This Day in Minnesota History

November 13, 1833

Charles M. Loring is born in Portland, Maine. As Minneapolis park commissioner from 1883 to 1890, he would be a principal player in the development of the city's system of parks, public grounds, and children's playgrounds. He would be the driving force behind creation of Victory Memorial Drive; Loring Community School is named for him. Central Park would be renamed Loring Park, also in his honor.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 13, 1891

Floyd B. Olson is born in Minneapolis. He was the first Farmer-Labor governor, serving from 1931 until his death on August 22, 1936. He is remembered for implementing New Deal policies and for his skilled negotiating during the 1933 Hormel strike in Austin and the 1934 teamsters' strike in Minneapolis.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 13, 1970

Police arrest Ronald Reed, a twenty-year-old suspect in an Omaha bank robbery, on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Governor Harold LeVander and St. Paul city councilwoman Rosalie Butler and hold them hostage for exchange with African American political prisoners. Police connect Reed to the Black Panther Party, but Emory Douglass, the Black Panthers' national minister of culture, denies Reed's membership in the party. Reed, an ROTC member at the University of Minnesota, is held in Ramsey County jail on a $150,000 bond, the highest in the state's history.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 14, 1766

Englishman Jonathan Carver enters Wakan Tipi, the cave and sacred site in present-day St. Paul, long used by Dakota people, that white settler-colonists would come to call by his name (Carver's Cave). Carver writes in his diary: "...came to the great stone cave called by the Naudowessies [Dakota] the House of Spirits. This cave is doubtless a greater curiosity than my short stay and want of convenience allowed me to sufficiently explore."

This Day in Minnesota History

November 14, 1860

Telegraph service reaches Minneapolis.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 14, 1908

Harrison Salisbury is born in Minneapolis. A reporter and author, he was especially noted for his writing on the Soviet Union, and in 1955 he won the Pulitzer Prize for international correspondence.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 14, 1917

Mike O'Dowd, the "Cyclone of St. Paul," defeats Al McCoy to win boxing's middleweight title, which he holds until 1920.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 14, 1996

Author Meridel Le Sueur dies in Hudson, Wisconsin. Born in Murray, Iowa, on February 22, 1900, Le Sueur moved with her family to Minnesota when she was twelve. A reporter and the author of novels and short stories, she was blacklisted for being a member of the Communist Party. Her work was rediscovered and heralded by feminists in the 1970s.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 15, 1851

Montezuma is founded by Orrin Smith, a steamboat captain. The town is more recognizable by its present name, Winona.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 15, 1866

Pilgrim Baptist Church is formally organized. The African American congregation, granted mission status by the First Baptist Church of St. Paul, met at various residences for a number of years before constructing a church at Thirteenth and Cedar Streets in St. Paul. Robert Hickman was ordained eleven years later and became the congregation's official pastor.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 15, 1880

A fire at St. Peter State Hospital (later renamed the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center), a mental asylum, kills between ten and fifteen inmates. The first mental institution in the state, the asylum had opened on December 6, 1866.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 16, 1854

The preparatory (or high school) department of what is now Hamline University opens for business in Red Wing. Named for Leonidas L. Hamline, a Methodist bishop, the school suspends operations in 1869 and reopens in St. Paul in 1880, but its original founding date makes it the oldest college in the state.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 16, 1881

Faribault hangs its first street signs.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 16, 1883

The steamer Manistee sinks in Lake Superior. It had left Duluth on November 10, but a gale had driven it into port at Bayfield. Captain John McKay tries to force passage on this night, and twenty-three of the sailors aboard are never seen again. A lifeboat carrying three survivors washes ashore a few days later.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 16, 1939

US Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler dies in Washington, DC. Born near Northfield, Minnesota, on March 17, 1866, Butler was a conservative judge who opposed many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Butler was the final justice to pass the bar exam after studying with an attorney rather than attending a law school. He served as lawyer for Ramsey County and as regent for the University of Minnesota before President Warren G. Harding appointed him to the high court in 1922.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 16, 2009

The first commuter rail train in Minnesota carries passengers from Big Lake to downtown Minneapolis. The Northstar Rail Line cost $320 million and is funded by the federal and state governments, the regional rail authorities for Anoka, Hennepin, and Sherburne counties, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minnesota Twins.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 17, 1863

Winfield Scott Hammond is born in Southborough, Massachusetts. Prior to becoming the state's eighteenth governor, he would function in various educational capacities: as high school principal in Mankato, superintendent of schools in Madelia, and president of the school board of St. James. He died on December 30, 1915, the second governor to die while in office.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 17, 1992

Jackpot Junction Casino, run by the Mdewakanton Dakota on the Lower Sioux Reservation in Morton, celebrates its eighth anniversary (November 16–18). It is the first Native American casino in Minnesota. Originally a bingo parlor, by 1988 it had become a fully operational casino.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 2, 1869

Measuring one-third of a township, tiny Manomin County (named for manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice) is abolished and transferred to Anoka County. Known as Mamomin Township until 1879, the territory is now the town of Fridley.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 2, 1948

Hubert H. Humphrey wins Minnesota's race for US Senate. During three consecutive terms he supports a medicare bill, a nuclear test ban treaty, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 2, 1993

Sharon Sayles Belton is elected mayor of Minneapolis. She is the first African American and the first woman to hold the office. Having previously worked for the State Department of Corrections and as assistant director of the Minnesota Program for Victims of Sexual Assault, Belton would tout a family-centered platform and administer numerous successful community programs, including the annual youth-oriented event, "Dancin' in the Streets."

This Day in Minnesota History

November 20, 1855

The Mississippi River freezes over for the season, concluding a busy year during which 553 boats and 30,000 people traveled to St. Paul.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 20, 1967

Nicollet Mall, a pedestrian walkway closed to traffic except buses, opens in downtown Minneapolis.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 20, 1969

Indians of All Tribes (IAT), a group of activists including Adam Nordwall (Red Lake Ojibwe) occupies Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. IAT intends to force negotiation with the federal government and to assert the need for Native self-determination. Members of the group remained on the island until they were forcibly removed in 1971, bringing national attention to Native issues.

This Day in Minnesota History

November 20, 1979

Artificial blood is used in the United States for the first time when Dr. Robert Anderson of the University Hospital injects Fluosol, a blood substitute developed in Japan, into a Jehovah's Witness individual who had refused a regular blood transfusion on religious grounds.

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