Minnesota Facts

St. Paul, Minnesota was originally called 'Pigs Eye'.

A waterfall in Minnesota called The Devil's Kettle puzzled scientists for decades because half its water disappeared into a hole with no apparent outlet. The mystery was finally solved in 2017 when researchers confirmed the water simply flows through fractured rock and rejoins the river downstream.

On April 18, 2024, a 71-year-old man's SUV slammed into a guardrail on Interstate 94 in St. Paul and burst into flames - he was unconscious and trapped inside. Seven strangers stopped, ran into the smoke, and pulled him out seconds before the car was fully engulfed. One of them, a UPS driver named Michael Coy, climbed inside the burning vehicle to unbuckle him.

Hibbing is an old mining town on Minnesota's Iron Range. In 1919, the mining company found its ore ran directly under the town. So it moved the entire town two miles south. Workers rolled nearly 200 buildings there on logs and steel rails. One hotel didn't survive the trip. The empty ground became a pit long billed as the world's largest open-pit iron mine. Hibbing still stands today, two miles from where it started.

The Bobcat is the loader on every job site. Louis and Cyril Keller, two welders in Rothsay, Minnesota, built it for a turkey farmer who needed his barn cleaned - from junkyard scrap, in six weeks. Neither brother went past 8th grade. The manure fork was bars off the old Rothsay jail. A farm-equipment maker, Melroe, saw it at the state fair and named it Bobcat. Louis's son Joe says it replaced the pitchfork and the wheelbarrow.

Duluth's Aerial Lift Bridge doesn't tilt or swing. Its whole 386-foot span shoots 126 feet straight up in a minute, opening 141 feet of clearance for 1,000-foot ships. Built as a transporter ferry in 1905, it became a lift bridge in 1929. Ships blast a long-short-short Captain's Salute; the bridge answers back. It still does this for almost 900 ships a year, carrying 35 million tons of cargo.