One year ago, we told you about the master carpenter making the 19th century relic his final masterpiece. NBC15 News' Phoebe Murray sat down with Michelle Baik as she described what it was like to witness the transformation ..read more

It's a maritime tragedy that's cemented in time. With the help of folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, you've likely heard the woes of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The ship met its ill-fated end nearly 50 years ago in Lake Superior and remains one of the most mysterious and controversial wrecks to date. Many details remain unknown about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, leaving experts to a range of hypotheses for that night. Of course, the harsh Nov. 10 storm was a large contributing factor, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly what caused the ship to drag to the depths of Lake Superior. Aft ..read more

Skits, dancing and a whole lot of pushups -- that’s only some of what it takes to be the beloved Buck Badger. Buckingham U. Badger is a staple for the UW-Madison campus and Wisconsin as a state. But how did Bucky become the icon he is today? Nameless before the 1940s, the mascot used to be a real, living badger kept in a cage at football games. Due to a rather ferocious personality, that Bucky was benched. The mascot came to life in 1949, when Bill Sagal, a UW cheerleader, sported on a paper mache rendition of the mascot’s head for the Homecoming game. Today, what does it take to become the mi ..read more

Vel Phillips -- known as a civil rights pioneer and woman of many firsts -- is becoming a ubiquitous name in Madison. Phillips represents many firsts for Wisconsin, including being the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin- Madison Law School and to be elected to a statewide office in Wisconsin and the entire nation.  She also served as the first female and African American elected to the Milwaukee Common Council, as well as the first African American judge in the state of Wisconsin. One of Phillips’ most notable moments was in her fight for fair housin ..read more

On October 8, 1871, two fires were set ablaze. Though one is likely written in your history books and one has been left to the ashes. While the Great Chicago Fire was burning through the Windy City, there was a much more disastrous event happening here at home: The Peshtigo Fire. 150 years ago, The Great Fire of 1871 destroyed Peshtigo, burning down all but one building and killing 800 people in the city alone, according to The Peshtigo Fire Museum. Charlie and Gabriella walk us through what caused this natural disaster — including weather patterns and standard industry practices of the time ..read more

The Wisconsin accent is surely a unique one — no oofs, eh’s or opes about it. Between the yeah’s ... er no’s, where do these specific phrases and dialects come from? Making Wisconsin’s Gabriella Rusk sat down with UW Linguistics Professor Joe Salmons to figure out. Accents tend to boil down to immigration patterns. German immigrants began making a home in Wisconsin in the 1840′s and for decades after, the Dairyland had the largest percentage of self-identified German Americans compared to any other state. It’s European immigrants — German, Norwegian, Polish, etc. — that have contributed to cer ..read more

Just over 50 years ago, the largest terrorist attacks on American soil up until that time happened on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus: the bombing of Sterling Hall. Four bombers made a violent statement against the U.S. government's involvement in the Vietnam war. At 3:45 a.m. they set off a massive fertilizer bomb in an alley next to the University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall, killing 33-year-old postdoctoral researcher Robert Fassnacht. In the first half of this episode, NBC15’s Charlie Shortino and Gabriella Rusk take a look back at that day and the events that led up to the bom ..read more

It's a maritime tragedy that's cemented in time. With the help of folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, you've likely heard the woes of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The ship met its ill-fated end nearly 50 years ago in Lake Superior and remains one of the most mysterious and controversial wrecks to date. Many details remain unknown about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, leaving experts to a range of hypotheses for that night. Of course, the harsh Nov. 10 storm was a large contributing factor, but it's hard to pinpoint exactly what caused the ship to drag to the depths of Lake Superior. Aft ..read more

Skits, dancing and a whole lot of pushups -- that’s only some of what it takes to be the beloved Buck Badger. Buckingham U. Badger is a staple for the UW-Madison campus and Wisconsin as a state. But how did Bucky become the icon he is today? Nameless before the 1940s, the mascot used to be a real, living badger kept in a cage at football games. Due to a rather ferocious personality, that Bucky was benched. The mascot came to life in 1949, when Bill Sagal, a UW cheerleader, sported on a paper mache rendition of the mascot’s head for the Homecoming game. Today, what does it take to become the mi ..read more

Vel Phillips -- known as a civil rights pioneer and woman of many firsts -- is becoming a ubiquitous name in Madison. Phillips represents many firsts for Wisconsin, including being the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin- Madison Law School and to be elected to a statewide office in Wisconsin and the entire nation.  She also served as the first female and African American elected to the Milwaukee Common Council, as well as the first African American judge in the state of Wisconsin. One of Phillips’ most notable moments was in her fight for fair housin ..read more