http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/images/common/logo.gif http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ The Wisconsin Historical Society presents Odd Wisconsin, to amuse, surprise, perplex, disgust, astonish, and otherwise engage you with the past. Michael Edmonds (mailto:miedmonds@whs.wisc.edu) Wisconsin Historical Society <webmaster@wisconsinhistory.org> en-us 2013-06-11T16:22:26-06:00 http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002859.asp Last week we featured a father-son senatorial team. This week we highlight married partners working as a political team. Our state's first female sheriff was elected in 1924 in Burnett County. This event, which on the surface seems like a huge step for women's rights, was actually just the latest twist in a clever ploy that male sheriffs had been... 2859@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Odd Lives 2013-06-11T16:22:26-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002283.asp According to the U.S. Senate's history site, the first and only father and son to serve in the Senate at the same time were Henry Dodge of Wisconsin and his son Augustus Caesar Dodge of Iowa. The elder Dodge represented Wisconsin in the Senate from 1848 to 1857. When he arrived in Washington, he joined his son, who was already... 2283@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Odd Lives 2013-06-05T07:26:11-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/004846.asp Tornado season has arrived in full force with this week's hot, humid and volatile weather. Click over to Ready Wisconsin to learn how to protect yourself (and see some amazing pictures and video). You can also follow Ready Wisconsin on Twitter for local severe weather alerts as they happen. Many local media outlets will send a text message to your... 4846@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Curiosities 2013-05-30T01:01:52-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001426.asp Many cities and towns claim to have held the first Memorial Day ceremony. But where did this holiday really begin? And how did it evolve in the public mind from a solemn commemoration of military sacrifices, to a general display of public patriotism, to the unofficial launch of summer, and finally back to its solemn roots? Here's the answer, with... 1426@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ 2013-05-22T07:43:59-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/005082.asp "Accordingly, on the 17th day of May, 1673," Fr. Jacques Marquette wrote in his diary, "we started from the mission of St. Ignace at Michilimakinac, where I then was. The joy that we felt at being selected for this expedition animated our courage, and rendered the labor of paddling from morning to night agreeable to us... we joyfully plied our... 5082@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Odd Lives 2013-05-16T12:47:54-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/005076.asp In 1828, the Ho-Chunk Chief Dandy was passing through Galena with some companions. White settlers had only recently started moving into the lead region of southwestern Wisconsin, and the Indians were interested in the strange newcomers and their customs. This was before the widespread occupation of Indian lands that would produce the Black Hawk War four years later. "While strolling... 5076@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ 2013-05-08T18:53:07-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002133.asp No, not the UW&#39;s Red Gym but a real castle. In 1861, a melancholy Englishman named Benjamin Walker brought his family across the Atlantic to settle on what were then the outskirts of Madison. No one seems to know why he left home or why he chose our capital, but in 1863 he erected a medieval castle on E. Gorham... 2133@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Madison 2013-05-01T05:42:16-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001297.asp That was how commissioner of fisheries Brayton O. Webster put it, at the height of Wisconsin's Progressive Era. But presumably he didn't consult the fish. The 1887 institution that gave its name to Madison's Fish Hatchery Road, shown here in a somewhat romanticized lithograph, was among the first fish hatcheries in the nation. Read about a visit to it in... 1297@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Animals 2013-04-25T01:09:24-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002873.asp 2873@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Curiosities 2013-04-16T01:47:36-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/005059.asp This week public television aired the first episode of a new British series dramatizing the life of Wisconsin native Harry Gordon Selfridge. The producers call him, "the flamboyant entrepreneur and showman seeking to provide London's shoppers with the ultimate merchandise and the ultimate thrill." That may be hyperbole, but in fact much of the consumer culture that surrounds us began,... 5059@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Odd Lives 2013-03-31T17:19:11-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001240.asp According to local legend, fur trader Michel Brisbois (1759-1837) had himself interred high on a bluff over Prairie du Chien so he could look down on his rivals forever. A Fierce Competition Brisbois was a fur trader who arrived in Wisconsin in 1781 and thumbed his nose at the rich and powerful for the next four decades. He undercut more... 1240@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Strange Deaths 2013-03-28T01:01:37-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002689.asp 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... 2689@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Curiosities 2013-03-20T01:23:26-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002035.asp "In my boyhood days" recalled Augustin Grignon* in the summer of 1857, "there was an aged Chippewa woman named 0-cha-own. She was a great huntress, and spent each winter with her dogs in the woods the same as any Indian hunter, and was quite as successful in killing bear, raccoon and other game. Beside a gun,which I presume she used,... 2035@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Odd Lives 2013-03-14T09:43:52-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/002057.asp Here's a story for Women's History Month about a Wisconsin woman who was once well-known but is now all-but-forgotten. She embodied New Age spirituality a century before that term was invented. Here are her own words describing how it all began. "I was crossing the kitchen with a basin of water when, suddenly, some unknown Force pressed me down upon... 2057@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Odd Lives 2013-03-07T05:47:55-06:00 Michael Edmonds http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001101.asp 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... 1101@http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/ Curiosities 2013-02-28T05:40:10-06:00 Michael Edmonds