Wisconsin Facts

Those little boxes of books on posts across America started as one man's tribute. Todd Bol built the first in 2009, from wood off his old garage door. He shaped it like a tiny schoolhouse, for his mother, June. She was a schoolteacher who tutored neighborhood kids at her dining table. He filled it with books and staked it in his yard. Neighbors wanted their own. There are now over 200,000, in 128 countries. There's probably one on your street.

Leonard Gigowski spent 50 years cutting meat at a Milwaukee grocery store. He drove the same car for 15 years. He never married. He never took a vacation. He clipped coupons. His friends figured he was just scraping by. He was quietly buying stock in the company he worked for and holding it for fifty years. When he died at 90, the lawyers opened his estate. $13 million went to his old Catholic high school. Nobody knew he was rich.

Old Abe was a real bald eagle who fought in the Civil War. He rode into more than 30 battles with the 8th Wisconsin Infantry. He perched on a custom shield and screamed over the gunfire. Confederate soldiers were ordered to shoot him down. He made it through every battle and went home to Wisconsin. Today his profile rides on the shoulder of every 101st Airborne soldier.

The Lambeau Leap is Green Bay's touchdown ritual: score, then dive into the stands. It began by accident on Dec. 26, 1993: Reggie White scooped a fumble, lateraled to LeRoy Butler, who scored and leaped into the crowd. Replays later showed White stepped out of bounds before the toss. The NFL banned celebrations in 2000 and 2014 but kept the Leap. Nearly every Packers touchdown at Lambeau still ends there.

At 73, Alvin Straight rode a 1966 John Deere mower 240 miles to his ailing brother in Wisconsin. Too blind for a license, he would not be driven. At about 5 mph, with breakdowns and a stop when his money ran out, it took six weeks. Twin Peaks director David Lynch made it a G-rated film, released by Disney. The mower still sits in his Iowa hometown.

In the mid-2000s, a Wisconsin dentist began paying kids a dollar a pound for their leftover Halloween candy. His own children told him it was a terrible idea. He sent the candy to troops overseas, and thousands of dentists across the country joined in. One military charity alone has shipped nearly 600,000 pounds of donated candy. Dental offices still collect it every November.