9 Insane Things That Happened In Minnesota You Won’t Find in History Books
By Jo Magliocco|Published April 23, 2016
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Jo Magliocco
Author
Minnesota staff writer for Only in Your State and owner of Minnesota blog NorthGuide.co, I'm a Minneapolis transplant who loves my cats, camera, and local coffee. On the weekends I'm usually exploring the North Shore or making my way through the list of Minnesota's State Parks. Want to talk about MN or ask me a question? Tweet me @sotafiedjo!
Minnesota has a lot of fascinating stories, but unfortunately the majority of people might not know them because they just aren’t in many books. These 9 stories are some of the most outrageous moments in MN history that, printed or not, should be known to the world.
1. July 4th, 1859 - The temperature dropped below freezing, making it an awfully icy holiday. Yikes!
2. November 28th, 1869 - St. Paul photographer Charles Zimmerman makes the news when he gets knocked out and pinned down by a three-hundred-pound icicle that fell while he was exploring under frozen Minnehaha Falls. Luckily, a passerby found him just in time to save him from a certain death.
3. 1898 - Olof Ohman, a Swedish Farmer, found the Kensington Runestone while he was clearing land and gave Minnesota something to argue about and puzzle over for the next hundred plus years.
4. 1920 - In Alexandria, the public library bans Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, believing that it was based on their town, and finding it far too offensive to be allowed.
5. 1929 – In a story that would inspire the name of Hotel Duluth's Black Bear Lounge, a bear follows a car into town, breaks through the Hotel Duluth Coffee Shop window and a local drunk attempts to come to the rescue by chasing it further in with a hammer, and throwing tables and chairs at it. Sergeant Eli Le Beau and Patrolman John Hagen attempted to lasso the bear, but ultimately it was shot in the standoff, stuffed, and mounted in the shop, to be later purchased and moved to Grandma's Saloon & Grill.
6. April 1st, 1934 - According to MinnPost, St. Paul had 2 breaking news stories on this day. The first is about infamous gangster John Dillinger escaping from officers by shooting his way out of a St. Paul apartment. The second is that the grand jury tasked with determining if the city had a gangster problem had declared the issue to be just a rumor. Irony, you beautiful thing.
8. 1946 - It cost over $100,000 when the Minnesota State Fair had to be cancelled just 10 days before opening day, for fear of the polio epidemic getting worse. The crews had to take down everything that had been painstakingly prepared, and everyone had to pick up their contest entries. But Minnesota sure made up for it the next year with record attendance.
9. 1965 - For two weeks, Minneapolis (and all of the rest of MN) were an hour behind St. Paul, when daylight savings began. St. Paul opted to join the rest of the county on May 9th, but Minneapolis waited until the legislation required it on the 23rd, due to the pushback of farmers and some business owners... In case you ever wondered why Congress needed to pass the Uniform Time Act of 1966 a year later.
