Trustbuster, Senator, Secretary of State, Nobel Laureate, and World Court judge, Frank Kellogg rose from a small farm in Olmsted County to being the highest-ranking diplomat in the United States. He is remembered as one of the authors of the 1928 Pact of Paris, a multi-lateral treaty that renounced aggressive war as a matter of national policy.

Winnibigoshish, Leech Lake, and Pokegama Falls Dams were built in the Mississippi Headwaters during the late 19th century. These structures preceded the construction of the Headwaters reservoir system and played key roles in flood prevention and river control during the 20th century.

Liang May Seen was the first woman of Chinese descent to live in Minnesota. After escaping from a brothel in San Francisco, Liang learned English, married, and moved to Minneapolis, where she was a leader in the Chinese immigrant community until her death in 1946.

"Reform!" was the rallying cry of late nineteenth-century America, and John Lind was in the vanguard. His election as the fourteenth governor of Minnesota and the first non-Republican governor of the state in decades heralded a new progressive era.

Thomas Lowry was one of the most influential and admired men in Minneapolis at the time of his death in 1909. Streetcars, railroads, libraries, and many other endeavors benefited from his involvement.

Swedish immigrant Hans Mattson was a prominent immigration booster and politician. Working for the state and for private companies, he recruited many Swedish and Norwegian immigrants to Minnesota during the late nineteenth century. He was also the first Scandinavian elected to Minnesota office. During his lifetime, Colonel Mattson was one of the best known Swedish Americans in United States politics.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Fredrick McGhee was known as one of Minnesota's most prominent trial lawyers. In 1905 he was one of a group of thirty-two men, led by W.E.B. DuBois, who founded the Niagara Movement, which called for full civil liberties and an end to racial discrimination.

Well-connected socially and politically, William Rush Merriam rose through the legislative ranks to become the eleventh governor of Minnesota by age thirty-nine. In 1899, President William McKinley appointed him director of the twelfth national census.

The Moorish/Byzantine-style building at 1004 Oliver Avenue North in Minneapolis was home to the congregation Mikro Kodesh (Holy Assembly) from the 1920s through the 1960s. It is one of the few physical remnants of the now-dispersed North Side Jewish community.

In 1906, construction began for the Minnesota State Sanatorium for Consumptives, or Ah-Gwah-Ching, about three miles south of Walker in Cass County. Overlooking Shingobee Bay on the south shore of Leech Lake, the hospital evolved into a massive complex of distinctive buildings.

From 1881 to 1920, the Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) struggled to secure women's right to vote. Its members organized marches, wrote petitions and letters, gathered signatures, gave speeches, and published pamphlets and broadsheets to force the Minnesota legislature to recognize their right to vote. Due to their efforts, the Minnesota Legislature approved the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919.

When George D. Munsing came to Minnesota in 1886 to produce a new line of woolen union suits, he founded an underwear empire. From long johns to girdles, the Minnesota company urged generations of consumers, "don't say Underwear, say Munsingwear."