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    MNopedia

    MNopedia — A resource for reliable information about significant people, places, events and things in Minnesota history.

    Hotdish

    A Minnesota culinary institution and a cultural touchstone of the Upper Midwest

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    A serving of hot dish and a green sauce sit on top of a white plate, with a metal fork at the top left.

    Samatar, Hussein (1964–2013)

    The entrepreneur and community leader who founded the African Development Center in Minneapolis in 2002

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    Red Wing pottery

    A stoneware-making tradition that grew out of Red Wing's clay soil

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    Orange salt-and-pepper shakers, a yellow pitcher, and a taupe oil pourer in fluid, round shapes sit against an indigo background.

    Mataafa Storm, 1905

    One of the costliest disasters in the history of Lake Superior

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    In a sepia-tinted photograph, a steamship with a central smoke funnel sits in water beside a harbor broken in half.

    Butler, Pierce (1866–1939)

    The first Minnesotan to serve as a justice of the US Supreme Court

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    A man wearing a suit jacket and tie sits in a study with a book open on the desk in front of him.

    Forest Fires

    Some of the state's deadliest natural (and not-so-natural) disasters 

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    A destroyed structure sits in the foreground next to a standing wooden pole, with charred buildings and fire survivors in the background.

    Commercial Logging, 1838–1949

    An industry that reshaped Minnesota's land, water, and people

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    A railroad car sits on a track next to a stack of logs that extends into an obscured vanishing point at the lower left.

    DesJarlait, Patrick (1921–1972)

    A modernist painter who depicted his Red Lake Ojibwe kin in a contemporary style

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    Recently Added Articles

    Twelve people, most of them in white medical coats, stand beside, on, and in front of the porch of a brick building, with stairs leading up to a raised platform.

    Hastings State Hospital

    Creator: Richard N. Danila
    First Published: November 13, 2026
    Hastings State Asylum for the Insane opened in 1900, and over the next seventy-eight years it housed 16,015 patients. By the 1940s it was a city in itself, with its own farm, power station, ...
    Place
    1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)
    1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)
    Health and Medicine
    Three-quarters head-and-shoulders view of a woman with her hair parted on the side.

    Jeffrey, Laura (1915–2003)

    Creator: Karen Sieber
    First Published: October 21, 2026
    Laura Jeffrey’s influence in St. Paul can be felt beyond her role as one of the city’s first Black librarians. The Macalester College graduate was also deeply involved in African American ...
    Person
    1920–1945 (Great Depression and World War II)
    1945–1989 (Post-World War II United States)
    African Americans
    Education
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    This Day in Minnesota History (November 13)

    1833

    Charles M. Loring is born in Portland, Maine. As Minneapolis park commissioner from 1883 to 1890, he would be a principal player in the development of the city's system of parks, public grounds, and children's playgrounds. He would be the driving force behind creation of Victory Memorial Drive; Loring Community School is named for him. Central Park would be renamed Loring Park, also in his honor.

    1891

    Floyd B. Olson is born in Minneapolis. He was the first Farmer-Labor governor, serving from 1931 until his death on August 22, 1936. He is remembered for implementing New Deal policies and for his skilled negotiating during the 1933 Hormel strike in Austin and the 1934 teamsters' strike in Minneapolis.

    1970

    Police arrest Ronald Reed, a twenty-year-old suspect in an Omaha bank robbery, on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Governor Harold LeVander and St. Paul city councilwoman Rosalie Butler and hold them hostage for exchange with African American political prisoners. Police connect Reed to the Black Panther Party, but Emory Douglass, the Black Panthers' national minister of culture, denies Reed's membership in the party. Reed, an ROTC member at the University of Minnesota, is held in Ramsey County jail on a $150,000 bond, the highest in the state's history.

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