor held office for an
unprecedented five terms.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.C10)(AP, 11/29/98)
1997 Dec 13, A ribbon-cutting
ceremony was held in Los Angeles for the $1 billion Getty Center, one
of the largest arts centers in the United States.
(AP, 12/13/98)
1997 Dec 13, Michigan Wolverine
Charles Woodson was named winner of the Heisman Trophy, the first
primarily defensive player so honored.
(AP, 12/13/98)
1997 Dec 24, A fire in Detroit
killed four children of the Buchanan family.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A3)
1997 The renovation of Old Main at
Wayne State Univ. was completed.
(WSUAN, Winter 1997, p.8)
1997 The Islamic Center of America
finished phase one of a project that would include a new $15 million
mosque on 9.8 acres on Altar Rd. in Dearborn. It was scheduled for
completion in 2004.
(WSJ, 4/7/99, p.B10)
1997 A jury convicted Denny
McLain, former Detroit Tiger pitcher, and his business partner of
stealing $3 million from a pension fund.
(www.clickondetroit.com/sports/2586043/detail.html)
1997 GM reintroduced the Malibu in
an effort to regain sales in the midsize sedan market. It had been
discontinued in 1983.
(WSJ, 4/1/09, p.A20)
1997 Nathaniel Abraham (11) shot
and killed Ronnie Greene Jr. (18) with a stolen rifle outside a Pontiac
convenience store. The killing was random and Abraham was charged with
1st degree murder. In 2000 Abraham was sentenced to a juvenile
detention center until age 21.
(SFC, 1/14/00, p.A3)
1998 Jan 1, The 109th Rose Bowl
Parade in Pasadena was held and Univ. of Michigan beat Washington State
21-16.
(SFC, 1/2/98, p.A1,22)
1998 Feb 17, In Detroit a landlord
paid an arsonist (35) a Rottweiler dog for setting a fire to get rid of
a family on her property. The fire killed 4 children.
(SFC, 2/19/98, p.A3)
1998 Feb 25, Harlan H. Hatcher,
President Emeritus of the Univ. of Mich., died at age 99. He wrote
several books on the history of the Great Lakes region.
(MT, Sum. ‘98, p.6)
1998 Apr 9, Detroit passed a
casino plan. The $1.8 billion plan still required state approval.
(WSJ, 4/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 19, A small plane crashed
on the west side of Detroit. It was reported to have contained cash and
marijuana that neighbors quickly picked up. The pilot was believed to
be Douglas C. Dufresne (66) of Florida.
(SFC, 4/21/98, p.A4)
1998 May 2, Police fired tear gas
into a crowd of 3,000 students at Michigan State Univ. who were
protesting the end of drinking at Munn Field.
(BS, 5/3/98, p.3A)
1998 Jun 1, A new $22 million
Kellogg’s Cereal City USA opened in Battle Creek. It was owned by the
non-profit Heritage Center Foundation.
(SFEC, 8/2/98, p.T7)
1998 Jun 16, The Detroit Red Wings
took home the Stanley Cup for the second consecutive year after
completing a sweep of the Washington Capitals with a 4-1 victory in
game four.
(AP, 6/16/03)
1998 Jul 7, Michael Jackson and
Detroit millionaire Don Barden announced a plan for a $1 billion
casino-entertainment complex. Mayor Archer was opposed to the casino
plan.
(SFC, 7/8/98, p.A3)
1998 Jul 26, In Michigan 3
spectators were killed and 6 people injured at the US 500 Race in
Brooklyn.
(WSJ, 7/27/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 28, General Motors and
the UAW agreed tentatively to settle strikes at two parts plants in
Flint.
(SFC, 7/29/98, p.A1)
1998 Jul 29, GM workers began
returning to their jobs after ratifying a strike settlement.
(SFC, 7/30/98, p.A3)
1998 Aug 4, Geoffrey Fieger, a
defense lawyer for Dr. Jack Kevorkian, won the Democratic nomination
for governor.
(SFC, 8/6/93, p.A5)
1998 Sep 17, Dr. Kevorkian
videotaped the injection death of Thomas Youk.
(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1998 Oct 5, Rick Wagoner became
the president of General Motors.
(WSJ, 3/30/09, p.A5)
1998 Nov 25, In Michigan a
prosecutor brought charges of first-degree murder against Dr. Jack
Kevorkian for administering a lethal injection last Sept. to a
terminally ill man who wished to die. A charge of assisted suicide was
later dropped.
(SFC, 11/26/98, p.A1)(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1998 Nov 29, In Dalton, Mich.,
Seth Stephen Privacky (18) and Steven Wallace (18) shot a killed
Privacky’s father (50), mother (49), grandfather (78), brother (19) and
brother’s girlfriend, April A. Boss (19). Seth Privacky pleaded no
contest to the charges and was sentenced to life in prison in late May,
1999. Privacky confessed that he committed the murders because his
father had threatened to kick him out of the house.
(www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/dec/12-02-98/news/news10.html)(SFC,
12/1/98, p.A4)
1998 Nov, In Kalamazoo Bradford
Metcalf (48), a militia member, was convicted of weapons and conspiracy
charges against the federal government. In 1999 he was sentenced to 40
years in prison without parole.
(SFC, 5/26/99, p.A3)
1998 Dec 10, In Detroit Andrzej
Olbrot (52), a Wayne State Univ. engineering prof., was shot and killed
while administering final exams. A 48-year-old graduate student turned
himself in the next day.
(SFC, 12/11/98, p.D6)(SFC, 12/12/98, p.A2)
1998 Dec 12, In Osseo, Mich., a
fireworks explosion at the Independence Professional Fireworks building
killed at least 7 people.
(SFEC, 12/13/98, p.A34)
1998 Dec 27, In Michigan 6
children of Femeeka O'Steen (27) died of smoke inhalation in Detroit as
their mother recovered in a hospital after giving birth.
(SFC, 12/28/98, p.A2)
1998 Dec 30, In Grand Rapids a
fire killed 5 people including 2 children.
(SFC, 12/31/98, p.A2)
1998 “The Other Side of the River:
A Story of Two Towns, A Death and America’s Dilemma” by Alex Kotlowitz
was an account of the death of Eric McGinnis, a black boy who drowned
in a river that divides St. Joseph from Benton Harbor.
(SFEC, 1/18/98, BR p.1)
1998 Thomas S. Monaghan sold his
Domino’s Pizza chain for some $1 billion.
(WSJ, 6/21/00, p.A1)
1999 Jan 2, In Chicago about 22
inches of snow fell on the city and across the northern Midwest. In
Detroit some 4,000 travelers were stranded in planes on the tarmac for
as long as 9 hours.
(SFC, 1/4/99, p.A5)(SFC, 2/8/99, p.A3)
1999 Jan, The little black book of
a Huntington Woods madam with 7,000 names was released on CD-ROM. Marci
Devernay (33) employed at least 25 male and female prostitutes and
faced up to 20 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/14/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 1, In Dearborn, Mich., an
explosion at a Ford River Rouge power station killed one worker and
injured 12 others. The Rouge power plant explosion killed 6 workers and
shut it down for 3 months.
(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A3)(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.A8)
1999 Feb 20, It was reported that
Gov. John Engler planned to improve education in Detroit by asking the
legislature to abolish the elected school board and to give Mayor
Archer the power to appoint a new one.
(SFC, 2/19/99, p.A4)
1999 Mar 25, The Legislature
approved a plan to replace the elected school board of Detroit with a
panel appointed by the mayor.
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.A3)
1999 Mar 26, In Michigan Dr.
Kevorkian was convicted of 2nd degree murder in the 1998 death of
Thomas Youk.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 29, In Michigan 5 people
died in Osseo following an explosion and fire at the Independence
Professional Fireworks Co.
(SFC, 3/30/99, p.A2)
1999 Apr 3, In Detroit 3 barbecue
restaurant employees and a child were found fatally shot at the
Prestige Restaurant.
(SFC, 4/5/99, p.A5)
1999 Apr 13, Judge Jessica Cooper
sentenced Dr. Kevorkian to 10-25 years in prison. He planned to appeal
the sentence which would require him to serve over 6 years before being
eligible for parole.
(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A3)
1999 Apr 14, In Michigan Dr.
Kevorkian said that he would begin to refuse food immediately.
(SFC, 4/15/99, p.A3)
1999 Apr 26, Detroit and Wayne
County filed suits for over $800 million against 35 manufacturers,
distributors and sellers of firearms.
(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A3)
1999 May 7, A jury in Pontiac,
Mich., announced a $25 million verdict against the producers of the
Jenny Lind TV Show over the 1995 segment that led to the murder of
Scott Amedure by Jonathan Schmitz. Amedure, a gay man, was shot to
death after revealing a crush on Jonathan Schmitz, a fellow guest on
the talk show. However, the Michigan Court of Appeals later overturned
the award, and the Michigan Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.
(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/10/99, p.B8)(AP, 5/7/04)
1999 May 23, A house fire in
Crystal Township left 2 adults and 4 teenage boys dead. Christopher W.
Simmons (17) escaped.
(SFC, 5/24/99, p.A6)
1999 Jun 11, Timothy Boomer (25)
was found guilty of swearing after tipping his canoe on the Rifle River
in 1998. The 1897 law was declared unconstitutional in 2002.
(SFC, 6/12/99, p.A2)(SFC, 4/2/02, p.A3)
1999 Jun, Cheryl L. Johnson
(1950-2007), a nurse at the Univ. of Michigan, and Susan Bianchi-Sand
were among the co-founders of the United American Nurses union (UAN).
During the week of June 17-20, ANA's House of Delegates (HOD) voted in
Washington, DC, to create the United American Nurses (UAN), a labor
entity within ANA that will further strengthen its labor activities.
(WSJ, 11/10/07, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/2tvqo9)
1999 Jul 24, Two girls, 8 &
14, were raped and left for dead in Thetford Township. Jack Duane Hall
(34) escaped arrest July 26 after shooting at officers.
(SFC, 7/27/99, p.A3)
1999 Jul 29, The MGM Grand Detroit
Casino opened in downtown Detroit in a former IRS building. It was the
1st of 3 planned temporary casinos. It closed in 2007 just before the
opening of a new $800 million MGM Grand across the street.
(SFC, 7/30/99, p.D5)(WSJ, 9/26/07, p.B1)
1999 Jul 31, In Cottrellville
Township 10 people died from a skydiving plane crash shortly after
takeoff from Marine City Airport, 40 miles north of Detroit.
(SFEC, 8/1/99, p.A5)
1999 Aug 14, The Kellogg Co.
announced the closure the historic South Plant in Battle Creek and a
cut of some 550 jobs.
(SFEC, 8/15/99, p.A4)
1999 Aug 30, Detroit's teachers
called a strike despite a state law that barred strikes.
(SFC, 8/31/99, p.A3)
1999 Aug 31, Detroit’s teachers
went on strike, wiping out the first day of class for 172-thousand
students in one of the largest teachers’ strikes in years. The walkout
lasted nine days.
(AP, 8/31/00)
1999 Sep 6, Detroit's teachers
reached a tentative agreement and won smaller classes and raises of up
to 4%. The union represented 9,200 teachers and some 172,000
students were affected. The teachers ratified the contract two days
later.
(AP, 9/6/00)(SFC, 9/7/99, p.A5)
1999 Sep 27, Tiger Stadium closed
in grand fashion after 87 years as the Tigers beat the Kansas City
Royals, 8-to-2.
(AP, 9/27/00)
1999 Oct 11, In Michigan police
reported that 5 suspects were taken into custody for holding and raping
4 girls for 2 weeks. The victims and suspects were all Laotian
Americans from of Hmong ethnic background.
(SFC, 10/12/99, p.A7)
1999 Oct 12, Professors Gerardus
't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman of the Netherlands won the Nobel
Prize in Physics for the invention of mathematical tools to calculate
properties of fundamental particles. From 1981 to his retirement in
1997, Veltman was an active member of the Univ. of Michigan physics
department.
(SFC, 10/13/99, p.A2)(MT, Fall/99, p.7)
1999 Oct 26, Gerald "Ajax"
Ackerman (42), former mayor of Port Huron, was sentenced to a year in
prison for 9 counts of indecent exposure to underage girls.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.A7)
1999 Nov 10, In Flint, Michigan, a
boiler exploded at the Clara Barton Convalescence Center. 5 people were
killed and over 20 injured.
(SFC, 11/12/99, p.A9)
1999 Nov 16, Nathaniel Abraham, at
13 one of the youngest murder defendants in US history, was convicted
in Pontiac, Michigan, of second-degree murder for shooting a stranger
outside a convenience store with a rifle when he was eleven. Nathaniel
was sentenced to juvenile detention. He will be released Jan. 13, 2007,
when he turns 21.
(AP, 11/16/04)
1999 Dec 7, In Detroit a man was
arrested on rape charges and suspected of being responsible for 8 rapes
of school girls since Sep.
(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A13)
1999 Dec 31, An arson attack of
the genetic research building at Michigan State University caused $3.7
million in damages. Frank Ambrose of Detroit later admitted to the
arson and went undercover for investigations of eco-terrorism. In 2008
Ambrose was sentenced to 9 years in prison.
(WSJ, 10/11/08,
p.A7)(www.earthfirstjournal.org/article.php?id=409)(SFC, 10/21/08, p.A3)
1999 Dec, In Detroit the MotorCity
Casino opened at a former wonder Bread factory.
(SSFC, 5/27/01, p.A18)
1999 The film "For Love of the
Game" starred Kelly Preston and Kevin Costner as a big-league Detroit
Tigers pitcher. It was directed by Sam Raimi.
(SFEC, 8/29/99, DB p.50)(SFC, 9/17/99, p.C1)
1999 Dr. John Shuey died and his
wife Rose donated their 46-work modern art collection to the Cranbrook
Art Museum.
(WSJ, 3/12/02, p.A24)
2000 Jan 26, Solomon Bell (38), a
police officer in Oak Park, committed suicide in the 6-week-old
MotorCity Casino after he lost a high-stakes hand of blackjack.
(SFC, 1/28/00, p.A5)
2000 Feb 4, The Ford Motor Co.
said it would provide new PCs and a printer with Internet access to its
300,000 employees at $5 per month over 3 years.
(SFC, 2/5/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 22, Sen. John McCain beat
Gov. George W. Bush in the Michigan primary 50-43% and in the Arizona
primary 60-30%.
(SFC, 2/23/00, p.A1)
2000 Feb 29, In Michigan a
6-year-old boy shot and killed Kayla Rolland (6) with a .32 caliber
semiautomatic after a quarrel in the Theo J. Buell Elementary School in
Flint. Jamelle James (19), the owner of the stolen gun, was later
arraigned on a manslaughter charge.
(SFC, 3/1/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 15, In Michigan 4 teens
beat to death and robbed Willie Jones (66) as he left the Michigan
Lanes Bowling Alley in Grand Rapids. The teens then stuffed Jones into
their car trunk and drove around town to show him off.
(SFC, 3/20/00, p.A11)
2000 Apr 11, The Detroit Tiger
baseball season began in the new Comerica Park. The Park received $110
million in public funds. It had the deepest fences in baseball.
(WSJ, 9/30/99, p.A24)(WSJ, 3/31/00, p.A1)(WSJ,
5/12/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 12, Detroit police
arrested John Eric Armstrong (26), a suspected serial killer. Armstrong
was reported to be responsible for killing some 20 prostitutes since
1992, when he served in the US Navy aboard the Nimitz.
(SFC, 4/14/00, p.A16)
2000 Apr 18, In Michigan Kenneth
Ray Miller (55), a tenant at a senior apartment house in Lincoln Park,
shot and killed 2 women after he was summoned to discuss complaints
about his vulgar language. A 3rd woman died days later.
(SFC, 4/19/00, p.A3)(SFC, 4/22/00, p.B10)
2000 May 27-29, The Detroit
Electronic Music Festival was held in Hart Plaza.
(SFC, 5/29/00, p.E7)
2000 Jun 1, Rick Wagoner, the
president of General Motors, was named CEO of GM.
(WSJ, 3/30/09, p.A5)
2000 Jun 13, A power outage hit
downtown Detroit at 12:45 p.m. due to a burned out cable at a power
station. Power was restored by early the next day.
(SFC, 6/13/00, p.A11)
2000 Jun 20, General Motors broke
ground on a $1 billion assembly and parts plant in Delta Township.
(SFC, 6/21/00, p.C7)
2000 Jun 22, Frederick Finley died
from a security officer’s choke hold in Dearborn. Finley’s 11-year-old
daughter had been accused of stealing a $4 bracelet and Finley punched
the guard who tried to detain her.
(SFC, 7/7/00, p.A9)
2000 Nov 22, Douglas Hermelin,
real estate developer and US ambassador to Norway (1997-1999), died at
age 63. He was one of the developers of the Palace of Auburn Hills and
developed the Pine Knob Entertainment Center and the Meadow Brook Music
Center.
(SFC, 11/24/00, p.D11)
2000 Nov, In Detroit a casino, 90%
owned by the Sault St. Marie Chippewa Indians, opened in Greektown.
(SSFC, 5/27/01, p.A19)
2000 Dec 12, General Motors, under
new CEO Rick Wagoner, announced a restructure and planned phase out of
the Oldsmobile vehicle division following a long slide in sales.
(WSJ, 12/12/00, p.A3)(SFC, 12/13/00, p.a3)(WSJ,
12/22/08, p.B2)
2000 Dec 13, A federal judge
upheld the Univ. of Michigan’s affirmative action program citing
diversity as a critical component of higher education.
(SFC, 12/14/00, p.A5)
2000 Dec 16, Federal prisoner
Theodore Kaczynski (58), aka the unabomber, donated his writings to a
special collection at the Univ. of Michigan, where he received his
doctorate in 1977.
(SSFC, 12/17/00, p.A1)
2001 Feb 1, Tony and Linda Calliea
claimed their Big Game lottery win for $107 million. They selected a
$57.7 lump sum option.
(SFC, 2/2/01, p.A2)
2001 Feb 23, Anthony Giacalone,
Detroit mobster, died at age 82.
(SFC, 5/3/01, p.B7)
2001 Mar 27, A US federal judge
ruled that the Univ. of Michigan racial criteria for accepting minority
students with lower test scores than whites was invalid.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A3)
2001 Jul 1, A state law went into
effect that allowed virtually any gun owner to carry a concealed weapon
in public.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.C6)
2001 Jul 12, Charleszetta Waddles,
aka Mother Waddles, died in Detroit at age 88. She was the founder of
the Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission in 1957.
(SFC, 7/13/01, p.D5)
2001 Jul 14, In Riverview an
explosion at the ATOFINA Chemicals plant killed 3 employees.
(SSFC, 7/15/01, p.A11)
2001 Aug 31, Grover T. Crosslin
(47), owner of the Rainbow Farms campground in Vandalia, Mich., set
fire to the structures on his property.
(http://cannabisnews.com/news/17/thread17211.shtml)
2001 Sep 3, FBI snipers shot and
killed Grover T. Crosslin (47) at his Rainbow Farms campground in
Vandalia, Mich., following a 4-day standoff. Crosslin was burning
buildings on his property, which was the target of civil forfeiture
proceedings. In 2006 Dean Kuipers authored “Burning Rainbow Farm: How a
Stoner Utopia Went Up in Smoke.”
(http://cannabisnews.com/news/17/thread17211.shtml)(SSFC, 7/23/06, p.M3)
2001 Sep 4, Police shot and killed
Rolland Rohm (28) at the Rainbow Farms campground in Vandalia, Mich.,
after he allegedly pointed a weapon at an officer. The campground had
been set up for marijuana advocates. Owner Grover T. Crosslin was
killed by FBI snipers a day earlier.
(SFC, 9/5/01,
p.A5)(http://cannabisnews.com/news/17/thread17211.shtml)
2001 Sep 21, Ronald C. Sheffield,
a federal security officer was shot and killed in the Patrick V.
McNamara building in Detroit. The gunman was seriously wounded.
(SFC, 9/22/01, p.A20)
2001 Oct 23, The tugboat J.W.
Westcott II rolled over and sank in the Detroit River and 2 crew
members were missing and feared drowned.
(SFC, 10/24/01, p.C14)
2001 Oct 25, The Ford Motor Co.
reached a settlement that would cost as much as $2.7 billion to replace
a $4 ignition device prone to cause stalling.
(SFC, 10/26/01, p.A1)
2001 Nov 4, Ian Wallace attempted
to firebomb 2 buildings at Michigan Tech. Univ. in Marquette, Mi., but
his devices failed. In 2009 he was sentenced to 3 years in prison. In
2008 Wallace admitted in his plea agreement to three other acts,
including the destruction of 500 research trees at a federal lab in
Rhinelander, Wis., in 2000. The value of the trees was estimated at $1
million.
(SFC, 3/24/09, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/db4zpf)
2001 Nov 15, Two trains collided
25 miles northwest of Detroit and 2 crew members were killed.
(WSJ, 11/16/01, p.A1)
2002 Jan 17, Stewart Richardson
took off from his figurine shop in White Lake and took with him over
$225,000 in cash from fraudulent eBay auctions. He had spent 5 years
dealing collectibles on eBay.
(WSJ, 2/22/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 5, In Mount Pleasant
Thomas Wendt shot and killed his ex-wife and 2 others at the Isabella
County Courthouse parking lot. Wendt later surrendered at his home.
(SFC, 3/6/02, p.A5)
2002 Mar 18, Maud Farris-Luse,
recognized as the oldest living person, died in Grand Rapids at age 115
years and 56 days.
(SFC, 3/21/02, p.A21)
2002 Apr 1, The 1897 law against
swearing in front of women and children was declared unconstitutional.
(SFC, 4/2/02, p.A3)
2002 Jun 13, The Detroit Red Wings
won the Stanley Cup 4 games to 1 over the Carolina Hurricanes.
(WSJ, 6/14/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 16, Stephen P. Yokich
(66), UAW president, died in Detroit.
(SFC, 8/19/02, p.B6)
2002 Aug 28, Federal grand juries
charged six men in Detroit with conspiring to support al-Qaeda's
terrorism as members of a sleeper cell.
(AP, 8/28/03)(SFC, 8/29/02, p.A1)
2002 Nov 5, Michigan voters
elected Democrat Jennifer Granholm (43) as governor.
(NW, 12/30/02, p.62)
2002 Dec 27, Gov. Engler of
Michigan signed a bill eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for drug
crimes.
(WSJ, 12/30/02, p.A1)
2002 Kwame Kilpatrick took office
as mayor of Detroit. His promises included a massive cleanup of
dilapidated properties, technological upgrade of city services and
tough but fair relationship with unions.
(WSJ, 1/27/05, p.A8)
2003 Jan 16, The Bush
administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down admissions
policies at the University of Michigan and its law school, arguing that
university admissions programs that gave an edge to minority students
were unconstitutional.
(AP, 1/16/04)
2003 Jan 18, Edward Farhat
(b.1924), pioneering pro wrestling villain (the Sheik), died in
Williamstown, Mich.
(SSFC, 1/26/03, p.A25)
2003 May 16, Michigan state and
federal police began investigations of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
on criminal misconduct charges that included leaving the scene of an
accident.
(SFC, 5/17/03, p.A3)
2003 Jun 3, Jurors in Detroit
convicted Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi and Karim Koubriti of supporting
planned terrorist strikes. Their case began 6 days after the Sep 11,
2001 attacks.
(SFC, 6/4/03, p.A3)
2003 Jun 23, The US Supreme Court,
in Grutter v. Bollinger, upheld a University of Mich. law school
admissions policy that gave minorities an edge, ruling 6-3 that race
can be one of many factors that colleges consider when selecting their
students. A point system for undergraduate admission was ruled
unconstitutional.
(AP, 6/23/03)(WSJ, 6/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug, Toyota sold more cars in
America than did Chrysler.
(Econ, 10/11/03, p.82)
2003 Oct 9, The Detroit Symphony
Orchestra dedicated its new $60 million Max M. Fisher Center, which
included a restored and remodeled Orchestra Hall.
(SFC, 10/9/03, p.F2)
2003 Oct 20, Kirk Jones (40) from
Canton, Michigan, survived a 150-foot plunge over the fast-flowing
Canadian side Niagara Falls, only to face charges of mischief and
unlawfully performing a stunt. Jones said he was driven by depression,
not a desire to become a daredevil. A 7-year-old boy who went over in
1960, unlike Jones, was wearing a lifejacket. Since 1901, 15 daredevils
have taken the plunge in barrels or other devices, including a kayak
and a personal watercraft. Ten survived,
(AP, 10/21/03)
2003 Nov, A new $17 million
Holocaust Museum was to be dedicated in Farmington Hills.
(WSJ, 10/8/03, p.A1)
2003 Nov 5, Bobby Hatfield (63),
the tenor half of The Righteous Brothers, who made "You've Lost That
Lovin' Feeling" a worldwide hit, was found dead in a Kalamazoo, Mich.,
hotel. An autopsy revealed that his death was triggered by acute
cocaine intoxication.
(AP, 11/6/03)(SFC, 1/8/04, p.E5)
2003 Dec, Severstal, a Russian
steel firm, purchased the assets of Rouge Industries for $285 million
in a bankruptcy auction.
(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.A1)
2003 Micheline Maynard authored
"The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip on the American
Car market."
(Econ, 10/11/03, p.82)
2003 Compuware, a
computer-services company, relocated from the suburbs of Detroit to the
downtown area on Woodward near the river.
(Econ, 2/4/06, p.27)
2004 Jan 19, Gov. Granholm
announced initiatives, the Michigan Water Legacy Act, to protect the
state's water supply and the Great Lakes.
(USAT, 1/20/04, p.12A)
2004 Feb 7, John Kerry scored
decisive wins in Michigan and Washington state.
(AP, 2/8/04)
2004 Mar 4, Michigan authorities
asked 6 southeastern counties to evaluate damage done by the emerald
ash borer. The pests had already killed some 6 million ash trees.
(USAT, 3/5/04, p.9A)
2004 Apr 29, GM ended production
of its Oldsmobile line (b.1897), named after Ransom E. Olds. The last
Olds Alero rolled of a GM assembly line in Lansing, Mich.
(SFC, 4/28/04, p.C1)
2004 May 20, Detroit Zoo officials
said they will stop exhibiting elephants on ethical grounds because
elephants can develop arthritis and stress-related ailments in
captivity.
(Reuters, 5/20/04)
2004 Jun 15, The Detroit Pistons
beat the Los Angeles Lakers 100-87 in Game Five of the NBA Finals for
their first championship in 14 years.
(SFC, 6/16/04, p.D1)(AP, 6/15/05)
2004 Aug 18, Two campers were
found slain at Fish Head Beach in Sonoma Ct., Ca. Lindsay Cutshall (23)
of Fresno, Ohio, and Jason Allen (26) of Holland, Mich., were found
with gunshots to the head. They had planned a wedding next month.
(SFC, 8/21/04,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenner,_California_Double-Murder_of_2004)
2004 Nov 12, Former President
Gerald R. Ford attended groundbreaking ceremonies at the Univ. of
Michigan for the new home of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
(SFC, 12/27/06, p.A11)
2004 Nov 19, In Auburn Hills,
Mich., players and fans exchanged punches in one of the worst NBA
brawls ever. Indiana Pacers’ Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson charged
into the stands and fought with fans and forced an early end to the
Pacers' 97-82 win over the Pistons win with 45.9 seconds left.
(AP, 11/20/04)
2004 Nov 20, The NBA suspended 9
players without pay over the Nov 19 Piston and Pacer brawl in Auburn
Hills, Mich.
(Econ, 11/27/04, p.34)
2004 Dec, Detroit’s Cass Corridor
held its annual Miss Cass Pageant for women with developmental
disabilities.
(WSJ, 12/17/04, p.A1)
2004 The murder rate in Detroit
rose to 384 killings for 2004.
(WSJ, 1/27/05, p.A8)
2005 Jan, Detroit’s Mayor
Kilpatrick (34) asked citizens to make great sacrifices due to a $230
million budget deficit. Meanwhile he leased a new luxury Lincoln
Navigator for his family’s use.
(WSJ, 1/27/05, p.A1)
2005 May 5, The Arab-American
National Museum opened across from City Hall in Dearborn, Mich.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, p.E6)(http://tinyurl.com/ajzhu)
2005 May 12, The Islamic Center of
America, a $12 million mosque, opened in Dearborn, Mich., down the road
near the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Co.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, p.E6)(www.icofa.com/)
2005 Jun 21, In Detroit a blaze
destroyed a sprawling, century-old warehouse on Piquette St. that once
was used to produce Studebaker cars.
(AP, 6/21/05)
2005 Aug 10, A fire destroyed an
egg facility in Michigan and killed some 250,000 chickens.
(WSJ, 8/11/05, p.A1)
2005 Aug 14, It was reported that
the Detroit area had more than 12,000 abandoned homes, a byproduct of
decades of layoffs at the city's auto plants and white flight to the
suburbs.
(AFP, 8/14/05)
2005 Sep 3, In Michigan an
explosion at a rural farm home in Caledonia township killed 6 siblings
aged 2-19, visiting from out of state.
(SFC, 9/5/05, p.A3)
2005 Sep, The FBI raided the home
of spammer Alan M. Ralsky (60) in a Detroit suburb seizing financial
records, computers and disks. Ralsky has said that he has 150 million
or more e-mail addresses, and he has been a target of anti-spam efforts
for years.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 2, In New York the
40-foot boat the Ethan Allen capsized on Lake George over so quickly
that none of the 47 passengers from Michigan could put on a life
jacket. 20 people were killed.
(AP, 10/3/05)
2005 Oct 17, General Motors Corp.
and the United Auto Workers reached a tentative agreement that will
help the embattled automaker lower its health care costs even as GM
reported a whopping $1.6 billion loss for the third quarter.
(AP, 10/17/05)
2005 Oct 24, Rosa Parks (92), who
galvanized the civil rights movement in 1955 when she was jailed for
refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala., died at her
home in Detroit. Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus
system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev.
King, who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
(AP, 10/25/05)
2005 Nov 8, In Hillsdale,
Michigan, unofficial results showed that Michael Sessions (18) got 732
votes, compared with 668 for Mayor Doug Ingles (51). Once his victory
is certified and he's sworn in - the ceremony is set for Nov. 21 - he
may be the youngest mayor in the USA.
(USAT, 11/10/05)
2005 Nov 9, Argentine prosecutors
said a Hezbollah militant has been identified as the suicide bomber who
flattened a Jewish community center in 1994, killing 85 people in
Argentina's worst terrorist attack. Hussein Berro, a 21-year-old
Lebanese citizen who "belonged to Hezbollah," was driving the van
packed with explosives July 18, 1994. He was identified by friends and
relatives in Detroit, Mich., from a photograph.
(AP, 11/9/05)
2005 Nov 18, Ford Motor Co., said
it plans to eliminate 4,000 salaried jobs, or 10% of its North American
white-collar work force, as part of a larger restructuring plan.
(Reuters, 11/18/05)
2005 Nov 21, General Motors Corp.
said it will eliminate 30,000 jobs and close nine North American
assembly, stamping and powertrain plants by 2008 as part of an effort
to get production in line with demand and position the world's biggest
automaker to start making money again after absorbing nearly $4 billion
in losses so far this year.
(AP, 11/21/05)
2005 Dec 8, Scientists said as
wetlands disappear and shorelines are degraded, the Great Lakes are
losing their ability to cope with environmental stress and ward off a
catastrophic breakdown.
(CP, 12/08/05)
2005 Dec 12, A fire at a nursing
home in Ishpeming, northern Michigan, forced dozens of elderly people
into the snow and bitter cold, including many who were unable to walk
and wearing only nightclothes. Two people died and at least 70 were
injured.
(WSJ, 12/13/05, p.A1)
2006 Feb 2, The Vatican announced
that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of an auxiliary
bishop of Detroit, Thomas Gumbleton, a liberal voice in the US church
who recently revealed that a priest abused him 60 years ago.
(AP, 2/2/06)
2006 Feb 5, In Detroit, Mich., the
Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl over the Seattle Seahawks 21-10.
(AP, 2/6/06)
2006 Feb 7, General Motors Corp.,
under shareholder pressure to return to profitability, announced it is
cutting in half its yearly dividend to $1 a share and reducing the
salaries of its chairman and senior leadership team.
(AP, 2/7/06)
2006 Feb 26, In Italy Sweden beat
rival Finland 3-2 for the Olympic men's hockey gold medal. Sweden took
advantage by scoring twice, with both goals by Detroit Red Wings
players: Henrik Zetterberg slightly less than five minutes into the
period and Niklas Kronwall eight minutes later.
(AP, 2/26/06)
2006 Mar 22, General Motors Corp.
and the auto parts supplier it once owned, Delphi Corp., announced
deals with the United Auto Workers that would offer buyouts to 13,000
hourly Delphi employees and up to 100,000 hourly GM workers represented
by the United Auto Workers.
(AP, 3/22/06)
2006 Mar 23, General Motors Corp.
said that it is raising nearly $9 billion in cash by selling a majority
interest in its commercial mortgage division and sprucing up the
finances of the auto loan and insurance business the struggling
automaker is still trying to sell.
(AP, 3/23/06)
2006 Apr 11, In Michigan Proof
(Deshaun Holton), a member of rap group D12 and a close friend of
Eminem, was shot to death early today at a Detroit nightclub along
Eight Mile Road. Keith Bender, shot by rapper Proof (32), just before
Proof himself was killed, died of his wounds on April 18.
(AP, 4/11/06)(AP, 4/18/06)
2006 Apr 14, Russia's OAO GAZ
automaker agreed to buy DaimlerChrysler AG production lines in suburban
Detroit and move them to Russia, where it will produce DaimlerChrysler
cars under license.
(AP, 4/14/06)
2006 May 19, In Detroit 12 people
died over the last 2 days from an overdose of a drug called fentanyl
that was considered 80 times more powerful than morphine. Some fentanyl
was being mixed with heroine. Officials reported over 100 confirmed
overdose cases from the drug since last fall.
(SSFC, 5/27/06, p.A21)
2006 May 30, The FBI said it had
found no trace of Jimmy Hoffa after digging up a suburban Detroit horse
farm.
(AP, 5/30/07)
2006 Jun 26, GM said that 35,000
workers had accepted incentives to retire early.
(Econ, 7/1/06, p.55)(http://tinyurl.com/e6ddb)
2006 Jul 3, Nissan Motor Co.
approved opening talks with General Motors Corp. over a possible
alliance.
(AP, 7/3/06)
2006 Aug 9, In Ohio Osama Sabhi
Abulhassan (20) and Ali Houssaiky (20), both of Dearborn, Mich., were
charged with money laundering in support of terrorism after authorities
said they found airplane passenger lists and information on airport
security checkpoints in their car.
(AP, 8/9/06)
2006 Aug 11, In Michigan 3
Palestinian American men from Texas were arrested after buying dozens
of cell phones at a Wal-Mart store. They were found with a 1000 cell
phones and later charged with federal fraud conspiracy and money
laundering. Initial terrorism charges were dropped.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 5, Bill Ford stepped down
as CEO of Ford Motor Co. and was replaced by Alan Mulally, a top Boeing
executive.
(SFC, 9/6/06, p.C3)
2006 Sep 15, US automaker Ford
Motor Co. unveiled sweeping job cuts and plant closures to stem losses
and said it has no intention of selling its luxury brand Jaguar. Ford
said it would cut 10,000 more white-collar positions, up from a
previous goal of 4,000, and offer buyout and early retirement to all
75,000 hourly employees. Ford stock closed at $8.02.
(AFP, 9/15/06)(SFC, 9/16/06, p.C1)(WSJ, 9/16/06,
p.A1)
2006 Sep, In Kenya farmers in the
Machakos region built small dams and water retention ponds on the Ikiwe
River with some $70,000 in aid from people in Archbold, Ohio. The
Archbold Mennonite Church project was part of Foods Resource Bank, a
Michigan-based hunger fighting organization that connects urban
churches with rural farm groups.
(WSJ, 4/23/07, p.A1)
2006 Oct 7, The NY Yankees were
eliminated from the first round of the AL playoffs, losing to Detroit
8-3 in Game 4. It was the second straight year New York lost in the
opening round.
(AP, 10/8/06)
2006 Oct 14, The Detroit Tigers
won the American League baseball pennant race in 4 games over Oakland,
Ca.
(SSFC, 10/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 23, Ford Motor Co. posted
a 3rd quarter loss of $5.8 billion.
(WSJ, 10/24/06, p.A3)
2006 Oct 27, In Missouri the St
Louis Cardinals won the World Series by beating the Detroit Tigers 4-2
in game 5, claiming their first MLB crown in 24 years.
(Reuters, 10/28/06)
2006 Oct 30, A new ranking
compiled by Morgan Quitno Press listed St. Louis as the most dangerous
city in the USA, leading a trend of violent crimes rising much faster
in the Midwest than in the rest of nation. The study looked at crime
only within St. Louis city limits, with a population of about 330,000
under Mayor Francis Slay. The safest city in 2005 was Brick, N.J., with
a population about 78,000, followed by Amherst, N.Y., and Mission
Viejo, Calif. The second most dangerous city was Detroit, followed by
Flint, Mich., and Compton, Calif.
(AP, 10/30/06)
2006 Nov 17, Bo Schembechler
(b.1929), former Univ. of Michigan football coach, died in Southfield,
Mich.
(WSJ, 11/18/06, p.A1)
2006 Nov 29, Still losing money
after job and factory cuts, Ford Motor Co. said 38,000 workers, almost
half of its hourly production force, had accepted buyouts or early
retirement offers.
(AP, 11/29/07)
2006 Dec 15, Laura Dickinson (22),
was found dead in her dorm room at Ypsilanti’s Eastern Michigan Univ.
Officials said she died of asphyxiation with no sign of foul play. In
February Orange Taylor III was arrested and charged with her murder and
family members learned that she had been raped and killed. In July 3
school administrators including the president were ousted for covering
up the rape and murder and received $550,000 in combined severance.
(SFC, 7/17/07, p.A3)(SFC, 7/19/07, p.A5)
2006 Dec 26, Gerald R. Ford
(b.1913), former Michigan Congressman and US President (1973-1976),
died. He had declared "Our long national nightmare is over" as he
replaced Richard Nixon, but may have doomed his own chances of election
by pardoning his disgraced predecessor.
(AP, 12/27/06)
2006 In Michigan Kristina Adkins
(13) killed her grandmother, Virginia Bentley, by poisoning. In 2008
Adkins was sentenced to life in prison with a chance for parole in 20
years.
(SFC, 11/1/08, p.A3)
2007 Jan 2, US markets and federal
agencies closed in respect for funeral rites for former Pres. Gerald
Ford. Ford’s body was flown to Michigan for burial following services
in the National Cathedral.
(WSJ, 1/2/07, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/3/07, p.A1)
2007 Jan 7, The North American
Int’l. Auto Show opened in Detroit. China’s Changfeng Group Co., made
its first appearance at the international auto show in Detroit, Mich.
China numbered over 100 automakers and industry consolidation was
expected.
(Econ, 1/6/07, p.54)(WSJ, 1/3/07, p.B1)
2007 Jan 17, A US snow and ice
storm was blamed for at least 64 deaths in nine states. These included
20 deaths in Oklahoma, 9 in Missouri, 8 in Iowa, 4 in New York, 5 in
Texas, 4 in Michigan, 3 in Arkansas, and 1 each in Maine and Indiana.
(AP, 1/17/07)(SFC, 1/18/07, p.A3)
2007 Jan 25, Ford Motor Co. lost
$5.8 billion in the fourth quarter amid slumping sales and huge
restructuring costs, pushing the automaker's deficit for the year to
$12.7 billion, the largest in its 103-year history.
(AP, 1/25/07)
2007 Feb 2, Joe Hunter (79),
Motown’s first bandleader, died in Detroit, Mich.
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.B6)
2007 Feb 2, Billy Henderson (67),
singer in the band called the Spinners, died in Florida. His songs
included “I’ll Be Around” (1972) and other hits. The 5-member band had
formed in 1954 in Ferndale, Mich.
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.B6)
2007 Feb 5, Violence raked Baghdad
as an Iraqi general took charge of the security operation in the
capital and Iraqi police and soldiers manned new roadblocks, initial
steps indicating the start of the long-anticipated joint operation with
American forces to curb sectarian bloodshed. At least 29 people died in
bomb and mortar attacks across the city, 15 of them as they waited to
refill propane cooking tanks when two car bombs blew up in quick
succession in south Baghdad. A soldier killed in a roadside bombing in
Basra was the 100th British death attributed to hostile action since
the US-led invasion in 2003. A US Marine was killed in fighting in the
volatile Anbar province. US forces shot and killed Donald Tolfree of
Owosso, Mich., a civilian contract truck driver at Camp Anaconda, the
huge air base north of Baghdad.
(AP, 2/5/07)(AP, 2/6/07)(AP, 2/10/07)
2007 Feb 13, Mitt Romney, former
one-term Republican governor of Massachusetts, officially entered the
2008 presidential race. In what amounted to a made-for-TV coming-out
tour, Romney announced his candidacy in Michigan, the place of his
birth. His father George Romney, a Michigan governor in the 1960s and
an AMC chief executive, made a short-lived attempt at the presidency
four decades ago.
(AP, 2/13/07)
2007 Feb 25, In Detroit Nation of
Islam leader Louis Farrakhan stressed religious unity during what was
billed as his final major speech, saying the world was at war because
Christians and Muslims were divided.
(AP, 2/25/08)
2007 Feb 28, In Michigan Thomas
Katona, a former county treasurer of a Lake Huron vacation community,
was ordered to stand trial on charges that he looted $186,500 in public
funds for a Nigerian investment scam. Katona was treasurer of Alcona
County from 1993 until his dismissal late in 2006. On June 12 Katona
(56) was sentenced for up to 14 years in prison.
(AP, 2/28/07)(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Mar 4, Stephen Grant (37) of
Mount Clemens, suspected of killing and dismembering his wife, was
captured as he fled searchers, running through snow in northern
Michigan. Tara Grant (34) was last seen on Feb 9. Stephen Grant
reported her missing five days later.
(AP, 3/4/07)
2007 Apr 23, A US Agriculture
Department official said a virus in the Great Lakes, that has killed
tens of thousands of fish in recent years, is spreading and poses a
threat to inland fish farming.
(AP, 4/24/07)
2007 Apr 24, Warren E. Avis
(b.1915), founder of the Avis Rent-A-Car System (1946), died in Ann
Arbor, Mich.
(WSJ, 4/28/07, p.A6)
2007 May 8, In Michigan Thomas
Katona (56), the former Alcona County treasurer (1993-2006), pleaded
guilty to embezzlement charges. He was accused of dumping public funds
into fraudulent Nigerian investments. He lost more than $1.2 million in
county funds altogether, plus $72,500 of his own money, despite a
warning from his bank that he might be getting swindled.
(AP, 5/9/07)
2007 Jun 1, In Michigan Jack
Kevorkian, the retired pathologist dubbed "Dr. Death" for claims that
he participated in at least 130 assisted suicides, left prison after
eight years still believing people have the right to die.
(AP, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 22, Guy Vander Jagt (75),
a 13-term Republican congressman from Michigan, died in Washington.
(AP, 6/22/08)
2007 Jul 9, The NAACP meeting in
Detroit held a public burial for the N-word (nigger) racial slur. In
1944 the NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit for Jim Crow.
(SFC, 7/10/07, p.A3)
2007 Aug 6, Montana was under a
state of emergency as firefighters battled several huge blazes.
Residents near a state park on Michigan's Upper Peninsula were ordered
to evacuate as another wildfire spread there.
(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 30, In Michigan the
Legislature approved moving the state’s presidential nomination to Jan
15, just days after national Democrats vowed to punish states that vote
too early. A suspected serial killer was arrested in the deaths of 5
women over the last month.
(SFC, 8/31/07, p.A6,16)
2007 Sep 1, The Mountaineers of
Boone, North Carolina, pulled off one of the greatest upsets in college
football history as Appalachian State beat No. 5 Michigan 34-32.
(AP, 9/2/07)
2007 Sep 8, In the Netherlands
Carlos Hartmann (41), of Tecumseh, Mich., killed Thijs Geers (22), a
Dutch student, on a train platform in the southern city of Roosendaal.
Hartmann hoped to punish the Netherlands for its government's support
of the war in Iraq and confessed to axing the student to death after
failing to find a soldier to kill.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2007 Sep 24, More than 73,000
General Motors Corp workers walked off the job after marathon contract
talks between the United Auto Workers union and GM stalled and the
union called the first national strike since 1970 against the top U.S.
automaker.
(Reuters, 9/25/07)
2007 Sep 26, The United Auto
Workers union and General Motors Corp reached a tentative contract,
ending a national strike by 73,000 workers with a groundbreaking deal
that includes a health-care trust fund. The Voluntary Employee
Beneficiary Association (VEBA) will be administered by the union and
take on some $51 billion in health-care liabilities.
(AP, 9/26/07)(Econ, 9/29/07, p.67)
2007 Oct 2, The new $800 million
MGM Grand Casino opened in downtown Detroit across the street from the
old MGM Grand, which had opened in 1999.
(WSJ, 9/26/07, p.B1)
2007 Oct 10, Thousands of Chrysler
LLC autoworkers walked off the job after the automaker and the United
Auto Workers union failed to reach a tentative contract agreement
before a union-imposed deadline. Hours later negotiators reached a
tentative agreement.
(AP, 10/10/07)(WSJ, 10/11/07, p.A3)
2007 Nov 3, United Auto Workers
agreed to a tentative contract with Ford Motor Co.
(AP, 11/3/08)
2007 Nov 7, General Motors posted
a record loss of $39 billion, which included a $38.6 billion noncash
charge related to accumulated deferred tax credits.
(SFC, 11/8/07, p.C3)
2007 Nov 18, Detroit pushed past
St. Louis to become the nation's most dangerous city, according to a
private research group's controversial analysis of annual FBI crime
statistics. Flint, Mich., ranked 3rd and Oakland, Ca., ranked 4th.
(AP, 11/19/07)(SFC, 11/19/07, p.A3)
2007 Nov 21, Michigan’s Gov.
Jennifer Granholm issued an order that bars discrimination against
state workers based on their "gender identity or expression," which
protects the rights of those who behave, dress or identify as members
of the opposite sex.
(AP, 11/22/07)
2007 Nov 26, A new study by the
University of Michigan bolstered claims that Native Americans are
descended from one migrant group that crossed a lost land link from
modern Siberia to Alaska. The study examined genes of indigenous people
from North to South America and from two Siberian groups.
(AFP, 11/27/07)
2007 Nov 26, In Michigan a find of
dioxin at the bottom of the Saginaw River could be the highest level of
such contamination ever discovered in the nation's rivers and lakes,
according to a federal scientist involved in cleanup efforts downstream
from a Dow Chemical Co. plant.
(AP, 11/26/07)
2007 Nov 29, Roger B. Smith (82),
former chairman and CEO of General Motors, died in Detroit. He was the
target of Michael Moore’s 1989 film “Roger & Me.” During his term
GM’s market share dropped from 45% to 36%. It currently stood at 24%.
(SFC, 12/1/07, p.B5)
2007 Dec 15, A winter storm
dropped snow from the Plains to the Midwest with as much as a foot of
snow in Kansas. Forecasts called for as much as 15 inches for sections
of southern Michigan.
(SSFC, 12/16/07, p.A4)
2007 Dec 16, Street and highway
crews were at work trying to clear roads across the Great Lakes states
into New England as a storm blamed for three deaths spread a hazardous
mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain. The storm was blamed for at least
10 deaths including 4 in Indiana, 2 in Michigan and Wisconsin, one in
Pennsylvania and one in Nova Scotia.
(AP, 12/16/07)(SFC, 12/18/07, p.A19)
2007 Dec 23, High wind and ice
coated power lines blacked out tens of thousands of people in Michigan,
Illinois and Wisconsin. At least 3 people in Minnesota and one person
each in Texas and Kansas were killed in traffic accidents. The storm
was blamed for at least 11 deaths.
(AP, 12/23/07)(WSJ, 12/24/07, p.A1)
2008 Jan 1, The Michigan
Wolverines upset No. 9 Florida 41-35 in the Capital One Bowl to win
their first bowl game since 2003. This one was special. Michigan's
senior class won its first bowl game in four tries and Lloyd Carr ended
his coaching career on a high note.
(AP, 1/1/08)
2008 Jan 23, In Detroit Mayor
Kilpatrick responded to revelations by the Detroit Free Press regarding
an affair with a top aide in 2002-2003. He said that period represented
a difficult time in his life. Some 14,000 text messages revealed that
he had lied under oath during testimony in 2007 over the use of his
security unit to cover up his extramarital affair with Christine
Beatty, his Chief of Staff.
(SFC, 1/25/08, p.A9)
2008 Jan 26, Miss Michigan Kirsten
Haglund, a 19-year-old aspiring Broadway star, was crowned Miss America
2008 in a live show billed as the unveiling of the 87-year-old
pageant's new, hipper look.
(AP, 1/27/08)
2008 Jan 30, Auto giant Ford
announced a multi-million dollar investment in South Africa, brushing
aside fears about an electricity crisis which has alarmed other
international investors.
(AP, 1/30/08)
2008 Feb 9, Michigan’s
unemployment rate topped the nation at 7.6%.
(Econ, 2/9/08, p.31)
2008 Feb 12, General Motors Corp.
reported a $38.7 billion loss for 2007, the largest annual loss ever
for an automotive company, and said it is making a new round of buyout
offers to US hourly workers in hopes of replacing some of them with
lower-paid help.
(AP, 2/12/08)
2008 Mar 23, In Detroit the Hellas
Café in Greektown, which first opened in 1901, closed.
(www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080322/BIZ/803220368/)
2008 Mar 24, In Detroit, Mich.,
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (37) was charged with 8 felonies in an
obstruction of justice case that involved a romantic affair with a
chief of staff.
(SFC, 3/25/08, p.A3)
2008 Mar 26, India's Tata Motors
said it had bought British luxury icons Jaguar and Land Rover from
ailing US carmaker Ford Motor Co for 1.15 billion pounds (2.3 billion
dollars).
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Apr 7, Samuel (b.1913)
Frankel, Detroit area developer and philanthropist, died. In the 1960s
Frankel collaborated with Harry Cunningham to create the discount-store
concept, building the first Kmart store. In 1969, he developed Somerset
Mall. In 2005 he and his wife Jean provided a $20 million endowment to
establish the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the
University of Michigan.
(www.lsa.umich.edu/judaic/html/history_goals_3_2.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/5srvs6)
2008 Jun 8, Wicked weekend storms
pounded the US from the Midwest to the East Coast, forcing hundreds of
people to flee flooded communities, spawning tornadoes that tore up
houses and killing at least eight people in Indiana (1), Michigan (6),
Connecticut (1). Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency
in 29 counties and President Bush declared a major disaster in 29
Indiana counties, freeing up aid. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver declared an
emergency in nearly a third of the state's 99 counties.
(AP, 6/8/08)
2008 Jul 9, Michigan Gov. Jennifer
Granholm signed legislation approving a compact by 8 states surrounding
the Great Lakes. Michigan was last of the 8 states to approve the
agreement, which outlaws diversions of Great lakes water from natural
drainage basins with rare exceptions.
(WSJ, 7/10/08, p.A2)
2008 Jul 31, In Wisconsin a gunman
opened fire on a group of young adults from Michigan killing 3, aged
17-19, along the Menominee riverbank in the town of Niagara. The next
day police arrested Scott J. Johnson (38). He had a raped a woman near
the same site the evening before the murders. In 2009 Johnson was
sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(AP, 8/2/08)(SFC, 5/22/09, p.A6)
2008 Aug 5, In Montenegro 4
Michigan residents were among 12 ethnic Albanians convicted of plotting
a rebellion to carve out a homeland within the tiny Balkan republic.
(AP, 8/5/08)
2008 Aug 7, A federal judge
ordered Detroit’s Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to jail for violating the
terms of his bond in his perjury case, a decision the judge said he
would have made for any "John Six-Pack" defendant before him.
(AP, 8/7/08)
2008 Aug 8, Joseph Bennett (43) of
Canada tried to drive an 58 bags contained 275,000 Ecstasy pills,
estimated at $6.5 million in street value, into Port Huron, Michigan.
In 2009 a federal judge in Detroit sentenced him to 7½ years in
prison.
(SFC, 6/25/09, p.A5)(http://tinyurl.com/koa934)
2008 Aug 24, The US Democratic
national convention’s credentials committee ruled to give full voting
rights to delegates from Michigan and Florida, despite their defying
party rules and holding their primaries early.
(SFC, 8/25/08, p.A6)
2008 Sep 4, Detroit Mayor Kwame
Kilpatrick (38) pleaded guilty to a pair of felony obstruction charges
in a sex-and-misconduct scandal and will step down after months of
defiantly holding onto his job leading the nation's 11th-largest city.
Kilpatrick’s sentence included 4 months behind bars, a $1 million fine
and forfeiture of his license to practice law.
(AP, 9/4/08)(SFC, 9/5/08, p.A4)
2008 Sep 19, Ken Cockrel Jr. was
sworn in as the city's new mayor, vaulted into office by a sex scandal
that destroyed the reign of Kwame Kilpatrick and threw Detroit's
government into chaos for months.
(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Oct 17, Levi Stubbs (72),
Four Tops frontman, died at his home in Detroit. His dynamic and
emotive voice drove such Motown classics as "Reach Out (I'll Be There)"
and "Baby I Need Your Loving."
(AP, 10/17/08)
2008 Oct 28, Kwame Kilpatrick
(38), former Detroit mayor, was sent to jail for 4 months for his part
in a sex-and-text scandal.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.A4)
2008 Nov 4, Michigan voted for
Barack Obama and legalized medicinal marijuana.
(Econ, 11/8/08, p.48)
2008 Nov 6, The leaders of GM,
Ford and Chrysler came to Capital Hill along with the president of the
UAW to discuss billions of dollars in financial help for the struggling
car industry.
(SFC, 11/7/08, p.C3)
2008 Nov 7, General Motors Corp.
reported $2.5 billion losses in the third quarter, burning through $6.9
billion in cash and warned that it could run out of cash in 2009. GM
also said it has suspended talks to acquire Chrysler. Meanwhile, Ford
Motor Co. said it lost $129 million in the third quarter as the
struggling automaker burned through $7.7 billion in cash and set plans
for more job cuts.
(http://cbs5.com/business/ford.posts.loss.2.858582.html)
2008 Nov 7, General Motors Corp.
dedicated its first Russian assembly plant, a $300 million,
70,000-car-a-year factory just outside of St. Petersburg.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 18, The chief executives
of Detroit’s Big Three automakers appeared before the US Senate Banking
Committee along with the head of the UAW union to plea for financial
aid under the current economic crises.
(WSJ, 11/19/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 20, US Congressional
efforts to rescue Detroit’s auto makers collapsed with lawmakers saying
the industry lacks credibility to return to profitability. Democrats
asked for a convincing turnaround plan by Dec 2.
(WSJ, 11/21/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 2, Detroit’s Big Three
auto makers presented turnaround plans to Congress and sought $34
billion in aid.
(WSJ, 12/3/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 10, Congressional
officials said majority Democrats and the White House have finalized a
deal to spend $15 billion on emergency loans for struggling US
automakers.
(AP, 12/10/08)
2008 Dec 11, The $14 billion
package to aid General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC
collapsed amid disputes over union wage cuts. A band of mostly
Republican Southern senators, including states that subsidized foreign
auto makers, formed the heart of the opposition.
(AP, 12/12/08)(WSJ, 12/12/08, p.A3)
2008 Dec 12, The White House and
the Treasury said they were considering diverting money from the Wall
Street rescue fund to stave off bankruptcy filings among the carmakers.
General Motors Corp. said it will temporarily close 20 factories across
North America and make sweeping cuts to its vehicle production as it
tries to adjust to dramatically weaker automobile demand.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 16, The publisher of the
Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News confirmed plans to cut home
delivery to three days a week and cut close to 900 jobs.
(WSJ, 12/17/08, p.B4)
2008 Dec 28, In Michigan strong
winds knocked down tree limbs and power lines eliminating power to
nearly 230,000 homes and businesses, mostly in Wayne and Oakland
counties.
(AP, 12/29/08)
2008 Dec 29, The US federal
government approved $6 billion in aid to GMAC LLC, the financing
company vital to the future of General Motors.
(WSJ, 12/30/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 31, SF ended the year
with 98 homicides. In Milwaukee, Wisc., the total number of homicides
dropped 32%, from 105 in 2007 to 71 in 2008, the lowest number since
1985. Detroit had 344 slayings, a 13% drop from the 396 in 2007;
Philadelphia's 332 killings were a 15% drop from the 392 in 2007; and
the 234 homicides in Baltimore were 17% less than the 392 the year
before. Cleveland recorded 102 homicides in 2008, down from a 13-year
high of 134 in 2007. Homicides in New York rose 5.2%, to 522 from 496
the year before. Slayings in Los Angeles were down to 376 in 2008
compared to 400 the prior year. Preliminary data in Chicago showed 508
homicides were reported in 2008, the first time the city had more than
500 murders since 2003 and about 15% more than the 442 homicides
reported in 2007. Washington, D.C., ended 2008 with 186 homicides, up
from 181 in 2007.
(SFC, 1/2/09, p.1)(AP, 1/3/09)
2009 Jan 5, The Vatican said that
Bishop Allen H. Vigneron will replace Cardinal Adam Joseph Maida at the
head of the Detroit archdiocese. The pope also named the auxiliary
bishop of Halifax, Claude Champagne, as the new bishop of Edmundston in
Canada. Benedict appointed the Rev. Cirilo Flores as new auxiliary
bishop of Orange, California.
(AP, 1/5/09)
2009 Jan 10, A winter storm left
large swaths of the Midwest and Northeast covered in snow and freezing
rain. 10 inches of snow forced some 100 cancellations at Chicago’s
O’Hare Int’l. Airport. At least 8 inches fell on lower Michigan and
Ohio.
(SSFC, 1/11/09, p.A14)
2009 Jan 16, Kellogg Co. of Battle
Creek, Mich., recalled 16 products containing peanut butter due to
possible salmonella contamination as federal officials confirmed
contamination at a Georgia facility that ships peanut products to 85
food companies. On Jan 21 federal health authorities confirmed that
peanut butter and paste made by a Virginia company were the sole
sources of the outbreak. The Blakely, Ga., facility was owned by Peanut
Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va.
(SFC, 1/17/09, p.A2)(WSJ, 1/22/09, p.A4)
2009 Jan 20, Chrysler and Italy’s
Fiat confirmed they had reached an agreement on an alliance that would
give Fiat a 35% stake in Chrysler, but only if Chrysler gets $3 billion
more in financial help from Washington.
(WSJ, 1/21/09, p.B1)
2009 Jan 21, GM reported an 11%
drop in 2008 vehicle sales, relinquishing its crown as the world’s
biggest auto maker to Toyota after 77 years.
(WSJ, 1/22/09, p.B3)
2009 Feb 3, Michigan Gov. Jennifer
Granholm announced a new $54 million movie production facility to be
built at a former GM facility in Pontiac. The state offered $15 million
in film related tax credits and as much as $101 million in state
credits over 12 years.
(WSJ, 2/3/09, p.B2)
2009 Feb 10, General Motors Corp.
said it will cut 10,000 salaried jobs, citing the need to restructure
itself with a government deadline looming and amid some of the worst
sales in the auto industry's history.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 10, Teens in Kalamazoo,
Michigan, beat a 50-year-old bicyclist leaving the man critically
injured. On March 26 five teens were charged in the beating.
(SFC, 3/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Feb 17, Chrysler and GM told
the US government they may need up to $21.6 billion in combined bailout
loans. GM’s survival plan called for cutting a total of 47,000 jobs
globally and closing 5 more US factories.
(SFC, 2/18/09, p.C1)(WSJ, 2/18/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 23, Ford Motor Co. said
it has reached a tentative deal with the United Auto Workers union on
changes to retiree health care, becoming the first Detroit automaker to
secure union concessions on the key issue.
(Reuters, 2/23/09)
2009 Feb 26, General Motors
reported a $9.6 billion 4th quarter loss bringing its loss for the year
2008 to $30.9 billion. This was its 2nd worst financial performance in
its 100 year history.
(WSJ, 2/27/09, p.B1)
2009 Mar 16, In Michigan 4
teenagers were killed when their car was struck by a van driven by
Frances Patricia Dingle in Roseville. Dingle was measured with a blood
alcohol level of .08, twice the legal limit, and was charged with 2nd
degree murder.
(SFC, 3/18/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 23, Advance Publications
Inc., owner of the Ann Arbor News and 7 other Michigan newspaper,
announced that the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News will publish its last
print edition in July and then become a community oriented Web site.
(WSJ, 3/24/09, p.B5)
2009 Mar 30, President Barack
Obama said that neither General Motors nor Chrysler has proposed
sweeping enough changes to justify further large federal bailouts, and
demanded "painful concessions" from creditors, unions and others as
their price for survival. Driving home the point, the White House
ousted the GM Chairman Rick Wagoner as it rejected GM and Chrysler's
restructuring plans. Fritz Henderson, GM's president and chief
operating officer, became the new CEO. Board member Kent Kresa, the
former chairman and CEO of defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp.,
was named interim chairman of the GM board.
(AP, 3/30/09)
2009 Mar 31, Fritz Henderson, GM's
new chief executive said that more of the automaker's plants could
close and bankruptcy is "more probable" as it works to meet new,
tougher requirements for government aid. In his first news conference
as CEO, Henderson said he expects the company would "need to take
further measures" beyond the 5 plants the company said it would shutter
when it submitted a restructuring plan to the government last month.
(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Apr 10, In Michigan a student
fatally shot a female classmate before turning the gun on himself in an
apparent murder-suicide that prompted a lockdown at Dearborn’s Henry
Ford Community College, west of Detroit. The bodies of Asia McGowan
(20) of Ecorse, and Anthony Powell (28) of Detroit, were discovered
inside a classroom.
(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Apr 27, General Motors Corp.
said it will cut 21,000 US factory jobs by next year, phase out its
storied Pontiac brand and ask the government to take more than half its
stock in exchange for half of GM's government debt as part of a major
restructuring that would leave current shareholders holding just 1
percent of the company.
(AP, 4/27/09)
2009 Apr 30, Chrysler filed for
bankruptcy protection after overnight talks broke down with a small
group of the company's creditors. Canada's government said it will take
an ownership stake in Chrysler in exchange for more than $2 billion in
loans, under a sweeping North American rescue plan. Ottawa and
Washington demanded the Detroit company partner with Fiat as a
condition for funding.
(AP, 4/30/09)(Reuters, 5/1/09)
2009 May 4, Wolves in parts of the
northern Rockies and the Great Lakes region come off the endangered
species list, opening them to public hunts in some states for the first
time in decades. States such as Idaho and Montana planned to resume
hunting the animals this fall, but no hunting has been proposed in the
Great Lakes region. About 300 wolves in Wyoming will remain on the list
because the US Fish and Wildlife Service rejected the state's plan for
a "predator zone" where wolves could be shot on sight. An estimated
4,000 wolves lived in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
(AP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 5, In Detroit, Michigan,
basketball legend Dave Bing was elected as mayor through the end of the
year, sweeping the incumbent from office in the city with myriad
problems. Bing had 52.3% of the vote, to 47.7% for Cockrel. Both are
Democrats.
(http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=4143798)
2009 May 7, General Motors Corp.
lost $6 billion in the first quarter and its revenue was cut nearly in
half as car buyers feared the wounded auto giant would enter bankruptcy
and no longer honor its warranties.
(AP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 7, In Italy Jonathan
Robert Hindenach (24) of Charlotte, Michigan, killing an Italian man in
Florence. He had consumed drugs and alcohol before slaying
Riccardo Nistri (62).
(AP, 5/8/09)
2009 May 9, Chuck Daly (b.1930),
NBA basketball coach, died in Florida. He coached the Dream Team to the
Olympic gold medal in 1992 after winning back-to-back NBA championships
with the Detroit Pistons.
(AP, 5/9/09)
2009 May 14, Federal authorities
in Detroit charged 74 members and associates of the Highwaymen
Motorcycle Club with attempted murder, cocaine and steroid distribution
and other crimes.
(SFC, 5/15/09, p.A7)
2009 May 14, Chrysler LLC said in
a bankruptcy court filing that it wants to eliminate roughly a quarter
of its 3,200 US dealerships by early next month, because the network is
antiquated and has too many stores competing with each other.
(AP, 5/14/09)
2009 May 15, General Motors said
it plans to eliminate some 1,000 of 6,000 showrooms over the next year
in an effort to boost profits by lessening competition among dealers.
(SFC, 5/16/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 1, General Motors filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of the Obama
administration's plan to shrink the automaker to a sustainable size and
give a majority ownership stake to the federal government. GM assets
were valued at $82.2 billion with liabilities at $172 billion. The US
government planned to receive 60.8% of GM stock, Canada’s government
11.7%, the UAW’s trust 17.5% and bondholders 10%. GM said it will
permanently close nine more plants and idle three others to trim
production and labor costs under bankruptcy protection. GM was expected
to lose 14 factories, 29,000 workers and 2,400 dealers.
(AP, 6/1/09)(Econ, 6/6/09, p.9,60, 62)
2009 Jun 2, GM struck a tentative
deal to sell its Hummer brand to China’s Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy
Industrial Machinery Co.
(SFC, 6/3/09, p.C2)
2009 Jun 5, General Motors Corp.
announced a tentative deal to sell its Saturn brand to former race car
driver and dealership group owner Roger Penske.
(AP, 6/5/09)
2009 Jun 10, Italy's Fiat became
the new owner of the bulk of Chrysler's assets, closing a deal that
saves the troubled US automaker from liquidation and places a new
company in the hands of Fiat's CEO.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 16, GM and Sweden's
Koenigsegg said they have struck a deal for Koenigsegg, a niche
manufacturer of some of the world's fastest and most expensive sports
cars, to buy loss-making Saab Automobile from General Motors.
(Reuters, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 19, In Michigan officials
said 36 members of 4 violent Detroit street gangs were arrested with
immigration, probation, weapons and other violations as part of a
nationwide crackdown.
(SFC, 6/20/09, p.A4)
2009 Jun 26, In Michigan Monica
Conyers (44), Detroit City Councilwoman and wife of Rep. John Conyers
(80), pleaded guilty to taking cash in exchange for her vote on a 2007
city sludge treatment contract with Synagro Corp. The contract was
rescinded last January amid accusations of wrongdoing. On June 29
Monica Conyers resigned from office.
(SFC, 6/27/09, p.A5)(SFC, 6/30/09, p.A4)
2009 Jun 30, In Michigan gunmen in
a green minivan opened fire on a group of teenagers waiting at a bus
stop near a Detroit school, wounding seven including two who were in
critical condition.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 10, General Motors
emerged from bankruptcy protection. CEO Fritz Henderson said the new GM
will be far faster and more responsive to customers than the old one,
and it will make money and repay government loans faster than required.
(AP, 7/10/09)
2009 Jul 23, In Michigan the last
edition of The Ann Arbor News rolled off the presses After 174 years,
with a three-word headline: "Farewell, Ann Arbor." It is being replaced
by AnnArbor.com, an online news site that will produce a print edition
twice a week.
(AP, 7/23/09)
2009 Jul 28, Tony Rosenthal
(b.1914), American artist and abstract sculptor, died in Southampton,
NY. He created the Regent’s Cube located in the Regent’s Plaza at the
Univ. of Michigan, his alma mater. Commissioned by the Class of 1965
and officially titled “Endover,” the revolving cube is one of three
designed Rosenthal. It was installed on Regents’ Plaza (the open space
bounded by the LS&A Building, Michigan Union and Fleming Building)
in 1968. The others are at home in New York City and Miami.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Rosenthal)(www.ur.umich.edu/0001/Nov06_00/6.htm)
2009 Aug 11, General Motors Corp.
said its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles
per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the
mileage of the current champion, the Toyota Prius.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 1, In Detroit a woman
(24) was shot killed during a street robbery by a boy (12).
(SFC, 8/20/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 10, GM announced that it
agreed to the sale of 55% of Ruesselsheim-based Adam Opel and Vauxhall
unit to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc. and Russian
lender Sberbank. Detroit-based GM will keep a 35% stake and continue to
work with Opel on developing vehicles, sharing technology and
engineering resources.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 11, In Owosso,
Michigan, Harlan James Drake (33) killed an abortion protester outside
a school along with the owner of a nearby gravel pit.
(SFC, 9/12/09, p.A4)
2009 Sep 22, In Michigan off-duty
Canton police officer Edward Williams II (36), shot and killed his wife
(33), a Detroit police officer, in a library parking lot before
shooting himself. He soon after at a hospital.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)(http://tinyurl.com/mlswtr)
2009 Sep 30, The Penske Automotive
Group Inc. announced it is walking away from a deal to acquire the
Saturn brand from GM, after being unable to find a manufacturer to make
Saturn cars when GM stops producing models sometime after the end of
2011. The brand was set up in 1990 to fight growing Japanese imports.
(AP, 10/1/09)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Michigan
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