Minneapolis Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Minneapolis trivia questions with answers. Minneapolis grew up around the only waterfall on the Mississippi and became the flour capital of the world, then reinvented itself as a city of lakes, skyways, theatre and one very famous purple musician. This quiz covers it in 50 questions: the meaning of the name, the Washburn mill explosion, Pillsbury and General Mills, the 1934 truckers' strike, Fort Snelling, the I-35W bridge and George Floyd Square. It also gets into the things locals like to test visitors on: which lake used to be Lake Calhoun, where Bob Dylan started out, why the Foshay Tower's dedication march was banned, who made the giant spoon, where Mary tossed her hat, which suburb the Mall of America is really in, and which bar invented the Jucy Lucy. Some questions are easy for anyone who has spent a weekend downtown; a few will only be answered by people who know how many neighbourhoods the city has. Every answer has been checked against a documented source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation after you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Minneapolis combines the Greek word for 'city' with a Dakota word meaning what?
Water
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.
Q 02What did workers dig beneath Saint Anthony Falls in 1869 that collapsed and nearly destroyed the falls?
A tunnel
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.
Q 03Minneapolis earned which nickname from its dominance of a single industry in the late 1800s?
Mill City
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.
Q 04Washburn-Crosby, the Minneapolis flour company founded in 1877, grew into which modern giant?
General Mills
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.
Q 05What exploded inside Minneapolis's Washburn A Mill in 1878, levelling it and several neighbouring mills?
Flour dust
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.
Q 06Which future vice president was once mayor of Minneapolis?
Hubert Humphrey
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.
Q 07Which fictional kitchen expert did a Minneapolis company invent?
Betty Crocker
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.
Q 08Which NBA team won its first titles in Minneapolis before moving west?
Los Angeles Lakers
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.
Q 09The largest lake in Minneapolis, Bde Maka Ska, was known until 2018 by what name?
Calhoun
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.
Q 10Minneapolis's enclosed second-storey footbridges, linking some 80 downtown blocks, form a network known by what name?
The Skyway
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.
Q 11Which holiday gave its name to the 1991 blizzard that buried the Twin Cities under 28 inches of snow?
Halloween
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.
Q 12Minneapolis and which neighbouring city are together known as the Twin Cities?
Saint Paul
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.
Q 13The Mall of America, often assumed to be in Minneapolis, is actually in which suburb?
Bloomington
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.
Q 21The Foshay Tower, finished in 1929, was deliberately modelled on which famous structure?
The Washington Monument
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.
Q 22Which composer banned his Foshay Tower dedication piece after the tower's owner paid with a cheque that bounced?
John Philip Sousa
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.
Q 23What is the tallest building in Minneapolis and in Minnesota?
IDS Center
Q 14The Mall of America was built on the former site of which Twins and Vikings ballpark?
Metropolitan Stadium
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.
Q 15What did Minneapolis-born Prince hold all at once in the summer of 1984?
A number-one film, album and single
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.
Q 16Prince died on 21 April 2016 at his Paisley Park studio in which Minneapolis suburb?
Chanhassen
Chanhassen is home to Paisley Park, where Prince lived and recorded; guided tours began that October, in a museum he had already been planning.
Q 17Which Minneapolis nightclub, opened in 1970 in a former Greyhound bus depot, is the main setting of Purple Rain?
First Avenue
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.
Q 18Which future pop star moved to Minneapolis in 2011 and appeared on a Prince album three years later?
Lizzo
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.
Q 19Bob Dylan began performing folk in 1959 in coffeehouses in which Minneapolis student neighbourhood?
Dinkytown
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.
Q 20On which downtown street does Mary toss her hat in The Mary Tyler Moore Show's opening credits?
Nicollet Mall
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.
IDS Center overtook the 32-storey Foshay Tower in 1972, ending the older building's 43-year run as the city's tallest.
Q 24Which architect designed the Minneapolis skyscraper with the Crystal Court atrium at its base?
Philip Johnson
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.
Q 25Spoonbridge and Cherry, the unofficial symbol of Minneapolis, was made by which husband-and-wife artists?
Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen
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.
Q 26Spoonbridge and Cherry stands in a sculpture garden run by which Minneapolis museum?
Walker Art Center
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.
Q 27Which Minneapolis theater moved into a riverfront building by Jean Nouvel in 2006?
The Guthrie
The Guthrie was born when director Tyrone Guthrie, disenchanted with Broadway, went looking for a city to host a resident company and picked Minneapolis.
Q 28The Stone Arch Bridge at Saint Anthony Falls was built in 1883 for which railroad tycoon?
James J. Hill
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.
Q 29Which interstate's bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in Minneapolis during the evening rush hour on 1 August 2007?
I-35W
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.
Q 30What did investigators identify as the cause of the 2007 collapse of a Minneapolis interstate bridge?
Undersized gusset plates
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.