50 Fun Facts About Minneapolis

The name Minneapolis combines the Greek word for 'city' with a Dakota word meaning what?

Water is the Dakota 'mni' behind the Minne in Minneapolis; schoolmaster Charles Hoag coined the name, first proposing it as Minnehapolis with a silent h.

What did workers dig beneath Saint Anthony Falls in 1869 that collapsed and nearly destroyed the falls?

A tunnel meant to power new industry on an island upstream flooded on 5 October 1869; it took years, and a concrete wall sunk beneath the riverbed, to make the falls safe again.

Minneapolis earned which nickname from its dominance of a single industry in the late 1800s?

Mill City was earned at the falls: from 1880 Minneapolis was the world's flour-milling capital for 50 years, until Buffalo, New York, overtook it in 1930.

Washburn-Crosby, the Minneapolis flour company founded in 1877, grew into which modern giant?

General Mills was formed in 1928 around Washburn-Crosby, and in 2001 it nearly doubled in size by buying Pillsbury, its hometown rival for more than a century.

What exploded inside Minneapolis's Washburn A Mill in 1878, levelling it and several neighbouring mills?

Flour dust in the air was ignited by a spark from millstones running dry, killing 18 workers; University of Minnesota professors later confirmed it by exploding flour dust in experiments.

Which future vice president was once mayor of Minneapolis?

Hubert Humphrey used the office to set up the city's first fair-employment commission and to take on its entrenched antisemitism, then won a US Senate seat in 1948.

Which fictional kitchen expert did a Minneapolis company invent?

Betty Crocker was dreamed up by the company's advertising department after a 1921 magazine contest brought a rush of cooking questions, so that every reply could carry one personal signature.

Which NBA team won its first titles in Minneapolis before moving west?

Los Angeles Lakers kept a name that only made sense back home: it honours Minnesota's nickname, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and has little to do with southern California.

The largest lake in Minneapolis, Bde Maka Ska, was known until 2018 by what name?

Calhoun honoured John C. Calhoun, the war secretary who sent the surveyors in 1817; his record as a defender of slavery drove the campaign to restore the Dakota name, White Earth Lake.

Minneapolis's enclosed second-storey footbridges, linking some 80 downtown blocks, form a network known by what name?

The Skyway began with one bridge between two office buildings in 1962 and grew link by link, so workers can cross downtown in a Minnesota January without stepping outside.

Which holiday gave its name to the 1991 blizzard that buried the Twin Cities under 28 inches of snow?

Halloween 1991 began three days of snow that left 28.4 inches on the Twin Cities and 36.9 on Duluth, then a state record, and about twenty people dead.

Minneapolis and which neighbouring city are together known as the Twin Cities?

Saint Paul was known as Pig's Eye Landing, after a tavern keeper's nickname, until a missionary built a log chapel dedicated to the apostle Paul in 1841.

The Mall of America, often assumed to be in Minneapolis, is actually in which suburb?

Bloomington's mall needs no central heating: skylights, lighting and the body heat of its shoppers keep it near 70 degrees through a Minnesota winter.

The Mall of America was built on the former site of which Twins and Vikings ballpark?

Metropolitan Stadium lost both teams to the Metrodome and was torn down in 1985 to make way for the mall, where a plaque in the theme park marks home plate.

What did Minneapolis-born Prince hold all at once in the summer of 1984?

A number-one film, album and single arrived together with Purple Rain; its chart-topper 'When Doves Cry' has no bass line, because Prince took it out of the finished track.

Prince died on 21 April 2016 at his Paisley Park studio in which Minneapolis suburb?

Chanhassen is home to Paisley Park, where Prince lived and recorded; guided tours began that October, in a museum he had already been planning.

Which Minneapolis nightclub, opened in 1970 in a former Greyhound bus depot, is the main setting of Purple Rain?

First Avenue opened as The Depot with a Joe Cocker concert in April 1970, and Prince rented the club in the autumn of 1983 to film scenes for Purple Rain.

Which future pop star moved to Minneapolis in 2011 and appeared on a Prince album three years later?

Lizzo co-founded the groups the Chalice and Grrrl Prty in Minneapolis and appeared on Prince's 2014 album Plectrumelectrum, years before her own records reached the charts.

Bob Dylan began performing folk in 1959 in coffeehouses in which Minneapolis student neighbourhood?

Dinkytown, beside the University of Minnesota, is where freshman Robert Zimmerman played the Ten O'Clock Scholar coffeehouse and began introducing himself as Bob Dylan.

On which downtown street does Mary toss her hat in The Mary Tyler Moore Show's opening credits?

Nicollet Mall now has a bronze statue of the hat toss, unveiled by TV Land in May 2002 with Mary Tyler Moore herself looking on.

The Foshay Tower, finished in 1929, was deliberately modelled on which famous structure?

The Washington Monument gave Wilbur Foshay the obelisk shape he wanted for his headquarters, but he lost the tower and his fortune in the 1929 crash, weeks after its lavish opening.

Which composer banned his Foshay Tower dedication piece after the tower's owner paid with a cheque that bounced?

John Philip Sousa forbade any performance until the debt was paid: the 1929 crash had wiped out Wilbur Foshay weeks after the tower's three-day opening party.

What is the tallest building in Minneapolis and in Minnesota?

IDS Center overtook the 32-storey Foshay Tower in 1972, ending the older building's 43-year run as the city's tallest.

Which architect designed the Minneapolis skyscraper with the Crystal Court atrium at its base?

Philip Johnson came to building late: he was the Museum of Modern Art's first architecture curator, and only trained as an architect in his mid-thirties.

Spoonbridge and Cherry, the unofficial symbol of Minneapolis, was made by which husband-and-wife artists?

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen designed it together in the 1980s; she is said to have drawn on the dining etiquette of Louis XIV's court at Versailles.

Spoonbridge and Cherry stands in a sculpture garden run by which Minneapolis museum?

Walker Art Center, which runs the garden with the city's park board, grew out of lumber baron Thomas Walker opening the art collection in his own house to the public for free.

Which Minneapolis theater moved into a riverfront building by Jean Nouvel in 2006?

The Guthrie was born when director Tyrone Guthrie, disenchanted with Broadway, went looking for a city to host a resident company and picked Minneapolis.

The Stone Arch Bridge at Saint Anthony Falls was built in 1883 for which railroad tycoon?

James J. Hill built it to carry his passenger trains into Minneapolis; nicknamed 'Hill's Folly' while it went up, it served the railways until 1978 and walkers and cyclists since 1994.

Which interstate's bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in Minneapolis during the evening rush hour on 1 August 2007?

I-35W lost its river bridge with rush-hour traffic on it, killing 13 people and injuring 145; a replacement opened in September 2008, barely 13 months later.

What did investigators identify as the cause of the 2007 collapse of a Minneapolis interstate bridge?

Undersized gusset plates, a design error from the 1960s, gave way under weight added by earlier renovations and by construction materials parked on the deck that day.

Which Minneapolis venue, opened in 2016 on the site of the Metrodome, hosted Super Bowl LII?

U.S. Bank Stadium saw the underdog Eagles beat the Patriots 41-33 in February 2018 for Philadelphia's first Super Bowl title, with backup quarterback Nick Foles named MVP.

The Minnesota Twins have played in which open-air ballpark since 2010?

Target Field gave the Twins a baseball-only park under open sky after 28 seasons sharing the roofed Metrodome with the Vikings.

What brought down the Metrodome's air-supported roof in 2010?

A heavy snowfall deflated the dome that December, and its successor on the same site was given a sloped roof so that snow slides off.

Which of these Minnesota teams plays its home games outside Minneapolis?

Minnesota Wild joined the NHL in 2000, seven years after the North Stars left for Dallas, and they play in the state capital rather than Minneapolis.

Which Minneapolis retail giant traces its roots to Goodfellow Dry Goods, founded in 1902?

Target began in 1962 as the Dayton department stores' discount chain and so outgrew its parent that the whole company took the Target name in 2000.

Mobile refrigeration inventor Frederick McKinley Jones co-founded which company in 1938?

Thermo King's truck units let fresh food cross the country, and in World War II its whole output went to the US military to keep blood plasma and medicine cold.

A Jucy Lucy, invented in South Minneapolis, is a cheeseburger with the cheese where?

Inside the meat patty, the cheese melts into a molten core, and two rivals on the same Minneapolis avenue each claim to have invented it.

The 5-8 Club and which Cedar Avenue rival both claim to have invented the Jucy Lucy?

Matt's Bar tells of a customer in 1954 who bit into the new burger and exclaimed 'that's one juicy Lucy'; the bar still spells it Jucy, without the i.

Which poet made Minnehaha Falls world-famous in an 1855 epic without seeing it?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote The Song of Hiawatha from books: he took its legends from the writings of Henry Schoolcraft and never travelled to the falls he made famous.

What does the Dakota name Minnehaha, long mistranslated as "laughing" something, actually describe?

A curling waterfall, or simply 'waterfall', is the Dakota sense; the 'laughing' gloss came from Mary Eastman's 1849 book of Dakota legends, and a hit poem made it stick.

What name is given to 20 July 1934, when Minneapolis police fired on striking truck drivers?

Bloody Friday left two strikers dead and 67 wounded, most of them shot in the back; within days the governor had put the city under martial law.

Which Minnesota governor declared martial law in Minneapolis during the 1934 truckers' strike and sent in the National Guard?

Floyd B. Olson, the state's first Farmer-Labor governor, was counted a friend of the unions, yet his Guard raided the strikers' headquarters before the employers settled.

Which site did the Minneapolis-founded American Indian Movement occupy for 71 days?

Wounded Knee was held by the movement in 1973, five years after it formed in Minneapolis and sent out street patrols to watch how police treated Native residents.

Outside a store at which Minneapolis intersection was George Floyd murdered on 25 May 2020?

38th Street and Chicago Avenue is where 17-year-old Darnella Frazier filmed the killing on her phone, footage shown at the trial that sent Derek Chauvin to prison for 22 and a half years.

Which enslaved couple met and married at Fort Snelling in the 1830s?

Dred and Harriet Scott later argued that their years on free soil at Fort Snelling had made them free, the suit the Supreme Court rejected in 1857.

Why was the Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock in Minneapolis permanently closed in 2015?

To stop the spread of Asian carp upstream, Congress ordered the lock closed, ending barge traffic above the falls 52 years after it opened.

Minneapolis is the seat of which county?

Hennepin County honours Louis Hennepin, the friar who saw the falls in 1680 while a captive of the Dakota and named them for his patron saint.

Minneapolis-founded Medtronic built the first wearable battery-powered version of which device?

Pacemaker units then plugged into the wall, so any power cut was a danger to the patient; heart surgeon C. Walton Lillehei asked Earl Bakken for one that ran on batteries.

Which candy bar did Frank Mars launch in Minneapolis?

Milky Way turned a struggling candy maker around: by 1924 the company was selling more than $700,000 a year, and Frank Mars soon traded Minneapolis for a bigger plant in Chicago.

Which engineer designed the world's fastest computers for Minneapolis's Control Data before starting his own supercomputer firm?

Seymour Cray's CDC 6600 so outran IBM's machines that IBM chief Thomas Watson Jr. wrote a scathing memo asking how a lab of 34 people, 'including the janitor', had beaten his company.