30 years ago, a group of University of Wisconsin-Madison students played a prank that’s remembered fondly — by some, at least — in Madison to this day.
The students — members of a group called the Pail and Shovel party, which ran UW’s student government at the time — planted more than 1,000 pink plastic flamingos on the grassy expanse near the dean’s office. (Interestingly, the student government’s president at the time was Jim Mallon, who went on to become executive producer of TV’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”)