175 Fun Facts About Minnesota

What is the capital city of Minnesota?

Saint Paul is one of Minnesota's 'Twin Cities' and serves as the state capital. It is located on the east bank of the Mississippi River.

What is Minnesota's best-known state nickname?

The Land of 10,000 Lakes undersells it: the state counts well over 10,000 lakes of ten acres or more, and only four of its counties have no natural lake at all.

Minnesota, a state for only three years, was the first to offer troops for which war?

The Civil War had just begun when Governor Alexander Ramsey, who happened to be in Washington, promised the president a regiment of 1,000 volunteers, the first troops any state offered.

What is the highest natural point in Minnesota?

Eagle Mountain, in Cook County, rises 2,301 feet, yet the state's lowest point, on the shore of its great northeastern lake, lies only about a dozen miles away.

Which Minnesota city hosts the Mall of America, one of the largest US malls?

Bloomington's giant mall has no central heating in its common areas: skylights, light fixtures and the body heat of shoppers keep it near 70°F through the winter.

Which famous medical institution has its main campus located in Rochester, Minnesota?

Mayo Clinic grew out of an 1883 tornado: the nuns who nursed the injured offered to build a hospital in Rochester if a local doctor and his sons would staff it.

What is the official state bird of Minnesota?

Common Loon bones are solid, not hollow like most birds', and the extra weight lets it dive about 200 feet after fish; only Alaska has more loons than Minnesota.

The Mississippi begins its journey to the Gulf at which Minnesota lake?

Lake Itasca spills out as a stream only 20 to 30 feet wide, the narrowest the river ever gets, and the flow needs about three months to reach the Gulf of Mexico.

What is the official state flower of Minnesota?

The showy lady's slipper orchid has been protected by state law since 1925, so picking or uprooting one is illegal anywhere in Minnesota.

What does Minnesota's state motto, 'L'Étoile du Nord,' mean in English?

The Star of the North was picked by Henry Sibley, the first governor, for the new state seal, and the legislature approved seal and motto together in 1861.

Which lake forms Minnesota's northeastern border and is also its lowest elevation point?

Lake Superior's shore, about 600 feet above sea level, is Minnesota's lowest ground, yet the state's highest point rises only about a dozen miles inland.

Which million-acre Minnesota preserve adjoins Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park?

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is guarded even from above: a 1949 order by President Truman barred aircraft from flying below 4,000 feet over it.

The 'Minne' in Minnesota, Minneapolis and Minnetonka comes from the Dakota word for what?

Water is mni in Dakota: Minnetonka is 'big water' and Minneapolis adds the Greek for city, while the state's own name is read as both 'cloudy water' and 'clear blue water'.

Which Minnesota city is nicknamed the 'Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas'?

Duluth got the name from Thomas Preston Foster, founder of its first newspaper, who coined it in a speech at a Fourth of July picnic in 1868.

Which North Shore lighthouse, run by the Minnesota Historical Society, was built after one November gale wrecked nearly 30 ships?

Split Rock Lighthouse was completed in 1910; its keeper today is older than Minnesota itself, founded by the territorial legislature in 1849, almost a decade before statehood.

Which of these U.S. states does NOT share a border with Minnesota?

Illinois sits across Wisconsin and Iowa from Minnesota; the land neighbours are Wisconsin, Iowa and the two Dakotas, plus Manitoba and Ontario to the north, with a water boundary with Michigan across Lake Superior.

The Mall of America was built on the former site of which Minnesota sports venue?

Metropolitan Stadium was home to the Twins and Vikings until both left after the 1981 season; a plaque in the mall's amusement park now marks where home plate lay.

Which Minneapolis theater, founded in 1963 by a British director, now overlooks the Mississippi from its 'Endless Bridge'?

The Guthrie is named for Sir Tyrone Guthrie, who found it a home by placing a small notice in the New York Times in 1959 inviting cities to host a resident theater.

Which river, flowing towards Hudson Bay, forms most of Minnesota's western boundary?

Red River of the North floods so often because it runs north: snow melts first in the warmer south, and the surge meets ice still blocking the channel ahead.

Which president commuted most of the death sentences passed on Dakota men after Minnesota's US–Dakota War?

Abraham Lincoln had the trial records of all 303 condemned men reviewed and let 39 sentences stand; 38 men were hanged at Mankato, still the largest mass execution in US history.

Which isolated corner of Minnesota is the only part of the lower 48 states north of the 49th parallel?

The Northwest Angle exists because the 1783 treaty makers used a map that drew Lake of the Woods as an oval; today it can be reached by road only through Canada.

What destroyed the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis on a May evening in 1878?

A flour-dust explosion, set off by a spark, levelled the mill and made national news; mills across the country then fitted ventilation systems to stop dust building up.

As of 2023, which Minnesota-based company was the largest privately held company in the United States?

Cargill was founded in Iowa in 1865 and has never gone public: about nine-tenths of it still belongs to descendants of the founding family.

The nation's first indoor shopping mall opened in which Minnesota suburb?

Edina's Southdale Center opened in 1956; its architect, Victor Gruen, meant it as a town square against car culture and later refused to 'pay alimony' for the malls it inspired.

Aviator Charles Lindbergh spent his boyhood in which Minnesota town on the Mississippi?

Little Falls saw the empty house wrecked by souvenir hunters once his 1927 flight made him famous, so the Lindbergh family gave the farm to the state in 1931 to protect it.

In 1984, Minnesota was the only state carried by which Democratic presidential nominee?

Walter Mondale held his home state by just 3,761 votes, so Ronald Reagan came that close to carrying all 50 states; Mondale's only other win was the District of Columbia.

What hyphenated suffix does Minnesota's state Democratic Party carry in its name?

Farmer-Labor was a third party that outgrew the state's Democrats, electing three Minnesota governors in the 1930s before the two parties merged in 1944.

Which former professional wrestler was elected governor of Minnesota in 1998 on the Reform Party ticket?

Jesse Ventura stood third in a poll two weeks before the vote, on 21 percent, then beat both major-party candidates with about 37 percent.

Which Minnesota governor was Kamala Harris's running mate in the 2024 election?

Tim Walz was a high-school teacher who had never held office when he unseated a six-term Republican congressman in 2006; Kamala Harris chose him in August 2024.

What was unusual about the Twins' World Series wins in 1987 and 1991?

The home team won every time, a World Series first in 1987: the Twins lost 52 of 81 road games that season yet took all four at the Metrodome.

Which Minnesota Lynx forward was named WNBA Most Valuable Player in 2014?

Maya Moore won four titles with the Lynx, then stepped away at her peak to help free Jonathan Irons, who had served 22 years on a wrongful conviction and whom she later married.

Which mushroom did Minnesota choose in 1984 when it became the first state to name an official state mushroom?

Morel got the title at the urging of the Minnesota Mycological Society, whose members hunt the honeycomb-capped mushroom in the state's fields and forests each spring.

Which Minnesota native won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Bob Dylan met the news with days of public silence, ignoring the Swedish Academy's calls until one member called him impolite and arrogant, and he later skipped the ceremony.

Prince died in April 2016 at his Paisley Park home and studio in which Minnesota city?

Chanhassen's Paisley Park opened to tours as a museum in October 2016, six months after he died there, and at first displayed his ashes in an urn shaped like the building.

In Peanuts, whose father is a barber, like the cartoonist's own father in St. Paul?

Charlie Brown shares more than a barber father with his creator: Schulz's high-school yearbook rejected his drawings, and the Little Red-Haired Girl was a real woman who turned down his proposal.

Garrison Keillor's radio show A Prairie Home Companion brought weekly news from which fictional Minnesota town?

Lake Wobegon, where 'all the children are above average', gave its name to the Lake Wobegon effect, the common human habit of rating oneself better than most people.

The Minnesota State Fair is famous for its butter sculptures of whom?

Dairy princesses each sit for six to eight hours in a glass-walled refrigerator while a sculptor carves a 90-pound block of butter, then take the likeness home.

Which Minnesota town, where Hormel makes its canned pork, is nicknamed 'Spam Town USA'?

Austin is home to Hormel and the Spam Museum; Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that without Spam the Soviet Union could not have fed its army.

Spencer Silver accidentally discovered the Post-it note's weak adhesive in 1968 at which Minnesota company?

At 3M, Spencer Silver spent years pitching his 'solution without a problem' before colleague Art Fry used the weak adhesive to mark his hymnal; Post-it Notes went national in 1980.

Which University of Minnesota apple, released in 1991, became the official state fruit in 2006?

Honeycrisp was once slated to be discarded by its own breeders; it went on to earn the university more than $10 million in patent royalties.

Who dug up Minnesota's Kensington Runestone, with its supposed Norse inscription dated 1362, in 1898?

A Swedish immigrant farmer, Olof Ohman, turned it up while clearing trees from his land; most scholars call the stone a hoax because its language is closer to modern Swedish than to medieval.

By what unflattering name, after a tavern keeper, was Minnesota's future capital known before 1841?

Pierre 'Pig's Eye' Parrant ran the tavern; the settlement took its lasting name from the log chapel that the priest Lucien Galtier built there in 1841.

Which novelist was born in Minnesota's capital city in 1896 and finished his first novel in his parents' house there?

F. Scott Fitzgerald rewrote This Side of Paradise on the top floor of 599 Summit Avenue; when the publisher accepted it, he ran outside flagging down cars to share the news.

Which intercity bus line began in 1914 with one Hupmobile carrying Minnesota iron miners to work?

Greyhound began when Swedish immigrant Carl Wickman, unable to sell a Hupmobile touring car, started charging iron miners 15 cents a ride in it instead.

Which building's self-supporting marble dome is the only one larger than Minnesota's State Capitol dome?

St Peter's Basilica was the model: the Capitol's architect based his dome on Michelangelo's, and among self-supporting marble domes only the original is larger.

Which architect of the Woolworth Building and US Supreme Court designed the Minnesota State Capitol?

Cass Gilbert drew fire for cladding the Capitol's exterior in white marble shipped from Georgia rather than in native Minnesota granite.

Saint Paul's Winter Carnival began after a New York reporter in 1885 compared the city's winters to which place?

Siberia, 'unfit for human habitation', was the jibe; the city answered the next winter with an ice palace and crowned King Boreas over a carnival it still holds.

Roughly how tall was St. Paul's 1986 Winter Carnival ice palace, then the tallest ice castle ever built?

The 1986 centennial ice palace rose about 129 feet (128 ft 9 in), a world record at the time; the 1992 palace later topped it at roughly 166 feet.

Which chemical and cleaning-products giant is headquartered in Minnesota's capital city?

Ecolab began in 1923 as Economics Laboratory with one product, Absorbit, which let hotels clean their room carpets quickly; a dishwasher soap came next.

The company behind Scotch tape moved its headquarters from St. Paul in 1962 to which suburb?

Maplewood won the headquarters because the firm had outgrown the St. Paul campus it had occupied for 52 years.

At the 2020 census, the population of Minnesota's capital city was closest to which figure?

That makes it the state's second-largest city, and the smaller half of the Twin Cities pair that anchors a metro area of more than three million people.

Which park in Minnesota's capital city is home to a free zoo, a glass conservatory and a Japanese garden?

Como Park's zoo began in 1897, when the city was given three deer and fenced a pasture for them; entry to the zoo and conservatory is still free.

Which fish, the mainstay of Minnesota sport fishing, has been the official state fish since 1965?

Walleye have a reflective layer in the eye that lets them feed in dim or murky conditions, which is why anglers go after them at night and on windy, choppy afternoons.

Which Ice Age animal did Minnesota name its official state fossil in 2025?

Giant beaver lived in what is now Minnesota until about 10,000 years ago; a first bid to honour it failed in 1988, and the Science Museum of Minnesota championed the one that passed.

Minnesota has the largest US population of which African immigrant community?

Somali Americans first came to the Twin Cities in the early 1990s, fleeing the fighting in Somalia; in 2018 one of them, Ilhan Omar, won a Minneapolis seat in Congress.

Minnesota has the second-largest US community of which Southeast Asian people?

Hmong refugees, US allies in the Laotian 'Secret War', began resettling in Minnesota in the mid-1970s; only California has a larger Hmong population.

Which sport did Minnesota name its official state sport in 2009, at the urging of sixth-graders?

Ice hockey won after pupils at a Minnetonka middle school spent months gathering more than 600 signatures; one of the bill's authors had played the game professionally in Italy.

Which holiday gave its name to the 1991 blizzard that buried parts of Minnesota under three feet of snow?

Halloween 1991 began with rain that turned to snow by evening and kept falling for days; one city measured 36.9 inches, at the time the largest single-storm total in state history.

Outside Alaska, Minnesota has the nation's largest population of which predator?

Timber wolves were never wiped out here: northeastern Minnesota sheltered the last wild wolves in the lower 48 states, and their descendants later spread back into neighbouring states.

Which enormous glacial lake formed in northwestern Minnesota 13,000 years ago?

Lake Agassiz was at its peak larger than all the Great Lakes combined; the silt it left behind became the flat, fertile valley along the state's western edge.

Which Minnesota iron range, the state's largest, was opened by the Merritt brothers in the 1890s?

Mesabi ore made other men rich: the Merritt brothers who opened the range lost control of their holding company, which John D. Rockefeller held by 1896.

Which conifer has been Minnesota's official state tree since 1953?

Red pine is called the Norway pine in the very statute that made it the state tree in 1953, though the species is a North American native.

Seven of Minnesota's eleven reservations belong to the Ojibwe, who with the Odawa and Potawatomi share which name for themselves?

Anishinaabe tradition tells of a migration west from the Atlantic coast over many centuries; the Ojibwe reached what is now Minnesota in the 1600s.

Which Midwestern metro area, besides Chicago, outranked the Twin Cities in population at the 2020 census?

Detroit's metro area counted about 4.4 million people in 2020 to the Twin Cities' 3.7 million, even though the city of Detroit itself has lost nearly two-thirds of its residents since 1950.

Which is the largest lake lying entirely within Minnesota's borders?

Red Lake's Upper and Lower basins make it the largest lake wholly inside Minnesota; most of it lies within the Red Lake Nation, whose leaders refused to let their land be split into private allotments.

Minnesota's largest city is nicknamed 'City of Lakes' for having how many lakes within its limits?

Minneapolis, the 'City of Lakes', holds thirteen lakes within its limits, among them Bde Maka Ska, Harriet and Nokomis, plus the Mississippi, creeks, wetlands and waterfalls.

Which nickname did Minneapolis earn in the decades it led the world in turning wheat into flour?

Mill City's flour plants ran on the water power of Saint Anthony Falls; the ruins of one of them, once the largest in the world, reopened in 2003 as the Mill City Museum.

Downtown Minneapolis links about 80 blocks with what kind of enclosed walkways?

Skyways are enclosed footbridges at second-storey level; developer Leslie Park opened the first in 1962, and the network now lets people cross the city centre in January without going outdoors.

Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis holds what distinction on the Mississippi River?

Its only major waterfall, Saint Anthony Falls drove the industries Minneapolis grew around; after a tunnel collapse nearly destroyed it in 1869, a timber apron was laid over the ledge in 1880 and rebuilt in concrete in the 1950s.

At which Minneapolis nightclub did Prince film the concert scenes of Purple Rain?

First Avenue, a downtown club in a former bus depot, was paid $100,000 to close for the shoot; the song Purple Rain itself had been taped live there at a benefit concert in August 1983.

Which Minneapolis museum stands beside the sculpture garden famous for its giant Spoonbridge and Cherry?

The Walker Art Center grew from lumber baron T.B. Walker's own collection: in 1879 he opened rooms of his Minneapolis home to the public for free, decades before the museum proper.

Since 2008 the Mall of America's indoor theme park, opened as Camp Snoopy, has carried which TV network's name?

Nickelodeon Universe replaced Camp Snoopy after talks over the Peanuts licence broke down in 2006; for two years the rides ran under the stopgap name The Park at MOA.

Shoppers at the Mall of America pay no Minnesota sales tax on which category of purchases?

Clothing sits with groceries and prescription drugs on Minnesota's short list of tax-free goods, so the price on a jacket's tag is the price at the till, while most other purchases carry the tax.

The Ghermezian family developed the Mall of America after building which giant Canadian mall?

West Edmonton Mall made the Ghermezians' name: the Iranian-born family began as rug importers in Montreal, and their firm, Triple Five Group, went on to build both malls.

The Vikings' founders walked away from which rival league in 1960 to take an NFL franchise instead?

The American Football League had named Minneapolis a charter city, but its owners defected within months; the AFL handed the vacant slot and its draft picks to Oakland, creating the Raiders.

What was the nickname of the Vikings' dominant defensive line of the late 1960s and 1970s?

The Purple People Eaters were Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall and Gary Larsen; Page went on to study law and sat on the Minnesota Supreme Court from 1993 to 2015.

Before moving to Minnesota, the Twins franchise played as which team?

The original Washington Senators, an American League charter club in 1901, moved to Minnesota after the 1960 season and became the Twins; an expansion Senators replaced them in Washington.

Since 2010 the Twins have played home games at which ballpark?

Target Field opened in April 2010 and gave Minnesota outdoor baseball again: the Twins had spent the previous 28 seasons under the fabric roof of the Metrodome.

Which slugger, the American League's 1969 MVP, starred for the Twins' 1965 pennant winners?

Harmon Killebrew dislocated his elbow in a collision at first base that August and missed seven weeks, yet was back for the World Series, which the Twins lost to the Dodgers.

In which year were the Timberwolves founded as an NBA expansion team?

The Timberwolves joined the NBA in 1989 alongside the Orlando Magic, playing their first season in the Metrodome before moving into Target Center in 1990.

Which star did Minnesota's NBA team draft out of high school in 1995, sparking eight straight playoff runs?

Kevin Garnett carried Minnesota to the playoffs every year from 1997 to 2004, but the team lost in the first round seven times running before reaching the 2004 conference finals.

Which Minnesota team left for Dallas in 1993, keeping only half of its name?

The Minnesota North Stars dropped 'North' when they moved south, and as the Dallas Stars won the Stanley Cup in 1999, a prize that had escaped them in 26 Minnesota seasons.

Which explorer reached the Mississippi's source in 1832, led there by the guide Ozaawindib?

Henry Schoolcraft had been on an 1820 expedition that stopped short and declared Cass Lake the river's head; on his return in 1832 Ozaawindib took him the rest of the way, to a lake then known locally as Elk Lake.

How far does the Mississippi flow from its Minnesota source to the Gulf of Mexico?

The Mississippi runs about 2,340 miles from its Minnesota headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico, beginning as a stream narrow enough to wade across.

Which folklore figure stands beside Paul Bunyan in the giant 1937 statues that are a northern Minnesota landmark?

Babe the Blue Ox and Paul were built in 1937 for a winter carnival that local boosters staged to win back tourists lost in the Depression.

Junk email is thought to be called 'spam' after a sketch about Minnesota's canned meat by which comedy troupe?

Monty Python's 1970 café sketch buried every other word under chants of 'Spam', which is probably why early internet users borrowed the name for messages that swamp everything else.

What did the initials of the Scotch tape maker originally stand for?

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing was founded in 1902 by five businessmen in Two Harbors to mine corundum; the ore proved worthless, and only a switch to sandpaper saved the firm.

The first Target store opened in 1962 in which Minnesota suburb?

Roseville got the first Target in May 1962 as a discount sideline of Dayton's department stores; the sideline grew so large that in 2000 the parent company renamed itself Target.

General Mills is headquartered in which Minneapolis suburb?

Golden Valley houses General Mills, whose best-known face never existed: Betty Crocker was invented in 1921 by the firm's forerunner as a friendly signature on replies to customers' baking questions.

Which future governor rescued the debt-ridden University of Minnesota, earning the title 'Father of the University'?

John S. Pillsbury joined the regents in 1863, when the school had shut for lack of money, and cleared its debts; it reopened in 1867 and he stayed on its board until 1901.

The Golden Gophers play which rival for the Little Brown Jug?

The jug stayed behind in Minneapolis after a 6–6 tie in 1903: Michigan's coach had it bought for 30 cents because he did not trust the home team's water, and the Gophers kept it as a prize.

At the 1901 Minnesota State Fair, which vice president urged a crowd to 'speak softly and carry a big stick'?

Theodore Roosevelt gave the speech on September 2, 1901; twelve days later President McKinley died of an assassin's bullet and the man with the big stick was in the White House.

Which Minneapolis band, fronted by Morris Day, did Prince assemble in 1981 as an outlet for his spare songs?

The Time played Prince's on-screen rivals in Purple Rain, yet on their debut album he played nearly every instrument himself and hid behind the credit 'Jamie Starr'.

Which Prince single hit number one in summer 1984 alongside his chart-topping album and film Purple Rain?

When Doves Cry spent five weeks at number one with no bass line at all: Prince pulled the bass from the finished track at the last minute because it sounded too conventional.

A bronze statue on Minneapolis's Nicollet Mall shows which sitcom star tossing her hat in the air?

Mary Tyler Moore filmed the hat toss on Nicollet Mall for the credits of her 1970s sitcom, set in a Minneapolis TV newsroom; when the statue was unveiled in 2002, she came to see it herself.

The singer born Robert Zimmerman spent his boyhood and teens in which northern Minnesota town?

Hibbing became home when he was six, after his father caught polio and the family moved to his mother's home town; he formed his first rock bands at Hibbing High.

Judy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm in which Minnesota town?

Grand Rapids is where her parents ran a movie theatre, and where 'Baby Gumm' made her stage debut at two, singing 'Jingle Bells' at its Christmas show; her birthplace is now a museum.

Which Minnesotan served as US vice president from 1965 to 1969?

Hubert Humphrey made his name as mayor of Minneapolis: his 1948 convention speech urging Democrats to back civil rights sent Southern delegates walking out; he was later Lyndon Johnson's vice president.

Which president picked a Minnesota senator as his running mate in 1976 and gave him a West Wing office?

Jimmy Carter made the job more than ceremonial: his vice president got an office in the West Wing, a weekly lunch with the president and a say in choosing the cabinet.

Who in 2006 became the first woman elected to the US Senate from Minnesota?

Amy Klobuchar got into politics after being sent home from hospital 24 hours after giving birth; she lobbied Minnesota's legislature into guaranteeing new mothers a 48-hour stay.

Which state's fair beats Minnesota's in total attendance, thanks to running twice as long?

The State Fair of Texas runs 24 days to Minnesota's 12, so its total gate is larger, while the Minnesota State Fair leads the nation in average daily attendance.

How do summer visitors reach the heart of Voyageurs, Minnesota's only national park?

By boat: no road reaches the heart of Voyageurs, so once the lakes freeze visitors switch to snowmobiles, skis and snowshoes, and can drive a ploughed ice road across Rainy Lake.

Francis Johnson spent 29 years in Darwin, Minnesota, winding the largest one-man example of what?

A ball of twine fills its own gazebo in Darwin; Johnson wrapped it four hours a day from 1950 to 1979, and 'Weird Al' Yankovic turned the roadside wonder into a 1989 song.

Mottos in which language, once painted over, line the ceiling of the Minnesota Capitol's basement café?

German sayings, 29 of them, were painted out of the Capitol's Rathskeller café in 1917 as wartime feeling turned on the language; uncovered in 1930 and hidden again in 1937, they have since been restored.

Best Buy is headquartered in which Minnesota suburb?

Richfield has housed Best Buy since 2003, when the chain pulled its scattered offices onto a single campus there; founder Richard Schulze had started the business by mortgaging his home.

Under what name did Best Buy start out as an audio store in 1966?

Sound of Music opened in 1966; after a tornado wrecked its biggest store in 1981, founder Richard Schulze held a parking-lot sale promising 'best buys', and the slogan became the chain's name in 1983.

Which Minnesota dairy cooperative dropped the Native American woman from its butter boxes in 2020 after 92 years?

Land O'Lakes began in 1921 as a statewide association of cooperative creameries; its catchier name came three years later, from a contest to christen its butter.

Ralph Samuelson invented a new sport in 1922 on which lake, a wide stretch of the Mississippi?

Lake Pepin was Samuelson's proving ground at 18, but he never patented his idea; in 1925 a New York inventor who had developed similar gear on his own took out the first patent.

Which brand did brothers Scott and Brennan Olson launch from their parents' Minneapolis basement in 1980?

Rollerblade began when the brothers spotted an inline skate in a sporting-goods store and rebuilt it so that winter athletes could keep training on dry roads all summer.

Which toy brand began in 1946 as Mound Metalcraft, a Minnesota firm set up to make garden tools?

Tonka trucks started as a sideline: Mound Metalcraft planned to sell garden tools, but its pressed-steel toys sold so well that the firm renamed itself Tonka Toys.

Which General Mills cereal traces back to bran gruel accidentally spilled on a hot stove in Minnesota in 1921?

Wheaties took years to perfect: George Cormack ran dozens of trials before the flakes survived boxing, and they reached shops in 1924 as Washburn's Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes.

Cheerios, launched by General Mills in 1941, is puffed from a dough made mostly of which grain?

Oats gave Cheerios its first name, Cheerioats, and later a cholesterol claim so bold that in 2009 the FDA warned the wording made the cereal an unapproved new drug.

Which Minnesota cookware company trademarked the name 'Bundt' and popularised the pan?

Nordic Ware founder H. David Dalquist made the first Bundt pan around 1950 at the request of Minneapolis Hadassah members, who wanted an aluminium version of the heavy cast-iron cake moulds of Europe.

Which Minnesota native coached the 1980 US Olympic hockey team to the 'Miracle on Ice'?

Herb Brooks, a St. Paul native and former Gophers coach, guided the 1980 US team past the heavily favoured Soviets 4–3 at Lake Placid before the gold-medal win over Finland.

Which Minnesota town is nicknamed the 'Icebox of the Nation'?

International Falls, on the Rainy River opposite Fort Frances, Ontario, won a long trademark fight with Fraser, Colorado, over the 'Icebox of the Nation' title, registered in 2008.

Who alone may quarry the soft red stone at Minnesota's Pipestone National Monument?

Enrolled tribal members of federally recognized nations dig the pipestone by permit, a right written into the 1937 law that created the monument; year-long permits carry a waiting list.

Grand Portage National Monument preserves a centre of what historic activity?

The fur trade ran through Grand Portage, the North West Company's great inland depot until 1802: canoe crews hauled their cargo over an 8.5-mile trail to get round the falls of the Pigeon River.

Lutefisk, the Scandinavian holiday dish beloved in Minnesota, is dried cod that has been soaked in what?

Lye turns the dried fish to jelly and leaves it too caustic to eat, so it must then soak for days in fresh water; Madison, Minnesota, calls itself the lutefisk capital.

Which explorer bargained in 1805 for the land where Fort Snelling would be built?

Zebulon Pike had no authority to make a treaty and left the price blank; the Senate later wrote in $2,000 for land he had valued at $200,000, and Fort Snelling rose there from 1820.

Which supercomputer designer left Minnesota's Control Data Corporation in 1972 to start a rival company?

Seymour Cray quit when Control Data put his troubled next machine on hold in 1972; within four years his new firm had delivered the first Cray-1, one of the most successful supercomputers ever built.

The 1971 'Minnesota Miracle' reforms signed by Wendell Anderson overhauled what?

The 1971 Minnesota Miracle shifted school and local-government financing onto state income and sales taxes, cutting reliance on local property taxes; Time put Anderson on its cover in 1973.

What is Minnesota's bluff-lined far southeast called, a region the last ice-age glaciers missed?

The Driftless Zone escaped the last glaciation, so it lacks the 'drift' of silt, gravel and rock that ice sheets leave behind, and its streams have cut steep bluffs into bare bedrock instead.

Which filmmaking brothers from St. Louis Park set their 1996 crime film Fargo mostly in their home state?

The Coen brothers named the film for a North Dakota city, yet its story only opens in a Fargo bar before moving to Brainerd and the Twin Cities of their childhood.

Which of Minnesota's 87 counties is the most populous, with Minneapolis as its seat?

Hennepin County holds more than one Minnesotan in five; it is named for Louis Hennepin, the Belgian friar who in 1680 gave Saint Anthony Falls its name.

Which territory, organized in 1836, included both Minnesota and Iowa at its creation?

Wisconsin Territory, created in 1836, reached west to the Missouri River, covering Iowa and Minnesota; Iowa Territory split off in 1838 and Minnesota east of the Mississippi stayed under Wisconsin until 1848.

Which NBA franchise won its first five championships in Minneapolis before moving to California in 1960?

The Lakers took their name from Minnesota's abundance of lakes and kept it after moving to Los Angeles, a city with very few natural ones.

Which nougat-and-caramel chocolate bar did Frank Mars create in Minneapolis in 1923?

Milky Way was named after a popular malted drink of the day rather than the galaxy, and it went national in 1924 with $800,000 in sales.

Which fictional homemaker did a Minneapolis flour company invent in 1921 to sign replies to customers' baking questions?

Betty Crocker got her surname from a company director, William Crocker, and her first name because Betty sounded cheery and all-American.

Which sitcom heroine, a 1970s Minneapolis TV news producer, is honored by a hat-tossing statue on Nicollet Mall?

Mary Richards flings her tam skyward in the statue, a 2002 gift from cable channel TV Land that copies the freeze frame ending her show's opening credits.

Which filmmaking brothers from a Minneapolis suburb set their Oscar-winning 1996 crime story Fargo in Minnesota?

Joel and Ethan Coen won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Fargo, which is set in Minnesota despite taking its title from a North Dakota city.

Which Disney film about a Minneapolis lawyer coaching youth hockey inspired the name of a real professional team?

The Mighty Ducks was filmed around Minneapolis, and a year later Disney founded a top-flight hockey club in Anaheim named after its pee-wee team.

Which 1993 comedy casts Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau as feuding, ice-fishing neighbors in Wabasha, Minnesota?

Grumpy Old Men never filmed in Wabasha itself: other Minnesota towns stood in for it, and interiors were shot at Prince's Paisley Park Studios.

Which fruit balances on a giant spoon in the Claes Oldenburg fountain that became an unofficial symbol of Minneapolis?

A cherry was sculptor Coosje van Bruggen's addition to Spoonbridge and Cherry, inspired by the dining etiquette of Louis XIV's court.

Which actress was named after the Minnesota river city closest to the rural farmhouse where she was born?

Winona Ryder, born Winona Horowitz near Winona, Minnesota, took her stage surname from singer Mitch Ryder, whose album her father was playing.

On which holiday does the twelve-day Minnesota State Fair in Falcon Heights traditionally come to an end?

Labor Day is the fair's finale after a run that starts in late August, and no US state fair draws a bigger average daily crowd.

Which winter vehicle did Polaris, co-founded by Edgar Hetteen in Roseau, Minnesota, begin building in the 1950s?

The snowmobile prototype was built by a partner and several employees while Hetteen was away on business, and he came back furious at the use of company time.

Which Minnesota town, a childhood home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, is the setting of TV's Little House on the Prairie?

Walnut Grove never appeared on screen, because the series was shot in California, but the real town on Plum Creek has a museum devoted to Wilder.

Which advertising mascot of a Le Sueur canning company stands as a 55-foot statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota?

The Jolly Green Giant began in 1928 as a scowling caveman in a bearskin, a far cry from the leafy figure that now greets drivers beside Interstate 90.

Which Minneapolis venue, home of the Vikings, hosted the Philadelphia Eagles' first Super Bowl win in 2018?

U.S. Bank Stadium stands on the old Metrodome site beneath a clear plastic roof whose steep slant, inspired by Nordic architecture, copes with heavy snow.

Which Minneapolis cheeseburger, claimed by both Matt's Bar and the 5-8 Club, hides its molten cheese inside the patty?

Jucy Lucy is spelled without the i at Matt's Bar, supposedly by accident, while the rival 5-8 Club insists on the conventional spelling.

Which northern Minnesota city built roadside statues of Paul Bunyan and his animal companion for a winter carnival?

Bemidji built the pair to catch the eye of passing motorists, and Kodak reportedly ranked them America's second most photographed statues, after Mount Rushmore.

Which flavor did Minnesota choose for its official state muffin in 1988 after a campaign by a third-grade class?

Blueberry was the choice of Carlton third-graders, who argued that the wild berries are common in northern Minnesota and wheat is a major crop in the south.

Which kitchen appliance did Charles Strite invent after tiring of the cafeteria food at a Stillwater, Minnesota factory?

The pop-up toaster, patented in 1921, heated both sides of the bread at once and sprang it clear when done, ending the burnt toast Strite's cafeteria served.

Which Minneapolis-raised sibling trio of the swing era sold an estimated 80 million records with their close harmonies?

The Andrews Sisters, LaVerne, Maxene and Patty, got their break by winning a talent contest at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis when Patty was twelve.

Which Iron Range mining town has been home to the United States Hockey Hall of Fame Museum since 1973?

Eveleth, a town of only a few thousand people, also shows off what it calls the world's largest authentic hockey stick in its downtown.

Besides Ontario, which Canadian province shares a border with Minnesota, touching the state's far northwest?

Manitoba lies downstream of northwestern Minnesota, whose rivers run north across the border on their way to Hudson Bay.

Which 53-foot Minneapolis waterfall won worldwide fame from Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha?

Minnehaha Falls gave its name to the poem's heroine, not the other way round, and Longfellow never saw the waterfall he made famous.

Which body of water on Minnesota's northern border, shared with two Canadian provinces, holds over 14,000 islands?

Lake of the Woods has so many islands and bays that its shoreline is put at 65,000 miles, more than twice the distance around the Earth.

What nickname, inspired by its shape on the map, is given to the northeastern corner of Minnesota?

The Arrowhead sends its water three ways: east into the Great Lakes, south down the Mississippi and north toward Hudson Bay.

Which river, one of the first eight Wild and Scenic Rivers named in 1968, forms much of Minnesota's eastern border?

The St. Croix marks the state line with Wisconsin for about 125 miles before it joins the Mississippi at the town of Prescott.

Which Minnesota county, named for a 17th-century friar and explorer, has Minneapolis as its seat?

Hennepin, the state's most populous county, honors Father Louis Hennepin, a Belgian priest whose travel writing introduced Europe to Niagara Falls.

Which shallow lake, Minnesota's second-largest inland lake, fills with thousands of ice-fishing houses each winter?

Mille Lacs is nowhere deeper than 42 feet, and it is a prime walleye spawning ground where billions of eggs and fry are produced every year.

Which Minnesota iron range has a name blending its prospector's first name with that of his dog?

Cuyuna joins the first three letters of Cuyler to Una, the dog's name, and Adams had found the ore by surveying with a dip needle in 1895.

Which Minnesota county, reaching from Canada to the Great Lakes, is the largest by area east of the Mississippi?

St. Louis County covers 6,860 square miles, nearly a tenth of it water, and reaches far enough north to take in Voyageurs National Park.

Which river on Minnesota's border with Ontario drops 120 feet at High Falls, the state's highest waterfall?

The Pigeon is so broken by falls near its mouth that canoe travelers spent centuries hauling their loads along a nine-mile overland detour instead.

Which challenger unseated Minnesota governor Elmer L. Andersen by just 91 votes after a recount that ran into 1963?

Karl Rolvaag, then the lieutenant governor, had to go to court to win a recount, and the final result was not announced until the middle of March.

Which Scandinavian country did future Minnesota governor Knute Nelson leave as a six-year-old emigrant?

Norway-born Nelson governed Minnesota from 1893 and went on to become the first Scandinavian-born member of the United States Senate.

Which Minnesota governor, elected in 2010, is a great-grandson of the founder of a Minneapolis department-store chain?

Mark Dayton, whose family's Dayton's stores grew into a national retail giant, had earlier served a term in the US Senate and as state auditor.

Which two-term Minnesota governor ran for president in 2012 and was then a finalist to be Mitt Romney's running mate?

Tim Pawlenty had co-chaired John McCain's 2008 campaign, and in 2018 he tried and failed to win a third term as governor.

Which street in Minnesota's capital, known for its Victorian mansions, is home to the Governor's Residence?

Summit Avenue's number 1006 was a lumber baron's family home until 1965, when his two youngest daughters donated it to the people of Minnesota.

Which Minnesota governor, the youngest ever elected when he won in 1938, later sought the presidency nine times?

Harold Stassen kept a campaign promise by resigning as governor in 1943 to serve in the Navy, where he became an aide to Admiral William Halsey.

Which frontier trader, Minnesota Territory's first delegate to Congress, went on to become the state's first governor?

Henry Sibley, a Democrat elected just as the state was being born, later commanded Minnesota's troops in the Dakota War of 1862.

Which Iron Range dentist is the only Minnesota governor to have served non-consecutive terms?

Rudy Perpich, the son of a Croatian immigrant miner, did not learn to speak English until at least the first grade.

Which Minnesota governor, in Washington when Fort Sumter fell, is credited as the first to offer Lincoln Union troops?

Alexander Ramsey went straight to the White House with his offer, and had earlier been the very first governor of Minnesota Territory.

Which Minnesota governor nominated John F. Kennedy at the 1960 convention and then became his Secretary of Agriculture?

Orville Freeman stayed in the post for eight years under two presidents and is remembered for proposing the Food Stamp Program.

Minnesota, home of the Jennie-O brand, ranks as the nation's largest producer of which farm-raised bird?

Turkeys made the name of Jennie-O, which began when its founder started raising the birds in 1940 and bought a processing plant in Willmar in 1949.

Which food, known to the Ojibwe as manoomin, has been Minnesota's official state grain since 1977?

Wild rice is the seed of an aquatic grass, and harvesters still gather it by bending the ripe heads over a canoe and knocking the grain loose with sticks.

Which beverage did Minnesota lawmakers name the official state drink in 1984, hoping in part to boost tourism?

Milk was picked, its chief sponsor said, to promote the product and to show the dairy industry that the state cares about it.

Which root crop does Minnesota lead the nation in growing, mostly in the flat valley along its northwestern border?

Sugar beets from this valley supply American Crystal, a grower-owned cooperative that sells about 15 percent of all the sugar in America.

Which insect ravaged Minnesota farms in the 1870s, prompting Cold Spring settlers to build a chapel against its return?

Locusts of the Rocky Mountain species did $200 million of crop damage across the region in the 1870s, yet within 30 years they were apparently extinct.

Which fruit did University of Minnesota breeders make cold-hardy with varieties named Frontenac and Marquette?

Grapes like Frontenac shrug off winter lows of −35 °F, which has let vineyards take root across the northern states and into Canada.

Which University of Minnesota-trained plant scientist won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize as father of the Green Revolution?

Norman Borlaug failed the university's entrance exam at first, yet his high-yield wheat is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.

Minnesota 13, the Prohibition moonshine of Stearns County, took its name from a university-bred variety of which crop?

Corn bred by the University of Minnesota to ripen in a short growing season was widely planted in Stearns County, and the liquor made from it kept the seed's name.

Which farmers' fraternity was co-founded in 1867 by Oliver Kelley, a Minnesota homesteader from Elk River?

The National Grange grew out of Kelley's belief that farm families needed a fraternal order of their own, and he served as its first secretary.

Which forage crop did German immigrant Wendelin Grimm first make winter-hardy on his Carver County, Minnesota farm?

Alfalfa died off in his first Minnesota winters, so Grimm kept saving and replanting seed from the survivors until the cold no longer killed his crop.