Odd Wisconsin Archives: Curiosities
Back in 1950, the irate owner of a Wisconsin summer resort "accosted the executive secretary of the Governor's Commission on Human Rights, shook his finger in her face, and demanded to know the names of the legislators who were responsible for the state's civil rights act." He was angry that he couldn't decide for himself who to serve or not... :: Posted on March 20, 2013
March is Women's History Month, so for the next few weeks Odd Wisconsin will occasionally focus on the lives of Wisconsin women. American Indian women, of course, have been making history here for thousands of years. Passing references to them occur throughout the 17th-century Jesuit Relations, but one of the earliest detailed accounts occurs in this 1702 letter by outraged... :: Posted on February 28, 2013
Every year for several decades, students have approached the Society's staff to learn about the Underground Railroad in Wisconsin. Slavery itself can be an awkward topic, especially for younger students. White kids often wonder how their ancestors could have owned other people as slaves and feel guilty or embarrassed, and black kids wonder how their ancestors could have put up... :: Posted on February 21, 2013
Here's a pop quiz for anyone who thinks they know Wisconsin history. The record of African-American life in our state begins in the year: a. 1967, with Milwaukee's fair housing marches; b. 1866, when Ezekiel Gillespie won the right to vote; c. 1792, when Black fur traders settled at Marinette; d. 1724, when an African-American slave was killed by the... :: Posted on February 1, 2013
In Germany they speak German; in China, Chinese. So how come, here in the center of No. America, we speak English? When the French and Indian War (1755-1763) broke out, the French controlled the interior of North America and the English the Atlantic seaboard. Here are a French map from 1757 and an English one from 1754 showing what they... :: Posted on February 1, 2013
One of the most profound differences between our own lives and those of earlier people is that we spend many hours awake after the sun sets. For nearly all of the 12,000 years that humans have lived in Wisconsin, sunset marked the end of each day. To work after dark required artificial light. Available fuels, usually wood or animal fats,... :: Posted on January 24, 2013
Stressed out by holiday parties, cooking, shopping, travel plans, house cleaning, and the whole annual onslaught of holiday obligations? Relax for a minute, and consider how people used to cope with the holidays. Our earliest French settlers devoted Christmas to celebrations at home and piety at church, especially midnight mass. Achille Bertrand, who arrived in Superior in 1857, recalled that... :: Posted on December 16, 2012
"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 caps (zipfelkappen) terminating in a long point with a tassel.... :: Posted on December 12, 2012
During a bitter stretch in the winter of 1925, the editor of the Rice Lake Chronotype decided to ask local old-timers about the famous bone-withering cold of January 1877, when local thermometers had supposedly stood at 68 degrees below zero. He tracked down retired lumberjacks Paul Fournier, Henry Dietz and Hans Borgen, who gave him the following "re-lie-able" information. They... :: Posted on December 6, 2012
In the township of Alto, in Fond du Lac County, a starving family truly had something to be grateful for in November 1850. In this memoir, James Pond recalls the destitution he and his family faced one Thanksgiving in his childhood, and how relief appeared from a most unexpected quarter. Pond went on to fight as a teenager with the... :: Posted on November 20, 2012
In the summer of 1827, a handful of Ho-Chunk warriors were led by scheming rivals into attacking settlers near Prairie du Chien. On June 28th, a war chief named Red Bird and three companions carried out revenge killings of two French-Canadian farmers. Three days later, they fired on a passing keelboat, killing two of the crew and wounding several others.... :: Posted on November 15, 2012
When George McGovern died this week, obituaries focused on his failed bid for the White House in 1972. He carried only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., after a dirty tricks campaign by incumbent President Richard Nixon that included forged letters, false press releases, IRS harassment, campaign spies, and of course the famous Watergate break-in. But it might have been Wisconsin Sen.... :: Posted on October 25, 2012
Most Wisconsin communities grew up accidentally. An entrepreneur bought the land near rapids on a river or the junction of two well-travelled roads and sold lots to newcomers. If the town boomed, new blocks were laid out helter-skelter as the landscape, opportunity, or a developer's whim suggested. On 19th-centurybirds'-eye views, Wisconsin cities and towns spread out like six-legged insects or... :: Posted on October 18, 2012
Last week La Crosse news anchor Jennifer Livingston sparked a national conversation after a viewer claimed she was a bad role model for girls because she's overweight. Her on-air reply was picked up by media outlets around the country and went viral on YouTube. This prompted us to wonder about why the appearance of public figures has become so important,... :: Posted on October 4, 2012
On April 5th, 1852, four Ojibwe warriors pushed off from Madeline Island bound for Washington, D.C. They carried in their canoe a white interpreter, Benjamin Armstrong, and their two principal chiefs, Ke-Che-Waish-Ke (better known as Chief Buffalo) and O-Sho-Ga. Although Chief Buffalo was in his nineties, he undertook the 1,500-mile journey in order to lay his nation's case before the... :: Posted on September 27, 2012
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