The Scandinavian Woman Suffrage Association used its unique ethnic affiliation to promote suffrage within Minnesota’s substantial Scandinavian community. By weaving celebrations of culture with targeted suffrage campaigns, the club contributed to Minnesota’s larger fight for women’s voting rights and even raised enough money to build a suffrage movement headquarters on the state fairgrounds.
Thomas D. Schall was twice a self-made man: first in rising from rural poverty to become a lawyer, second in recovering from an accidental blinding to serve twenty years in Congress.
In 1948, 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.” Starting out with a basement factory in his home and $1200 in 1949, he transformed the fishing lure into the Cootie game that reached $1.5 million in sales by 1953.
The Cottonwood County village of Westbrook is home to the smallest hospital in Minnesota: Dr. Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital. Four months before it opened in January 1951, a women’s auxiliary officially organized and immediately began gathering supplies for the new facility.
Henry Schmidt’s dream of becoming a physician in his hometown of Westbrook, Minnesota, came true in 1910. His dream of opening a hospital, however, was postponed when he died during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Schmidt’s father was instrumental in opening Westbrook’s Henry Schmidt Memorial Hospital in 1951.
The School of India for Languages and Culture (SILC) was established in 1979 as a weekend school by Indian American parents to help their children learn and become familiar with their heritage. It is a non-profit, secular organization run by volunteers.
Founded in 1882, the Schubert Club is one of the oldest existing arts organizations in the country. It has had a significant impact on the cultural life of St. Paul, supporting music education and hosting concerts featuring well-respected local, national, and international musicians.
Charles Schulz was a cartoonist best known as the creator of Peanuts, the syndicated comic strip that featured the characters Snoopy and Charlie Brown and expanded into a franchise that included TV shows, movies, and toys. By the time of Schulz’s death, Peanuts was reaching readers in twenty-one languages across some 2,600 newspapers in seventy-five countries. Altogether, Schulz produced more than 18,000 strips over nearly fifty years.
The history of science and technology in Minnesota is the history of both how people have perceived and organized the world and how they have brought these worldviews into practice. They have defined science and technology in different ways over time, often according to their social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances.
When 3M began doing business in 1902, it made sandpaper. Soon the sandpaper company invented a line of products that changed household life around the world. 3M's Scotch-brand masking tape and cellophane tape were small inventions that started a consumer revolution.
Scottish immigrants first came to Minnesota with the fur trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the 1850s, colonies of Scots began to put down roots in towns such as Mapleton and Caledonia, while others migrated to the larger cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth. Like other immigrants, they sought to preserve the customs of their homeland wherever they landed. They clubs they formed and the events they held allowed them to celebrate their heritage.
The July 13, 1890, capsizing of the steamer Sea Wing on Lake Pepin and the deaths of ninety-eight of its passengers horrified Minnesota and the nation. The accident ranks among the most deadly on America’s inland waterways.
The Second Battery of Minnesota Light Artillery fought in some of the major battles in the Civil War's Western Theater. In their three and a half years of service, the Second's officers and men had the unique experience of functioning in all branches of the army-artillery, cavalry, and infantry.
Minnesota raised two companies of sharpshooters during the Civil War. Both were in the elite Berdan’s Sharpshooters brigade. The Second Company of Minnesota Sharpshooters, however, served out most of its three-year enlistment with the premier regiment of the state: the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
On Wednesday afternoon, November 25, 1863, the Second Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment participated in one of the most dramatic assaults of the Civil War. They were fighting the Battle of Missionary Ridge, one of several important battles they had been involved in throughout their two years of service in the Union Army. This battle would prove to be the most significant in the history of the regiment.
From the time of statehood into the early 1900s, Minnesota's climate discouraged the growing of corn. Many immigrants from Northern Europe disbelieved the skeptics and set out to prove them wrong by developing special varieties of seed capable of growing corn in cold conditions. They were successful, and by the late 1930s, Minnesota had become one of the leading corn-producing states.
Carver County made its mark on aviation history thanks to local aviation pioneer Elmer Sell. Owner of the first airplane in Carver County, Sell founded Sell Airfield and had a flying career spanning four decades.
On April 24, 1926, Herbert W. Sellner filed an application with the United States Patent Office for an “Amusement Device” designed for parks and resorts. His goal was to provide riders with “pleasurable and unexpected sensations” by swinging, snapping, and rotating them in an unpredictable pattern. He named his creation the Tilt-A-Whirl, and it became the most popular ride made by his Faribault-based Sellner Manufacturing Company.
In 1923, the City of Harmony created a central park amid a national urban planning movement focused on adding outdoor spaces to cities. The park quickly became a venue for a variety of summer events as well as a community gathering spot.
Seminary Fen is located between the cities of Chaska and Chanhassen, just across the river from Shakopee. In the twenty-first century, the site is a rare wetland, but the site was used long before the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) took control in 2008.
Cass and Chisago Counties are created. Cass is named for Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory, who explored the upper Mississippi in 1820 and negotiated several treaties with Native American nations. Chisago is named using a contracted, incorrect version of the Ojibwe name for Lake Chisago: Gichi-zaaga'igan, meaning "large and lovely lake."
Wendelin Grimm moves to Carver County. Grimm begins experimenting with what he called Ewiger Klee, or "everlasting clover," in the next year, developing a winter-hardy strain of alfalfa. Fed to cows, this alfalfa would be critical to the dairy boom in the Upper Midwest.
A forest fire kills 413 people and burns 160,000 acres of timberland around Hinckley. Railroad engineer James Root saves more than 100 people by loading them onto train cars and driving through the blaze. The devastation of this fire convinces many of the importance of forest conservation.
