06/04/2026
A little Minnesota history as we welcome the month of June, courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society:
1836
Charles Nathaniel Hewitt is born in Vermont. He led the state legislature to create the state board of health in 1872, making Minnesota the third state to do so. Dr. Hewitt died in 1910.
1839
Forty-seven soldiers at Fort Snelling are confined to the guardhouse for violating orders about visiting the saloon of Henry Menk, near modern Fort Road and Munster Avenue, in St. Paul.
1859
Logs driven by floodwaters knock down the second and third bridges built over the Mississippi River, in Minneapolis. The first, the Father Louis Hennepin Suspension Bridge, remains standing.
1916
Forty miners on the Mesabi Iron Range walk off the job at the start of a massive strike, coordinated by the ethnically diverse rank and file, with help from experienced organizers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Scab workers undermine the strike, and the strikers concede defeat after three and a half months. However, by December, Oliver Iron Mining Company, a subsidiary of US Steel, compromises with pay raises and other small reforms. The company maintained its anti-union stance until 1943.
1990
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev spends a few hours in the Twin Cities.
1999
Duluth's Ed Hommer is the first double amputee to reach the top of Mount McKinley (20,320 feet). He had lost his legs to frostbite after a plane crash on the mountain in 1981.
