June 2005 Odd Wisconsin
In July 1854, John W. Quinney (1797-1855) returned home from Wisconsin. A leader of the Stockbridge Indians who helped organize the tribe's emigration to Wisconsin in the 1820s, Quinney had been invited to speak at July 4th celebrations in Reidsville, N.Y. In his speech there to 2,000 listeners, he described...
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Posted in Curiosities on June 29, 2005
This week's statewide smoking ban seems ironic, since tobacco growing is a very old farming practice in our state. It also recalls efforts in our history to prohibit alcohol. Strange as it sounds, in November of 1853 a majority of Wisconsin voters chose to outlaw liquor consumption. Statewide,the vote was...
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Posted in Bizarre Events on June 26, 2005
Frederick W. Kehl emigrated from Germany in 1874 as a twelve-year old orphan and by 1884 had moved to Madison and established Kehl's School of Dance near the Capitol. For generations, Madison children learned to dance there, at a time when dancing was not just a pleasure but a social...
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Posted in Odd Lives on June 24, 2005
This weekend is circus weekend in Wisconsin, with the 39th annual Great Circus Parade beginning at noon on Saturday in Baraboo. The parade may step off at noon but Wisconsin's circus history began more than a century ago. Check out contemporary newspaper stories and reminiscences by the people who raised...
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Posted in Curiosities on June 21, 2005
That’s right. Seven new “femineered” refrigerators model for 1954 that you “can decorate to match your kitchen, or leave gleaming white...They're beautiful either way!" and a Shindig at the Teenbeat Club ten years later were both used by International Harvester’s advertising department to market new products. You can see them,...
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Posted in Curiosities on June 19, 2005
It's just been brought to our attention that at least one editor long ago thought up the idea of "Odd Wisconsin." We'll occasionally insert one or two of these 1935 cartoons here on the Web site, with links to related materials whenever they exist....
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Posted in Animals on June 16, 2005
Victorian farm families frequently had their pictures taken in front of their homesteads to document their pride in what they'd built. Often they even moved their most prized furniture or other possessions out onto the lawn to show them off. These scenes - - hundreds of which were captured by...
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Posted in Bizarre Events on June 14, 2005
Maybe because tomorrow’s his birthday! Yes, Fighting Bob La Follette’s 150th birthday is June 14, 2005. Although today’s political climate is radically different than that of a century ago, we find that when the current generation is asked who are the most famous or important figures in Wisconsin history, he...
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Posted in Odd Lives on June 13, 2005
The first permanent buildings on the site of modern Milwaukee were constructed by fur trader Solomon Juneau. In 1816 he began his career as a clerk for Jacques Vieau, who had only a seasonal trading post on the Menominee River. In 1819 he bought out Vieau's post, in 1822 he...
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Posted in Strange Deaths on June 9, 2005
Frank Lloyd Wright had a justifiably large ego and a personality of mythological proportions. He is said to have been the inspiration for Ayn Rand's famous self-appointed prophet Howard Roarke in The Fountainhead. In this 1942 article, William T. Evjue describes a private tour of the Wright home, however, during...
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Posted in Odd Lives on June 7, 2005
The shotgun blew a hole the size of a fist in the young fur-trader's side, on June 6, 1822. Military physician William Beaumont, who spent much of his career at Ft. Crawford in Prairie du Chien, was astonished that Alexis St. Martin didn't simply die on the spot. Instead, he...
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Posted in Odd Lives on June 5, 2005
Down here in the southern part of the Badger state temperatures have begun to break 80 every day. We spend half an hour before breakfast watering all those seedlings we put in a couple weeks ago (now parched and drooping by 4:00pm). The mosquitoes are humming, the dogs lie panting,...
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Posted in Curiosities on June 2, 2005
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