Charles August (C. A.) Lindbergh, father of the aviator Charles Augustus Lindbergh, was a Little Falls lawyer who represented Minnesota’s Sixth District in the United States Congress for five terms. He was a leader of the progressive wing of the Republican Party and opposed the United States’ entry into World War I. As the nominee of the Nonpartisan League, he waged an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Governor Joseph Burnquist in the bitterly fought 1918 gubernatorial Republican primary.

In 1879, scientists at the University of Minnesota asked chemistry student Laura Linton to analyze rock samples that had been collected along the North Shore of Lake Superior. Her research identified a previously unknown mineral, which her professors named “lintonite” in recognition of her work. Linton went on to become a chemistry and physics teacher, a research chemist, and, after earning a medical degree at the age of forty-seven, the supervising physician of the women’s ward at Rochester State Hospital.

Ojibwe oral tradition identifies Little Round Hill, a small elevation on the banks of the Crow Wing River, as the location of a late-1700s French fur trading fort and a skirmish between Ojibwe hunter-traders and Dakota warriors. Located in Old Wadena County Park at the confluence of the Partridge and Crow Wing Rivers, it was the site of the first intensive archaeological excavation within Wadena County.

The Czechs who came to Roseau County beginning in the 1890s were some of the first European Americans to homestead on land in northwest Minnesota. Czech fraternal lodges were created in America by immigrants to promote their welfare, maintain cultural traditions, and satisfy social needs. Lodge Boleslav Jablonsky was one such lodge.

Minnesota native Maud Hart Lovelace captured her Mankato childhood in her Betsy-Tacy series of thirteen books. During her career, she authored six historical novels for adults as well as five additional books for children.

The Lower Sioux Agency, or Redwood Agency, was built by the federal government in 1853 near the Redwood River in south-central Minnesota Territory. The agency served as an administrative center for the Lower Sioux Reservation of Santee Dakota. It was also the site of key events related to the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

The Luce Line Railroad, known by several different names, was a small rural Minnesota railroad that operated through much of the twentieth century. It connected rural communities in western Minnesota to the Twin Cities and offered transportation for passengers, lumber, grain, and other commodities.

John Lyght, Minnesota’s first African American sheriff, faced different challenges than his constituents as one of the only African Americans in Cook County. A reputation for fairness, however, won him multiple re-elections with wide support between 1972 and 1994.

Founded in 1874, Macalester College began as a Presbyterian college with few resources and only six students. The private liberal arts college became known for its rigorous academics and commitment to internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society.

David Madson was a Minneapolis-based architect who worked for a retail marketing firm while attending the University of Minnesota to complete his master’s degree in architecture. He designed an AIDS memorial in the mid-1990s, when few memorials for the disease existed and the epidemic was at its height. He was involved in the local queer and leather communities, frequented gay bars, and attended HIV/AIDS fundraisers. Madson is widely known as the second victim of spree killer Andrew Cunanan, who murdered him in Chisago County, Minnesota, in 1997.

In 1904, Charles W. Malchow was a professor of medicine at Hamline University Medical School who had studied abroad in Germany and England. He had a happy marriage, a medical practice in downtown Minneapolis, and a house near Lake of the Isles. He was young, handsome, successful, and ambitious. Then he went to prison.

In August 1872, Julia Sears (1839–1929) was hired to head the Mankato State Normal School. Upon taking the job, she became the first woman to hold such a position of power in a coeducational institution of higher learning in the United States. Her leadership challenged traditional gender roles at teachers’ colleges but led to controversy when the local school board replaced her with a man.