Science and Technology

Draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz

About 13,000 years ago the melting glaciers that covered Minnesota and Canada created a vast lake, bigger than all the Great Lakes of today combined. Geologists later named this Lake Agassiz (AH-ga-see), for the Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz. The lake drained twice: first to the south, to form the channel of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi in the Twin Cities, and then, 1,600 years later, to form the course of the Red River of the North.

Honeycrisp apple

In 1982, apple variety MN 1711 at the University of Minnesota’s apple breeding program was saved from the reject pile by horticulturist David Bedford and given another year to prove itself worthy of a patent. The apple, renamed Honeycrisp™, became Minnesota’s official state fruit and one of the most popular apple varieties in the nation.