The Soudan Mine, which opened in 1884, is located at the western edge of the Vermilion Range, about two miles northeast of Tower. It was the first iron mine in the state, and its first ore shipment in the summer of 1884 marked the beginning of the state's mining industry.

In 1937, the George A. Hormel Company, a meat-packing business in Austin, Minnesota, introduced SPAM luncheon meat to use up an excess of pork shoulder in their inventory. In the eighty years since its introduction, SPAM has fed millions of people and is available in more than forty countries and in over fifteen varieties and sizes.

On October 5, 1869, water seeped and then gushed into a tunnel underneath St. Anthony Falls creating an enormous whirlpool. The falls were nearly destroyed. It was years before the area was fully stabilized and the falls were again safe from collapse.

The State of Minnesota and the health insurance federation Blue Cross and Blue Shield brought a lawsuit against tobacco companies in 1994. The suit—State of Minnesota et al. v. Philip Morris et al.—ended the companies’ chain of legal victories and turned the tide in anti-tobacco efforts throughout the nation.

Published in Minneapolis between 1885 and 1940, Svenska Amerikanska Posten (the Swedish American Post) was one of the largest and most popular Swedish-language newspapers in the United States. It catered to an urban, secular segment of the Swedish American community.

By the 1970s, Red Wing's famed Main Street scarcely resembled its 1870s glory days. But Red Wing was revitalized in the following decades by the vision and initiative of the Red Wing Shoe Company's William D. Sweasy.

Founded in 1882, the Farmer grew from a small publication produced by Edward A. Webb and his wife to a large magazine with a circulation of over 175,000. For over one hundred years, it was published by the Webb Company in St. Paul.

The Theodore Hamm Brewing Company, one of Minnesota’s most iconic breweries, began brewing beer in about 1865 as Excelsior Brewery in St. Paul. Hamm’s was brewed in Minnesota for well over a century, and its brief national profile was bolstered by both its iconic animated bear and its Minnesota-centric slogan: “From the land of sky-blue waters.”

The Thorstein Veblen Farmstead is a historic landmark in Nerstrand, Minnesota. From 1866 until 1888, it was the primary home of Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929), a son of Norwegian immigrants who would become a world-renowned economist and social scientist. His most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), introduced the term “conspicuous consumption.” The ten-acre farmstead was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, and designated a National Historical Landmark in 1981.

Expert Essay: Associate professor of history Tracey Deutsch reveals how Minnesota trading traditions, businesses, and industries both large and small have influenced the course of Minnesota history.

Swan Turnblad was a prominent Swedish Minnesotan and the manager, editor, and publisher of Svenska Amerikanska Posten, a Swedish American newspaper. He donated his family home and the newspaper to the newly founded American Institute of Swedish Arts, Literature and Science (later renamed the American Swedish Institute) near the end of his life.

Wage cuts to employees of the Minneapolis and St. Paul streetcar companies in 1889 prompted a fifteen-day strike that disrupted business and escalated into violence before its resolution. In spite of public support for the strikers, the streetcar companies succeeded in breaking the strike with few concessions.