Each week, MinnPost brings you a highlight of our state’s past from MNopedia, an encyclopedia of Minnesota history written by experts and produced by the Minnesota Historical Society.
Minnesota enacted its first major human rights law in 1967. That statute made it unlawful to discriminate against people based on race, color, creed, and national origin in unions, employment, education, public services, and public accommodations.
Beatlemania was in full throat that night at Metropolitan Stadium, where the screaming fans drowned out the group’s half-hour set.
Motivated by his desire for a reliable cafeteria breakfast where he worked, Charles P. Strite designed a pop-up toaster in 1919.
The winter of 1887–1888 was ferocious and unrelenting. But nothing prepared southwestern Minnesota for the January storm that came to be known as the Children’s Blizzard.
The stockaded structure, supervised by veteran trader John Sayer, was a place where employees of the North West Fur Company came together with Ojibwe and Metis hunters and trappers.
The festival in Walker began in 1980 as a way to bring tourists to northern Minnesota during the long winter months.
Established by fur trader and politician Henry Hastings Sibley, it sits on a bluff on the south side of the Minnesota river, just east of Historic Fort Snelling.
Madson designed an AIDS memorial in the mid-1990s, when few memorials for the disease existed and the epidemic was at its height.
Over a period of about six decades, the mill produced millions of board feet of lumber and provided construction material used in towns and cities throughout the state.
The Minnesota turkey industry began with small backyard flocks raised on family farms.
Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950.
An unusually close election in 1962 led to a recount in the race between Gov. Elmer L. Andersen and his challenger, Lt. Gov. Karl F. Rolvaag.
On Oct. 30, 1991, no one in Minnesota foresaw a blizzard. Local meteorologists predicted a few inches of snow. The snow began to fall in the early to mid-afternoon of Oct. 31 and fell steadily for almost three days.
The title recognizes its status as one of the first cities to discourage Halloween tricks by hosting a city-wide party.
On October 5, 1869, water seeped and then gushed into a tunnel underneath St. Anthony Falls creating an enormous whirlpool. The falls were nearly destroyed.
Public art created during the late 1960s and early 1970s responded to the destruction of America’s inner cities. While many of the first Chicano murals painted on St. Paul’s West Side are now lost, murals continue to reflect the community’s growth and progress.
Gomez-Bethke served as Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights, guided boards and commissions as a volunteer, and co-founded both Centro Cultural Chicano and Instituto de Arte y Cultura.
Though she often escaped the public eye, her work survives through her children and community, the attendees of survival schools, and the children protected by the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The rustic cabin was built by Jun Fujita, one of the first prominent Japanese Americans in the Midwest.
Agricultural societies held fairs in Minnesota Territory as far back as the early 1850s.
