Odd Wisconsin Archives: Curiosities
That was the headline atop the final section of Industrial Milwaukee, an annual review of business trends and statistics about Wisconsin's largest city that ran from 1919 to 1929. The anonymous writer went on, "Industry still has its ups and downs and good years will still be followed by years not so good. In the aggregate, 1929 was a high... :: Posted on April 13, 2008
The first day of air mail service linking Wisconsin to New York was marked by violent weather that not only stopped the mail but claimed the life of a veteran pilot. On June 6-7, 1926, planes were supposed to leave New York at 8:00p.m., Chicago at 5:50a.m. and Milwaukee at 6:50a.m. to arrive in Minneapolis at 10:40a.m. Different pilots flew... :: Posted on April 6, 2008
On the evening of March 31, 1918, Prof. E.A. Schimler, a language instructor at Northland College, was kidnapped by a mob of masked men. They took him to a lonely spot outside Ashland, stripped him naked, roughed him up, covered his body with tar and feathers, and left him to fend for himself. Schimler limped back to his boarding house... :: Posted on March 31, 2008
Printing presses were not something that pioneer settlers wanted to carry west. They were made of cast iron and weighed as much a winter's worth of provisions. To be useful, they had to be accompanied by an equally heavy load of lead type. Hauling them overland was impossible and shipping them down the Great Lakes was problematic. So it... :: Posted on March 25, 2008
The vernal equinox doesn't arrive until next week, but we've already encountered another sure sign of spring --mud season. It's nice to see bare ground poking through the snow (and for the first time in three months), but the consequence of melting snow is rising tides of muck. Here's an early resident's memory of the main street in Fond du... :: Posted on March 13, 2008
This winter's record snowfall and vicious temperature swings have left our roads looking like a pock-marked lunar landscape. This points out how much we take for granted a universal system of smooth and reliable roads – a utopian ideal that would have made our forebears laugh out loud. They'd have been downright grateful to drive their horse-drawn wagons along concrete... :: Posted on March 5, 2008
Last Friday, Feb. 8th, Frank Oresnik of tiny Catawba, Wis. (up north in Price County) put the millionth mile on his 1991 Chevy Silverado pickup. Oresnik delivers seafood all around the upper Great Lakes, from Minneapolis to Chicago to Michigan, and he bought the truck used back in 1996. It had 46,000 miles on it then, and this weekend, after... :: Posted on February 10, 2008
Super Bowl. Super Tuesday. In recent years everything from fast food to fast computers has been promiscuously tagged as "super." Constant repetition has muffled the word's power and obscured its original meaning, which was subtly connected to the naming of Lake Superior. "Super" derives from the Latin concept "on top of," or "above," and goes back through many centuries to... :: Posted on February 2, 2008
Monday night President Bush announced his intention to rein in the earmarking of federal funds by lawmakers who want to channel taxpayer dollars to their own pet projects. This vision runs against the grain not only of imperfect human nature but also of American history: almost from the start, political power was viewed by office holders primarily as the... :: Posted on January 28, 2008
With the primary season well underway, it's good to remember that half of Wisconsin citizens were denied the right to vote until 1920. As soon as Wisconsin women secured the right to vote, they turned out in large numbers. 106-year-old Louise Thiers' understated comment - - "I've waited a good many years for this opportunity" - - represented the feelings... :: Posted on January 13, 2008
This week the Wisconsin Senate's committee on public health approved a statewide smoking ban. Tobacco has been consumed here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, but in a radically different way than it is today. The first French missionary to reach Wisconsin, Fr. Louis Menard, wrote home in 1661 asking for a supply of tobacco. It wasn't for himself,... :: Posted on January 6, 2008
We live in a frantic culture of transient gratifications where, to most people, the past is an irrelevant distraction. But at the turn of the year everyone recognizes the passage of time. Even people who might otherwise never think about history sing Auld Lang Syne and wish that old acquaintance be not forgot. True, their minds may be more focused... :: Posted on December 27, 2007
During the 1880s Otis Terpening was a brawling lumberjack in the Wisconsin northwoods. He logged from the St. Croix River across Douglas County into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, wintering in the forest and riding logs downriver to mill in the spring. Forty years later Charles Brown was collecting lumberjack folklore and asked for his recollections. This unleashed a deluge of densely... :: Posted on December 24, 2007
Winter has descended with a vengeance, and here at the Society headquarters in Madison, runny noses and sore throats are beginning to accompany aching shovel-muscles. Relief is in sight, though. Our Museum staff recently stumbled upon a bottle of skunk grease made in New Glarus about 1920 to help relieve chest congestion (read their account here). When doctors were scarce... :: Posted on December 11, 2007
This weekend's ice storm may be the first of many blizzards this winter, but it's only the latest in a long line of memorable storms. One that was recalled for a lifetime started on Wednesday, March 2, 1881. The previous Saturday had been warm enough for a thunderstorm; lightning even struck the Capitol. Every low-lying field was still flooded when... :: Posted on December 2, 2007
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