In 1894, fire destroyed Hinckley, killing hundreds
A fire survivor described Hinckley as occupying “a hole cut in the brush lands and for miles in all directions young trees, huge stumps, and fallen logs covered the land.”
Mary Laine
Minnesotan Albert Henry Woolson was the last surviving Civil War veteran
When Woolson enlisted in the Union Army as a private at Okaman on October 10, 1864, he was fourteen years old.
Remember the game ‘Cootie’? It was made in Minnesota
Herbert W. Schaper was a mailman in Minneapolis and a fisherman who made his own lures. One day, he added six legs to a lure that he had whittled and called it a “Cootie.”
The Tilt-A-Whirl, a fair staple, was invented in Minnesota
Herbert Sellner founded the Sellner Woodcraft Company in 1912 to manufacture mission furniture, lamps, and other wood articles. By 1923, Sellner’s creativity evolved.
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed thousands of Minnesotans
The flu, also known as the grip or grippe, occurred in three waves in 1918: March to early summer; the fall; and winter extending into early 1919.
How Minnesotans handled leprosy around the turn of the 20th Century
In 1888, Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian physician, arrived in St. Paul to study leprosy because of the high number of Norwegian immigrants in the state.
A local co./ was going broke/ till clever ads/ demand awoke/ Burma-Shave
By the late 1930s, Minneapolis-made Burma-Shave became the second-highest-selling brushless shaving cream in the US and was in 17 percent of medicine cabinets.
How do you solve a problem like excess pork shoulder inventory? SPAM
In the eighty years since its introduction, SPAM has fed millions of people and is available in more than forty countries and in over fifteen varieties and sizes.
In the ’50s, using a cartoon bear to advertise beer was totally fine
Controversy exists about who first “created” the Hamm’s bear.
For the love of plants: 150 years of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society
Members taught each other, and the public, how to use plants to enhance their environments.
Minnesota’s Blue Mounds State Park: Come for the quartzite cliffs, stay for the bison herd
The current bison herd began when three bison were relocated from the Fort Niobrara Wildlife Refuge near Valentine, Nebraska, to the park in 1961.
The first park ever to be shared between two states? Minnesota and Wisconsin’s own Interstate State Park
Established in 1895, Interstate is Minnesota’s second oldest state park.
Once Minnesota’s deepest mine, Soudan complex is now a state park
When the mine closed in 1962 due to rising production costs, it was the oldest and deepest mine in the state, at 2,341 feet below the surface.
