Prior to Halloween, I'd been hoping that the Weird Wisconsin website would return after being boarded up since sometime in 2007. Mostly because I've been a sucker for quote-unquote "true" ghost stories since grade school. (This despite certain..."incidents," such as the cat extruding herself from her hiding-place right next to where I was engrossed in a book of such stories. D'oh!). In addition to hauntings and other "unexplained" phenomena, Weird Wisconsin also featured the bizarre side of the state's history, in keeping with their motto: "When you go looking for the weird, the weird comes looking for you."
For instance: In 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was on campaign stop in Milwaukee while running for President under the Bull Moose (Progressive) Party ticket when he was shot to "avenge" the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley. The would-be assassin of (McKinley's) then-Vice President Roosevelt believed that the McKinley's ghost had asked him to settle the score.
Roosevelt went down from the shot, and the surrounding crowd tackled the shooter (John Shrank). Then Roosevelt--always larger than life--jumped up, shouting, "Don't hurt the poor man!" Although the bullet had entered his chest (where it was later deemed too dangerously lodged to remove), its force had been blunted by Roosevelt's eyeglass case and the fifty page text of the speech he was about to deliver. And deliver it he did, judging that because he was not coughing blood, the bullet could not have entered the lung. Only after his 90-minute spiel was he admitted to the hospital, where he greatly annoyed his neighbors with his snores.
But shuttered website aside, there's still plenty of weird...or at least lots of stuff that challenges our modern sensibilities and what we think we know about the past lurking in just about every nook of history. In this case, I'm reading Nancy Unger's Fighting Bob LaFollette, and thought I'd share some of the nuggets I've found, merely 1/3 of the way in:
- Bob LaFollette's paternal grandparents were neighbors of Abraham Lincoln's Mom and Dad.
- In 1875, the University of Wisconsin boasted 345 students, and the number of four-year university students in the United States was 27,000.
- However, even in 1875, the UW was co-ed: LaFollette met his wife as a fellow student.
- In 1860, the year the Civil War began, Wisconsin's African Americans could own property, attend public schools, sit on juries, and marry white spouses. However, the popular referendum denied them the right to vote, which was ultimately given by fiat of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court a year after the close of the Civil War.
- Cranberries were at one time an experimental crop, intended to diversify agricultural output in the wake of war shortages and crop failures.
- Ditto for hops, which contributed to the hundreds of breweries that made up Milwaukee's leading industry (in the 1870s or so)...and a 30% spike in Wisconsin's overall alcohol consumption. (And Oktoberfest begins!)
- In LaFollette's childhood, Wisconsin's sheep population outnumber its cows. However, by the time he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Wisconsin was sufficiently "the dairy state" for for the frosh Congresscritter to attempt to protect its interests by arguing for a tax on margarine.
- Railroad titans were the Wall Street bankers of LaFollette's youth and early career, most notably for helping themselves to public land, and for fixing prices to the detriment of farmers and the cities that relied on their produce.
- (And speaking of corruption...) The safeguards against politicians abusing their powers were pretty much nonexistent. For instance: Philetus Sawyer, lumber baron and the senior Senator from Wisconsin during LaFollette's first term, ran through a law to sell himself timberlands belonging to the Menominee tribe. And it was considered routine business by all but the reformers.
Apart from the chance to collect oddball trivia ('cuz my brain is like flypaper for that stuff), I like to think that going on "weirdness safari" (particularly in history) is an excellent stretch for the brain. It counter-acts the too-easily and spuriously-used rationalization of "that's the way it's always been." I can't recommend the experience highly enough.
But for pete's sake, just make sure you know where the cat is.
