May 2004 Odd Wisconsin
Dateline: May 29, 1943. On this date Norman Rockwell's painting “Rosie the Riveter” appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, forever romanticizing women's work on the home front. But what was it really like? Women at the Moe Brothers metal shop in Fort Atkinson, Wis., Goodyear’s Aircraft Manufacturing Plant in Akron, Ohio, and International Harvester’s Osborne Works in...
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Posted in Curiosities on May 28, 2004
Dateline: Milwaukee, 1912. May 20th was the date on which Charles Lindbergh took off in 1927 on the first transatlantic solo flight by a man, and on this same date five years later Amelia Earhart made the first solo transatlantic flight by a woman. Wisconsin has its own rich aviation history, some of it bizarre and some of it heroic....
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Posted in Curiosities on May 20, 2004
Dateline: Thunder Lake Marsh, Oneida County, 1947. Advertisers have long known that sex will help sell almost anything, but this provocative combination of strapless bikini top and thigh-high waders certainly pushed the limits of good taste. Cranberries have been grown commercially in Wisconsin for well over 100 years but until Ocean Spray blended them with other fruit juices in 1963,...
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Posted in Odd Lives on May 18, 2004
Dateline: St. Louis, May 14, 1804. Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and their men set out to explore the West 200 years ago today. Although inhabitants of St. Louis gave them up for lost, they returned more than two years later with volumes of scientific notes, hundreds of specimens, and a permanent place in American history. Nearing home, they had encountered...
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Posted in Curiosities on May 10, 2004
Dateline: Irwinville, Georgia, May 10, 1865. On this date Confederate president Jefferson Davis was captured by the Union Army, and a teenager from Wisconsin was among the troops that surrounded him. Read an interview with this soldier, as well as a recollection of Davis’s first Wisconsin defeat, in our collection of Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles...
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Posted in Curiosities on May 10, 2004
Dateline: Philadelphia, May 9, 1754. This week marks the 250th anniversary of the political cartoon, a genre to which Wisconsin made substantial contributions. Here the supporters of Bob LaFollette employ it as he prepares his unsuccessful 1912 run for the presidential nomination. Wisconsin artist Art Young was the first to place editorial cartoons on the front page, and Milwaukee Journal...
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Posted in Curiosities on May 6, 2004
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