Minnesota Trivia & Tidbits - Page 9

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

Garrison Keillor was born in Anoka (pop. 17,780) in 1942, and went to work for Minnesota Public Radio in 1969. His first broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion was on July 6, 1974.

first appeared: 1/11/2004

Among inventions and products born in this state are masking and scotch tape, the bundt cake pan, Green Giant vegetables, Thinsulate and Cream of Wheat cereal.

first appeared: 1/4/2004

In 1855, Afton (pop. 2,839) took its name from the Robert Burns poem Afton Water, which sings the beauty of hills and rills.

first appeared: 12/28/2003

Begun in 1912, the St. Olaf Christmas Festival at St. Olaf College in Northfield (pop. 17,147) is one of the nation’s oldest musical celebrations of Christmas.

first appeared: 12/21/2003

For half a century, from 1880 to 1930, Minneapolis led the world in flour milling and earned the nickname “Mill City.” The city honored its heritage last September by opening Mill City Museum in the 1878 former Washburn A Mill factory.

first appeared: 12/14/2003

In 1950, William Marvy of St. Paul developed the red, white and blue swirled “weatherproof” barber pole seen outside barbershops across America. The William Marvy Co. currently is the nation’s last manufacturer of barber poles.

first appeared: 12/7/2003

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a 1956 gas station in Cloquet (pop. 11,201) sports a copper cantilevered canopy and glass-walled lounge.

first appeared: 11/30/2003

Henry Hastings Sibley, the state’s first governor elected in 1858, previously managed the American Fur Company in Mendota (pop. 147). His limestone home is preserved at the Sibley House Historic Site.

first appeared: 11/23/2003

At Brainerd (pop. 13,178) High School, Bob Johnson teaches the ancient practice of dark house fishing. Ice fishermen in windowless fish houses use decoys to attract and spear fish.

first appeared: 11/16/2003

Basshenge, a monument inspired by Stonehenge, features 21 sculpted bass instruments on 5-foot-tall concrete pillars. Bassist Joseph Guastafeste spearheaded the attraction in 1999 near Birchdale (pop. 814).

first appeared: 11/9/2003

Delene Moser is the first female lockmaster on the upper Mississippi River. She began duties last January at Lock and Dam 7 near La Crescent (pop. 4,923).

first appeared: 11/2/2003

In 1930, Sinclair Lewis was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The author of Main Street and Babbitt was born in 1885 in Sauk Centre (pop. 3,930).

first appeared: 10/26/2003

Architect Louis Sullivan designed the 1906 Wells Fargo Bank in Owatonna (pop. 22,434). The bank with gold-leaf arches was featured on a 1981 U.S. postage stamp.

first appeared: 10/19/2003

In 1865, S.W. VanDusen platted Byron (pop. 3,500) and named the railroad town after his hometown of Byron, N.Y. (pop. 2,493).

first appeared: 10/12/2003

Dr. Robert Good, pioneering immunologist and native of Crosby (pop. 2,299), performed the world’s first successful bone marrow transplant in 1968 at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

first appeared: 10/5/2003

Visitors can journey one-half mile underground at the 1884 Soudan Underground Mine in Soudan. Iron mining ended there in 1962.

first appeared: 9/28/2003

Economist Thorstein Veblen, who wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899 and used the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” spent his childhood near Nerstrand (pop. 233).

first appeared: 9/21/2003

Pioneering horticulturist Peter Gideon planted 350 apple trees in 1854 in Excelsior (pop. 2,393) and developed the popular Wealthy variety apple.

first appeared: 9/14/2003

Engineer Earl Bakken, co-founder of Medtronic in Minneapolis, developed the first battery-powered wearable heart pacemaker in 1957.

first appeared: 9/7/2003

Founded by Swedish immigrants in 1862, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter (pop. 9,747) is the state’s oldest Lutheran college.

first appeared: 8/31/2003

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