Showing 201-220 of 440 Entries
Author: Michael Pulido
The greater Kettle Moraine stretches from Kewanee County south through Walworth County. It was created when the Green Bay and Lake Michigan “lobes” of the Wisconsin Glacier (it had six lobes all together) retreated some 10,000 years ago. The retreating glacier left behind geological indentations, known as kettles, and deposited debris—silt, rocks, and boulders—that produced…
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Author: James K. Nelsen
Kindergarten is a preschool education approach designed to transition children from home to school. “Kindergarten” is a German word that means “garden for the children.” It traditionally emphasized learning through playing, singing, drawing, and social interaction. The first kindergarten was established in Blankenburg, Germany, in the late 1830s. In America kindergartens usually enroll five-year-old children,…
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Author: Matthew Costello
Performing traditional African, African-American, and Caribbean dances, Ko-Thi Dance Company aspires to bridge the cultural gap between western and non-western peoples. The company’s founder, Sierra Leone native Ferne Yangyeitie Caulker studied with the National Dance Company at the University of Ghana in the late 1960s. After finishing research in Ghana, she opened the Ko-Thi Dance…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
Kohl’s Corporation, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in suburban Menomonee Falls, operates a national chain of over 1,100 department stores. The Corporation had over $19 billion in sales in 2014. As of 2015, Kohl’s had stores in every state except Hawaii and employed a total of 137,500 people across its corporate and retail locations. Forty…
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Author: Nan Kim
Estimated at approximately 4,000 residents in 2014, the Korean American population in the greater Milwaukee area has grown by at least twofold since the 1980s, when the community was estimated at 1,200 to 2,000 members. Yet the number of Korean restaurants was the same then as it is now: two. While Seoul Korean Restaurant and…
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Author: Karalee Surface
For over one hundred years Ladish Company has engaged in the age-old practice of forging metal into a variety of finished products. Innovative application of such technology made the company one of the foremost forge shops in the country, and modernization of the basic process made Ladish a key supplier of aerospace parts. In addition,…
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Author: Bethany Harding
In one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of the Great Lakes, the steamship Lady Elgin sank off the coast of northern Illinois during the early hours of September 8, 1860. The ship left Milwaukee late on September 6 bound for a political rally in Chicago with approximately four hundred passengers on board,…
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Author: John M. McCarthy
Several distinct phases in land use and planning are apparent throughout Milwaukee’s history. Informal and “special purpose” planning dominated the city’s early decades, followed in the Progressive Era by creation of formal planning bodies that guided growth and redevelopment for the first half of the twentieth century. Lastly, attempts at both regional planning and central…
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Author: Michael Gonzales
As in all communities, Milwaukee residents have always needed to dispose of the GARBAGE they produced. One disposal method that transforms the metropolitan landscape is sanitary landfills—sites where garbage is dumped into trenches and covered with soil. At times the use of landfills brought the city of Milwaukee into conflict with both neighboring and distant…
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Author: Brian Mueller
The current Baltic state of Latvia became independent from the Russian Empire in 1918, was absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940, was invaded by the Nazis in 1941, retaken by the Soviet Union in 1944, and was a Soviet Socialist Republic until the fall of Communism and independence in 1991. That political history served…
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Author: Ellen Langill
Laura Ross Wolcott (1834-1915) was the first female doctor in Wisconsin and an important leader of the woman suffrage movement in Milwaukee. She was born in Maine, educated in Boston, and graduated in 1856 from the Female Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She came to Milwaukee in 1857, opened a private practice, and later…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Although now merely a shadow of itself, the production of leather and leather goods was once a key part of Milwaukee’s industrial history. The leather industry and city grew together as firms tanned, curried, and finished animal hides as well as manufactured a variety of finished products. Milwaukee matured into a leading national and international…
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Author: Thomas G. Cannon
The Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee is one of America’s oldest, continuously-operating law firms providing free legal services to the poor. Its creation was suggested in a 1910 letter from Professor John R. Commons, renowned University of Wisconsin economist, to Victor L. Berger, Milwaukee alderman-at-large and head of the Socialist Party. When successive bills in…
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Author: Joseph Ranney
Lawyers appeared in Milwaukee almost simultaneously with the first settlers: Hans Crocker (1836), John H. Tweedy (1840), future Wisconsin Supreme Court justice Abram Smith (1842), and William Pitt Lynde (1843) were the first Milwaukee attorneys admitted to practice before the Territorial Supreme Court. Law in early Milwaukee, as elsewhere in frontier America, was a highly…
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Author: Lisa Lamson
Les Paul changed the nature of twentieth century popular music by inventing the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar and his innovative work in recording studios. The “Wizard of Waukesha” was born Lester William Polsfuss in June 1915 in Waukesha, Wisconsin. While he was at Waukesha High School, his orchestra, the “Red Hot Ragtime Band,” played…
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Author: Cheryl Kader
The composite designation “LGBT” functions as an acronym to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Milwaukeeans who, since the 1960s, have challenged the city and metropolitan region to end gender and sex based forms of discrimination. In the process, they have demonstrated vibrant activism and artistry bifurcated by the politics of gender and race. By…
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Author: Lisa Lamson
Wladziu Liberace, or “Mr. Showmanship,” once said, “don’t be misled by this flamboyant exterior. Underneath I remain the same—a simple boy from Milwaukee.” He was born in West Allis in 1919 to a Polish-Italian family and, when he was four, began playing the piano. Liberace quickly outpaced his family’s basic piano lessons and began his…
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Author: Michael Gonzales
As industrial and agricultural development spurred trade in the nineteenth century, cities along Lake Michigan became major shipping ports. Lighthouses aided navigation and improved maritime safety as lake traffic increased. Although modern navigation tools made most lighthouses obsolete, many are still maintained for educational purposes. Built in 1838, Milwaukee’s first lighthouse was intended to mark…
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Author: Angela Fritz
Lizzie Black Kander’s life experience coincided with the emergence of industrialized cities, rapid urbanization, and the massive immigration of her coreligionists from Eastern Europe. Elizabeth, “Lizzie” Black was born in Milwaukee on May 28, 1858 to John and Mary (Perles) Black. The Blacks lived on Milwaukee’s South Side, having moved from Green Bay in 1844.…
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Author: William Dalhk
Lloyd Barbee (1925-2002), born in Memphis, came to Milwaukee in 1962. An African American attorney committed to equal rights for all, in 1973 Barbee began a sustained drive to integrate Milwaukee’s racially segregated public schools. The Barbee-led movement of blacks and whites used educational picketing, marches, non-violent civil disobedience, and three school boycott campaigns, but…
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