The Minnesota Boat Club (MBC) was founded by ten young men in 1870 at a time when rowing was wildly popular throughout the country. Over time, additional clubs were established in Minnesota, intensifying the competition. After earning a national reputation, MBC encountered financial difficulties and faltered.

University of Minnesota professor Frank M. "Doc" Whiting brought a unique type of theater entertainment to the Twin Cities with the opening of the Minnesota Centennial Showboat in 1958. For more than fifty years the showboat presented a variety of student theater productions, from melodrama to Shakespeare, in a floating venue on the Mississippi River.

In 1857, elected delegates met in St. Paul to draft a state constitution so that Minnesota could officially join the Union. Due to a bitter rivalry, Democrats and Republicans refused to meet jointly until near the end of the convention. Finally, a Compromise Committee with five members from each group proposed language that both sides accepted. Yet they refused to sign the same document. As a result, Minnesota has two copies of its constitution: one Democratic and one Republican.

Around midnight on July 10, 1970, four teams of two or three people each broke into Selective Service offices in Little Falls, Alexandria, Winona, and Wabasha, intending to destroy as many military draft files as possible—acts of protest against the war in Vietnam. They mostly failed. Eight of them were arrested and charged with federal crimes. They became known as the Minnesota Eight.

Minnesota's early woman suffragists endured many setbacks in their fight for the vote. Perhaps none was as disappointing as Governor Horace Austin's veto of the 1870 female suffrage bill—the first to pass both the House and Senate. His controversial decision appeared to defy the state constitution.

Minnesota’s governors did not have an official residence until 1965, when the daughters of lumber magnate Horace Irvine donated their family home to the state. Over the years, the house on Summit Avenue has provided Minnesota’s First Families with a comfortable home and has served as a ceremonial building for visiting dignitaries and the public alike, though not without controversy.

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. Over the next twenty-five years DFL legislators tried and failed six times to amend the law to add sexual orientation. They succeeded in 1993.

When Hanley Falls School closed in the late 1970s, a few local residents saw an opportunity. Committed to sharing the history of their community, they transformed the white, two-story building on the town square into the Minnesota Machinery Museum. Since 1980, the museum has collected vintage farm equipment and created exhibits celebrating the history and agricultural tradition of Yellow Medicine County.

Minnesota Men of Color (MMC) was a non-profit organization that served gay and bisexual men of color, women of color, and gender-non-conforming people of color between 1998 and 2003. From its headquarters in Minneapolis, MMC reached clients that majority-white LGBTQ groups had overlooked, focusing specifically on those who were Native, Latinx, African American, and Asian American.

The Minnesota Motor Corps was the first militarized organization of its kind in the United States. Made up of volunteers and their vehicles, the corps existed for the duration of World War I. It provided disaster relief, transported troops, and aided police. The Motor Corps’ services proved crucial, but many viewed it as a state-sponsored police force that infringed on the rights of citizens.

The Minnesota North Stars were one of the teams created during the National Hockey League’s first expansion in 1966, which finally brought an NHL team to the “state of hockey.” Their twenty-nine-year residency in the state produced two trips to the Stanley Cup finals, but their sudden departure to Dallas in 1993 shocked fans throughout Minnesota.