Harris Martin, also known as George Harris, was a middleweight boxer who went by the moniker “the Black Pearl.” In 1887 he became the first Colored Middleweight Champion of the World in a fight staged on the banks of the Mississippi, making him one of the most famous boxers of the period.

Activist Winona LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in 1989 in response to environmental destruction and a land-tenure crisis in the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe. Since then, WELRP has taken steps to recover stolen land, to aid and educate Ojibwe communities, to maintain traditional culture, and to restore sustainable ways of life.

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.

Motivated by his desire for a reliable cafeteria breakfast at the Stillwater, Minnesota, factory where he worked, Charles P. Strite designed an innovative pop-up bread toaster in 1919. After Strite modified his commercial-grade model for home use, the Toastmaster quickly made its way into kitchens nationwide.

In the 1860s, Minnesota experienced rapid population growth due to immigration. To serve the needs of these new citizens, the state legislature passed an act for the establishment of an asylum for the “insane” in St. Peter in 1866. As it filled to capacity and then expanded, it became the primary site for housing mentally ill people considered dangerous or sexually aggressive.

On August 21, 1965, the Beatles played their one and only concert in Minnesota. Beatlemania was in full throat that night at Metropolitan Stadium, where the screaming fans drowned out the group’s half-hour set. But the hijinks had only just begun. In an episode straight from the Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night, the band's sleepover at the Minneapolis Leamington Motor Inn involved chases between fans and hotel security, a limo driver roped in for off-duty crowd control, a reporter disguised as a waitress, and the police.

Established by fur trader and politician Henry Hastings Sibley, the Sibley Historic Site was a regional headquarters of the American Fur Company between 1836 and 1842. It sits on a bluff on the south side of the Minnesota river, just east of Historic Fort Snelling, and is a symbol of the thriving fur trade in nineteenth-century Minnesota. Today, the site contains several original buildings and operates as a museum that offers public tours.

David Madson was a Minneapolis-based architect who worked for a retail marketing firm while attending the University of Minnesota to complete his master’s degree in architecture. He designed an AIDS memorial in the mid-1990s, when few memorials for the disease existed and the epidemic was at its height. He was involved in the local queer and leather communities, frequented gay bars, and attended HIV/AIDS fundraisers. Madson is widely known as the second victim of spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who murdered him in Chisago County, Minnesota, in 1997.

Marine Mill, the first commercial sawmill in Minnesota, operated in Marine Mills (Marine on St. Croix) along the banks of the St. Croix River from 1839 to 1895. 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 remaining ruins were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and opened to the public as a park and historic site two years later. The Marine on St. Croix Historic District, created in 1974, includes the mill’s remains.

Robert Aaron Brown was a prolific St. Paul painter, mostly of watercolors, whose productive years were roughly 1930 to 1950. His works appeared in dozens of exhibits, including solo shows at the Walker Art Center and the St. Paul Public Library. He painted city scenes (chiefly in St. Paul) and landscapes of the St. Croix and Upper Mississippi valleys.