The heated mill pond, or "hot pond," was invented around 1890. This innovation in Minnesota logging made it possible for logging companies to run their sawmills year-round.

To sum up the broad scope of Oscar C. Howard’s life, one could say simply that he fed Minnesota— literally. The trained chef moved from managing large industrial cafeterias to owning successful catering businesses, which culminated in the development of the Meals on Wheels program. Many others were nourished in a more figurative sense through Howard’s teaching, mentorship, preaching, and philanthropy. Along the way, he broke through countless racial barriers, both official and unspoken.

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.

Hubert H. Humphrey, a giant of Minnesota politics, was one of the most influential liberal leaders of the twentieth century. His political rise was meteoric, his impact on public policy historic. His support for the Vietnam War, however, cost him the office he most sought: president of the United States.

Hüsker Dü was a hardcore punk/alternative rock band that formed in St. Paul and performed and recorded between 1979 and 1987. The Hüskers (as they were called by fans) were a key creative force in the Twin Cities hardcore scene in the early 1980s and became one of the most influential and highly praised American alternative rock bands.

Centralized hydroelectric power came on for the first time in the United States in downtown Minneapolis on September 5, 1882. Minnesota Brush Electric Company produced the power, beating a similar effort in Appleton, Wisconsin, by twenty-five days.

When Alfred T. Andreas chose Minnesota as the subject for his new atlas, the state was only fifteen years old. Andreas's publication of An Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota changed the way state atlases were written, illustrated, and distributed. The atlas also put the social and cultural landscape of early Minnesota literally on the map.

The European immigrants who moved into southwestern Minnesota in the mid-1800s brought their religious faiths with them. The founders of Immanuel Baptist Church in Westbrook (Cottonwood County) moved into the first church building erected in the village after the members of that original congregation moved on to other areas, leaving the building vacant.

By 1880, Goodhue County held within its borders four significant Euro-American immigrant enclaves: Minnesota's largest group of Swedes; the second largest assembly of Norwegians; one of the most densely populated German tracts; and an Irish colony at the county's center. The colonizing of Goodhue County serves as a case study of the state's early immigration patterns.

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a service-oriented fraternal organization. Started in England in the 1700s, it spread to the US in the early 1800s and to Minnesota in 1849. In Polk County, though Crookston Lodge No. 73 disbanded in the 1910s, members of Fisher Lodge No. 87 met regularly for over a hundred years.

In 1934, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs set up a new organizational model to transform Native American tribal governments. The articulation of that model, the Indian Reorganization Act, influenced the governance systems of Native people, including Minnesota’s Ojibwe and Dakota. They now work to customize the government forms imposed upon them.

Built in less than a year, the Industrial Exposition Building in Minneapolis housed the city's first Industrial Exposition in 1886 and the Republican National Convention of 1892. It dominated the Mississippi riverbank east of St. Anthony Falls for decades.