Sunday, March 8, 2009

The Flamingos of Bascom Hill



In 1979, the student government at University of Wisconsin decided that the best use of student government funds was to purchase 1,008 plastic flamingos and display them in the center of the beautiful, green campus on historic Bascom Hill. Please read the short and very interesting article about the event at the Wisconsin Historical Society website. The governing body was also responsible for a partial replica of the Statue of Liberty peeking out from the frozen Lake Mendota in the middle of Madison.

3 comments:

anastasia said...

i think the pink flamingos are kind of cool but would i have used university / government money for it? no way! And we wonder why we're in the mess we're in now. lol

Matt said...

I think it was worth it... I know nothing about the University of Wisconsin, other than that chances are it's in Wisconsin. But here, some 30 years after they bought all those flamingos, people are still talking about it!!

ninou77 said...

I didn't know that story!! It's amazing and what a bizarre idea! But I like it!