The ability to issue partial vetoes of appropriations bills has allowed Wisconsin governors since 1930 to wield a quasi-legislative power that can substantially — and sometimes controversially — alter the text and implications of appropriations bills with little if any legislative input.

For nearly two decades after World War II, leaders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison systematically outed gay students to their families, extended harsh punishments for suspected homosexual activity and participated in harmful attempts at psychiatric treatment.

Wisconsin's agricultural bounty is possible thanks in part to the state's voluminous supply of freshwater. At the same time, the use of this resource to grow crops and nourish livestock poses risks to the quality of these waters.

Sometimes pollution is dramatic, like aerial footage of a 2011 coal ash pond collapse that sent toxic contents onto the beach and into Lake Michigan in Oak Creek, just south of Milwaukee.