1885 - Tucson's representatives to the 13th territorial Legislature miss their chance to argue that their city should either be Arizona's capital or home to the insane asylum because they get stuck in the mud and are so late to the session that all that's left for Tucson is the University of Arizona.
1891 - The UA opens its doors. There are only two colleges (Agriculture and Mines), six teachers and 32 students, who could get demerits for running on the verandas of Old Main. The first enrolled student is 15-year-old Clara Fish.
1893 - The territorial Legislature establishes a territorial museum. Today the Arizona State Museum is the largest anthropology museum in the Southwest and houses the world's largest collection of Southwestern pottery.
1899 - The first student newspaper, Sage Green and Silver, is published. Students petition for a better football field.
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1900 - Regents approve a $50 appropriation from university contingency funds "for the encouragement of athletics." Also that year, students change the school colors from sage and silver to red and blue.
1907 -Â President Kendrick Charles Babcock officially condones pillow fighting; previous fights led to arrests.
1914 - UA becomes nation's fifth university to hold a homecoming. Also that year, the Wildcats get their name from a football game against Occidental College, where the Los Angeles Times wrote that the UA "showed the fight of wildcats."
1915 - UA students build and paint the first "A" on "A" Mountain.
1920 - U.S. General John J. Pershing dedicates the Berger Memorial Fountain just west of Old Main. It's inscribed to the 12 "sons of the university" who gave their lives in World War I.
1924 - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge is so impressed with the UA polo team, which had just lost the national championship to Princeton, that he comes to campus to congratulate the players.
1926 - The university motto, "Bear Down," is the last piece of advice football team captain Button Salmon tells coach "Pop" McKale in 1926 as Salmon lies dying from injuries in an automobile accident.
1929 - First homecoming game is played in Arizona Stadium. First homecoming parade is also held that year.
1933 - The small pond at Park Avenue and North Campus Drive is built for the UA president's house. The house is demolished four years later to make space to build Gila Hall.
1942 - The Navy sets up a Naval Training School on campus, preparing 10,000 troops to serve on land, sea and air in World War II.
1947 - Tucson sophomore Ruth Tackett is elected the first homecoming queen.
1950 - The graduating class numbers 1,000.
1955 - First of series of lectures by distinguished persons takes place, sponsored by a grant from Kennecott Copper. In time, John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Martin Luther King and others appear at UA.
1960 - Poetry Center is dedicated by Robert Frost. It was the only free-standing building in the country dedicated to the study and celebration of poetry.
1969 - A candlelight vigil on campus protests the Vietnam War.
1975 - Ansel Adams' hat, camera, notes, letters, negatives and fine prints are all part of the archive the famed photo-grapher gives the UA when he and school President John Schaefer co-found the Center for Creative Photography.
1978 - UA leaves the Western Athletic Conference and joins the Pac-10, which includes universities such as Stanford and Berkeley, schools the UA considers to be its academic peers.
1984 - The movie "Revenge of the Nerds" is filmed at Cochise Hall and other locations on campus.
1985 - KUAT-FM radio station begins broadcasting 24 hours every day.
1988 - UA enrollment tops 30,000 for first time.
1995 - For the first time, women make up more than half the freshman class.
1998 - The CatCard debuts. It does everything from opening doors to purchasing textbooks and serving as an official ID.
2008 - The UA is the first public university to lead a NASA mission to Mars, attracting worldwide media coverage of this pioneering exploration.
2009 - The American Heart Association endorses compression-only CPR, a method developed by physicians in the UA Sarver Heart Center. Also that year, the first Tucson Festival of Books is held on campus, attracting more than 50,000 visitors.
2010 - The Mirror Lab is developing the world's largest spin-cast mirrors for the next generation of large telescopes, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile.
Source: University of Arizona
