December 2004 Odd Wisconsin
It was a mid-19th century Wisconsin custom to open one’s home on New Year’s Day and entertain with refreshments and best wishes anyone who came to the door. On Jan. 1, 1851, two young Madison men vowed to visit - - and eat or drink something at -– every house in the city. Judge Elisha Keyes here recalls that day,...
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Posted in Curiosities on December 21, 2004
No ski lifts, polypropylene socks, or Gore-Tex mittens helped people have winter fun in Wisconsin in the 19th century. But when the hearty were feeling hardy, they braved temperatures of 30 below to plunge down a home-made hillside in downtown LaCrosse. See the photo and newspaper story in our collection of Wisconsin Local History & Biography Articles....
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Posted in Curiosities on December 21, 2004
As you celebrate your family's traditions this week, consider how the people who lived here before you celebrated theirs. This memoir of pioneer Green Bay recalls how bear, sturgeon, and venision were on the dining room table for Christmas dinner in 1836, with the faces of Indians dressed in their finery pressed to the window. While staid Yankees from New...
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Posted in Curiosities on December 20, 2004
Feeling under the weather? You might want to try this mid-19th century treatment for "smallpox, the plague, or any eruptive fever." On second thought, you probably can't find the major ingredient at this time of year. For details about the other bizarre medical event mentioned here, see this article from the Milwaukee Journal. Both are from our online collection of...
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Posted in Bizarre Events on December 17, 2004
The desire to get rich quick is an inextinguishable little flame burning in the core of too many human hearts. Whether it's a Top 40 hit, the dot.com bubble, Texas oil wells, the California gold rush, or the Great Lakes fur trade, there never seems to be a shortage of people willing to jump on board and try to get...
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Posted in Curiosities on December 10, 2004
If you think you're spending too much time shopping this month, maybe you can blame Ripon native Gordon Selfridge. After working his way up through Marshall Fields, in 1909 he opened his own department store on London's Oxford Street, in the very heart of the British Empire at its height. One of the first retailers to appreciate the psychology of...
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Posted in Odd Lives on December 8, 2004
If patience is a virtue, John Krusback, president of the Embarass State Bank, must have been a saint. An amateur gardener as well as an executive, he spent more than a decade growing a chair from box elder seedlings. Read about this unique seedling seating in our collection of Wisconsin Local History & Biography articles...
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Posted in Bizarre Events on December 3, 2004
Dateline: Mackinaw, Aug. 30, 1702. We sometimes like to think that our own age is unique in its level of moral corruption; but whenever lust and greed have been given free rein, human nature sinks toward its lowest common denominator. In this letter from our new Turning Points in Wisconsin History digital collection, a French priest rails against profiteering, drunkeness,...
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Posted in Curiosities on December 1, 2004
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