David Lance Arneson was a game designer from St. Paul who collaborated with Ernest Gary Gygax to publish the famous tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in 1974. Although the D&D property changed hands in 1997, and the game’s mechanics have evolved, its core wouldn’t be what it is today without Dave Arneson.

The US Congress ordered the beginning of mail service from Superior to Grand Portage, Minnesota, in 1855, but service was spotty. John Beargrease and his brothers came to the rescue. They began covering a regular mail route between Two Harbors and Grand Marais in 1879.

Minneapolis-born Cora Johnstone Best achieved international success as a mountaineer during the 1920s. She was a pioneer in the sport, becoming a licensed guide at a time when women were rarely given the opportunity to be lead climbers.

Blue Mounds State Park, named for a long, high Sioux quartzite cliff, is located in southwestern Minnesota on the Iowa and South Dakota borders. The cliff, one and one-half miles long and up to ninety feet high, appeared to be blue in color to the early Euro-American immigrants who saw it from a distance. A unique herd of bison, the largest North American mammal, makes its home in the park on 533 acres of native tall grass prairie, which escaped plowing due to poor soil quality.

In September of 2010, the Minnesota Twins unveiled a memorial to highlight Calvin Griffith, their first owner. While Griffith is credited with bringing professional baseball to Minneapolis, his racist attitudes and actions outshine his accomplishments. In response to increasing public pressure following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the statue was removed in June of 2020.

In the early twentieth century, few meeting and event spaces in Minnesota were designed to be accessible to the state’s deaf, deafblind, and hard-of-hearing community. In 1916, Margaret Brooks Thompson hired deaf architect Olof Hanson to design the Charles Thompson Memorial Hall in St. Paul in memory of her husband. It was the first social club designed exclusively for the deaf in the United States.

Sired by a champion pacer and born in 1896, Dan Patch was bred to be a racehorse. At first glance, though, his chances didn't look too good. He had long legs, knobby knees, and worst of all, a sweet disposition—not considered an asset in the hypercompetitive world of harness racing.

Franz Jevne State Park is Minnesota’s smallest state park, consisting of about 120 acres of hardwood forest and wetlands. Stretching along the southern shoreline of the Rainy River in Koochiching County, the park represents the combination of natural resources and social history that built Minnesota’s far north. It shares a rich culture with the Manitou Burial Mounds, a National Historic Site of Canada, on the river’s northern bank.

Born into slavery in 1852, Prince Honeycutt set a course for himself that led from Civil War battlefields in Tennessee to freedom in the North. He settled in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, in 1872, and his accomplishments there were milestones in the state’s history: the first Black professional baseball player, the first Black firefighter, and the first Black person to run for mayor. In addition, he used his business and leadership skills to assist other Black people moving from the Jim Crow South to rural Minnesota.

As enthusiasm for professional sports grew in Minnesota during the mid-twentieth century, Metropolitan Stadium, designed for baseball, became too small and had too few amenities to continue to attract professional teams. By the early 1970s, Minnesota's teams, seeking greater profits, began to demand a bigger and better venue. The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome ("The Dome"), a covered, multi-purpose stadium built in downtown Minneapolis, served this purpose for thirty-one years.

The Interstate State Park, located on 295 acres in Taylors Falls, is the second-oldest state park in Minnesota. Created in 1895, its unique topography and geological history draw many visitors to the area. It is the first park in the United States to be located in two states, Minnesota and Wisconsin, with the St. Croix River serving as the border. The two parks are operated separately by the states’ Departments of Natural Resources.