December 2006 Odd Wisconsin
As 2006 winds down, the staff who distract you from more important things with these little anecdotes are taking a few days to hibernate. After nearly three years of uninterrupted historical nonsense, it's time for reruns here at Odd Wisconsin. If you're one of the hundreds of people who enjoy...
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Posted in on December 28, 2006
"It was formerly a belief of children in some German households in a midwestern city that in the weeks or month before Christmas (Weinachten), the garrets of homes were occupied by dwarfs called kobolders. These little men were described as being attired in close-fitting brown jackets and knitted brown woolen...
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Posted in Curiosities on December 19, 2006
We may never know exactly what Americans understood by the refrain "and a partridge in a pear tree" since the word partridge was used for an amazingly wide variety of birds in America. Here in Wisconsin it was haphazardly applied to any small game bird, but especially to the spruce...
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Posted in Animals on December 16, 2006
...then consider the first attempt to run a steamboat up the Fox River. This occured in the summer of 1843, when Capt. Peter Hotaling piloted the stern-wheeler Black Hawk across the Great Lakes from Buffalo in the hope of starting commercial service from Green Bay to Lake Winnebago. The Fox...
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Posted in Bizarre Events on December 11, 2006
When the Oneida and other Indian nations were dispossessed of their homelands in the Northeast, government officials attempted to settle them on the Wisconsin frontier. They began negotiating for Menominee and Ho-Chunk lands in 1821, but revisions, protests, and subsequent negotiations went on for more than a decade. During one...
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Posted in Curiosities on December 4, 2006
During the winter of 1811, fur trader Thomas Gummersall Anderson was far from civilization, isolated with five French-Canadian helpers deep in the frozen forest of the northwest. They’d eaten all the migrating waterfowl shot the previous autumn, and the friendly Sioux hunters were all in the field collecting beaver pelts....
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Posted in Animals on December 4, 2006
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