The Oliver Iron Mining Company was one of the most prominent mining companies in the early decades of the Mesabi Iron Range. As a division of United States Steel, Oliver dwarfed its competitors—in 1920, it operated 128 mines across the region, while its largest competitor operated only sixty-five.

On Saturday, November 12, 1955, Kenneth E. Lindberg, cashier of the Northern State Bank of Thief River Falls, met in the bank with a man who had identified himself as Herbert Johnson of the Johnson Wax Company. Lindberg was never seen alive again in Thief River Falls again.

Minneapolis real estate developers began writing racial covenants—race-based property ownership restrictions—into property deeds in 1910. They were banned by the Minnesota state legislature in 1953, but their use in the early twentieth century laid the foundation for contemporary racial disparities in Minnesota.

Albert Henry Woolson had outlived over two million Civil War Union Army comrades when he died in Duluth on August 2, 1956, at the age of 106. At his death, he was recognized as the last surviving Union Army veteran. Civil War historians, however, now recognize him as the last survivor of both the Union and Confederate armies.