Minnesota Trivia & Tidbits - Page 15

Looking for Minnesota trivia? Try our list Minnesota little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

The world’s largest open pit iron ore mine is at Hibbing (pop. 17,071). Opened in 1895, it measures 3 miles long, 2 miles wide, and 535 feet deep.

first appeared: 9/23/2001

Oliver H. Kelley of Elk River (pop. 16,447) founded the National Grange, the first nationwide farmer’s organization, in 1867. His farm is now a state historic site.

first appeared: 9/16/2001

Headquartered in Austin (pop. 23,314), the Hormel Co. introduced the canned luncheon meat Spam in 1937. Today, Hormel produces 435 cans of the product every minute, and Americans consume 3.5 million pounds a year.

first appeared: 9/9/2001

Hutchinson (pop. 13,080) was named after Adoniram and Asa Hutchinson, members of a singing family well known during the middle of the 19th century.

first appeared: 9/2/2001

James Shields was the only person to serve as a U.S. senator for three states—in this case, Minnesota, Missouri, and Illinois during the late 1800s.

first appeared: 8/26/2001

On Sept. 12, 1998, Alfred Wolfram of New Brighton (pop. 22,206) kissed 11,030 people in eight hours at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in Shakopee (pop. 20,568), breaking his old record of 8,001 kisses eight years earlier.

first appeared: 8/19/2001

Built just before World War I to house lumberjacks, the Kettle Falls Hotel in the Superior National Forest, near Crane Lake, still hosts overnight guests.

first appeared: 8/12/2001

The Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley (pop. 45,527) is home to 2,300 creatures from five continents, including 105 animals representing 15 species on the U.S. Endangered and Threatened Species Act list.

first appeared: 8/5/2001

Inventors have shown their creations every summer at Redwood Falls (pop. 5,459) since 1958 at the Minnesota Inventors Congress. Among the successful inventions exhibited over the years have been extendible ladders used as fire escapes from multistory homes and snap-on lids for canning jars.

first appeared: 7/29/2001

Blue Mounds State Park, north of Luverne (pop. 4,445), is named after a large lichen-covered rock outcrop, which appeared blue to settlers traveling west in the 1860s.

first appeared: 7/22/2001

The state’s geographic center is near Crow Wing State Park, about 10 miles southwest of Brainerd (pop. 13,814).

first appeared: 7/15/2001

The world’s largest wild rice farm is in Clearwater (pop. 821) and covers more than 2,000 acres.

first appeared: 7/8/2001

Born March 11, 1893, in New Ulm (pop. 13,800), children’s book author-illustrator Wanda Gág hand-lettered her text, a rarity at the time, and was the first in America to use double-page illustrations.

first appeared: 7/1/2001

At 25 feet in height and measuring 100-by-140 feet at its base, Grand Mound is the largest known American Indian burial mound in the Upper Midwest. It’s at the confluence of the Big Fork and Rainy Rivers near International Falls (pop. 7,370).

first appeared: 6/24/2001

The University of Minnesota had the largest student population of any university system in the nation during the 2000-2001 academic year. The university’s four campuses had a combined enrollment of 51,445 students.

first appeared: 6/17/2001

Mountain Lake (pop. 1,738), in the southwest part of the state, has a lake by the same name nearby, but no mountain.

first appeared: 6/10/2001

In Judge C.R. Magney State Park, on the north shore of Lake Superior, waters of the Brule River split just above a waterfall. The waters on the east half of the river flow over the waterfall while those on the west disappear into a large hole. No one knows where that water goes.

first appeared: 6/3/2001

The historic Hooper-Bowler Hillstrom House in Belle Plaine (pop. 3,721) features a two-story outhouse connected to the upper floor by a skyway. Samuel Bowler, who had a large number of children, built the five-seat outhouse after he purchased the home in 1886.

first appeared: 5/27/2001

Richard W. Sears was born in Stewartville (pop. 5,088) on Dec. 7, 1863. In the 1880s, Sears started a mail order business in Minneapolis, and in 1893 he acquired a partner, A.C. Roebuck. By 1903, their business had annual sales of $11 million.

first appeared: 5/20/2001

Brainerd (pop. 13,814) has one of two concrete water towers in the state. The other is at Pipestone.

first appeared: 5/13/2001

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