PART 2

MinnPost's tribute to Minnesota's 150 years of statehood continues with 50 more examples of bad weather, wars, a boneheaded decision to drop a cartoon strip and other moments we'd just as soon forget. Part 1 can be found here. The series will conclude Friday, July 4. Lest we forget: Happy Sesquicentennial, Minnesota!

1940               
Nov. 11 — The Armistice Day Blizzard kills 49 people in Minnesota after temperatures suddenly plunge from the 60s to zero, winds gust to 32 mph and 16.8 inches of snow fall in 24 hours. (Mnsu.edu)     

1943               
The Minnesota Legislature asks the federal government to set up a prisoner-of-war camp to replace the droves of workers joining the military in World War II. About 3,000 POWs were held in 21 camps between 1943 and 1945, according to "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Minnesota."

1945
By the end of World War II, 6,278 Minnesotans lose their lives serving in the war effort.

1946               
Carey McWilliams, writing in a 1946 issue of the liberal journal Common Ground, describes Minneapolis as the most anti-Semitic city in the country. At the time, Jews were barred from membership in service clubs and trade unions.   

The Minnesota State Fair is canceled because of a polio epidemic.

1949
Editors at the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press decide to drop a cartoon strip called "Li'l Folks." Turns out the cartoonist named Sparky is actually Charles Schulz, who went on to great success with a revised version of the strip called "Peanuts."

1952

April — More than 2,600 families are evacuated in the Upper Levee and portions of St. Paul's West Side after the Mississippi River shatters the flood stage record of 19.4 feet set in 1881. This time: 20.4 feet.

1953   

By the end of the Korean War, 688 Minnesotans have died in the fighting.

The dismantling begins of one of the world's largest urban trolley systems with more than 500 miles of track connecting Stillwater with ferry boats on Lake Minnetonka and linking to trains traveling all the way to Northfield. Light rail, anyone?

1956               
June 9 — A military jet crashes in South Minneapolis, killing six people. Four days earlier, another jet crashed and killed a mother and daughter out for a look at the new Bloomington stadium.
   
Homes in St. Paul's Swede Hollow immigrant neighborhood are burned after the city health department declares they are contaminated.

1958
Cincinnati Royals player Maurice Stokes, in a March 12 game against the Lakers at Minneapolis Auditorium, falls hard on a drive to the basket. Days later, Stokes loses consciousness and falls into a coma for weeks. He is left a quadriplegic after being diagnosed with post-traumatic encephalopathy.

It's hard to imagine Bill doing this to Hillary: Andy Knutson helps sabotage a third term for his wife, Minnesota's first congresswoman, Coya Knutson, with the "Coya Come Home" campaign. (PDF p.338)

1959
St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, considered the heart of the black community, is demolished to make way for Interstate 94.

1960
Businessman Bob Short moves the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles.

April 16 — Albert Lea rocker Eddie Cochran, of "Summertime Blues" fame, dies in a taxi accident while on tour in England. He was 21.

Nov. 30 — Novelist Ernest Hemingway undergoes shock treatment for depression at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester, Minn. He commits suicide in Idaho a few days after leaving Minnesota. 

1961               
Early summer — For the first time, Dutch elm disease is found in Minnesota among trimmed branches of elms in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood.

Demolition of the Metropolitan Building, with its fine wrought-iron interior, begins in Minneapolis.

1963
St. Paul's most notorious crime case — the murder of Carol Thompson — rocks the couple's Highland Park neighborhood and inspires a yearlong media frenzy that produces near-daily developments as a botched murder-for-hire case unravels, implicating her husband, T. Eugene Thompson.

1964
June 12 — In their first Minnesota appearance, the Rolling Stones flop badly, drawing only 283 fans to Danceland at Excelsior Park, when a promoter decides not to advertise the concert because of fears the event would produce a new round of fan-driven hysteria similar to Beatle-mania.

Oct. 25 — Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall picks up a fumble but runs the wrong way into the opponent's end zone. He throws the ball out of bounds, scoring a safety for the San Francisco 49ers.  

1965               
May 6 — Two F4 tornadoes hit Fridley, and 13 people die as six tornadoes touch down in the Twin Cities.
               
For two weeks, St. Paul and Minneapolis are on different times, when the capital city decides to join most of the nation by starting Daylight Saving Time. Minneapolis opts to follow the later date set by state law.

1967               
July 19 — Stone-throwing rioters, upset about racism, break windows and set fires along Plymouth Avenue in North Minneapolis.

1968               
U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy refuses to stand with Democratic presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

1970               
Super Bowl IV: Kansas City Chiefs, 23; Minnesota Vikings, 7.               

1971               
The Monticello Nuclear Power Plant's tank of radioactive cooling water overflows, eventually reaching the Mississippi River.

1972               
Jan. 7 — Pulitzer Prize-winning poet John Berryman, suffering from alcoholism, jumps to his death from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis.

Jan. 23 — Minnesota Gopher basketball players beat up Ohio State players, hospitalizing their center, Luke Witte. Gopher players Corky Taylor and Rob Behagen are suspended for the remainder of the season.

July 27 — Virginia Piper, wife of a retired investment banker, is kidnapped from her Orono home. The $1 million ransom is paid and she is found in Jay Cooke State Park. Two men are arrested for the crime but eventually acquitted, leaving the case unsolved. Just $4,000 of the ransom money was ever recovered.

1973               
Excelsior Amusement Park closes and is demolished.               

1974               
Super Bowl VIII: Miami Dolphins, 24; Minnesota Vikings, 7.

1975               
Super Bowl IX: Pittsburgh Steelers, 16; Minnesota Vikings, 6.
               
Nov. 10 — The Edmund Fitzgerald, en route from Duluth to the steel mill on Zug Island, near Detroit, Mich., with a full cargo of taconite, sinks during a massive winter storm on Lake Superior. All 29 aboard are lost.

By the end of the Vietnam War, 1,072 Minnesotans lose their lives.
           
1976
A heavy January snowstorm damages 325 cars in a pileup on a Minneapolis freeway.

1977
Super Bowl IX: Oakland Raiders, 32; Minnesota Vikings, 14.

June 27 — Duluth heiress Elisabeth Congdon is smothered to death in her bed and her night nurse is bludgeoned to death on the stairway of Glensheen, the 39-room Congdon family mansion in Duluth. Congdon's son-in-law, Roger Caldwell, is later convicted of the crime. Her adopted daughter Marjorie Caldwell is later accused of planning the murders, but is acquitted.   

1978               
Sept. 29 — Minnesota Twins owner Calvin Griffith makes his infamous speech to members of the Lions Club in Waseca. Among other things, Griffith is quoted as saying, "I'll tell you why we moved to Minnesota. It was when we found out you only had 15,000 blacks here.''               

1979               
The Minnesota Daily publishes its "Christ speaks!" parody issue featuring sexual references, prompting the University of Minnesota administration to try to take back a portion of the Daily's student-activity fee. A court takes a dim view of the U's attempt to interfere with the First Amendment.

1980               
May 16 — Ming Sen Shiue kidnaps former missionary Mary Stauffer and her 8-year-old daughter, Beth, and holds them for seven weeks. Ming Sen Shiue is apparently seeking revenge for a bad grade Stauffer gave him 15 years earlier at Roseville High School. The mother and daughter are rescued when Stauffer frees herself from a shackle and contacts police. Shiue is later convicted.
   
1981               
November — A rapid accumulation of more than 10 inches of snow causes the roof of the Metrodome to collapse, requiring it to be re-inflated just 48 days after it was inflated for the first time.

1982               
Nov. 25-26 — A Thanksgiving weekend fire, set by two juveniles, destroys an entire block of downtown Minneapolis, including the 16-story headquarters of Northwestern National Bank (now Wells Fargo) and the vacant, partially demolished location formerly occupied by Donaldson's department store, which had recently moved across the street to the new City Center mall. Nobody is injured or killed.


1984               
Nov. 6 — Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale of Minnesota loses 49 states, and the election, to Ronald Reagan.

1985               
Lou Holtz resigns as the coach of the Golden Gophers and goes to Notre Dame.

1986               
Jan. 25 — Three Gopher basketball players are arrested on rape charges in Madison, Wis. The University of Minnesota forfeits the game; Coach Jim Dutcher quits in protest and all players are eventually acquitted.               

1987               
Joe Niekro, the knuckleball pitcher with the Minnesota Twins, is ejected in the fourth inning of an 11-3 game against the California Angels after umpires find an emery board in his pocket. He is suspended for 10 games.               
               
1989               
Jacob Wetterling of St. Joseph is kidnapped by a masked gunman and has yet to be found. In 1994, the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act, more simply known as the Jacob Wetterling Act, is passed in his honor. It's the first law to institute a state sex-offender registry.

1991                
June 13 — Lightning strikes during the U.S. Open Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, killing one spectator and injuring five others.

Next: The bad weather continues in 1991, what with the Halloween blizzard and the wooden head of Paul Bunyan's wife being sliced off in a windstorm.

Did we miss an event? Please feel free to send a "Minnesota moment we'd just as soon forget" to comments below. Reference sources are much appreciated.

150 Minnesota moments we'd just as soon forget: Part 1 | Part 3

Credits: This concept can be blamed on News Editor Casey Selix, but she could not have compiled the list without the wit and wisdom of reporters Doug Grow, David Hawley, Joe Kimball and David Brauer. Nor could the list have been executed without the brilliant expertise and contributions of Web Editor Corey Anderson, News Editor Don Effenberger, Co-Managing Editor Susan Albright and Office Manager Virginia Kujawa.