Amazing Lore, Legends, and Myths

Additional reporting and research by Chuck Terhark and Sean McPherson

Richard Avedon photo by Caitlin Abrams

The Assassinated Photo in the Black Forest Inn

Crazily, Eat Street’s stoic Bavarian joint has a signed Richard Avedon portrait hanging next to the bar, gifted from the photographer himself to commemorate his 1970 exhibition at the nearby Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Crazier is that the photo (of members of a 1963 Daughters of the American Revolution convention) was assassinated in 1986 by a surly bar patron who, moments after plugging the pic with two bullets from point-blank range (a third shot missed), casually walked down to the police station and turned himself in. Avedon, who has since seen the carnage in person, actually liked the change.

Ted Williams (1938) and Willie Mays (1951) Both Played for the Minneapolis Millers Before Getting to the Big Show

But did you know Darryl Strawberry (1996) and Jack Morris (1996) played for the St. Paul Saints after their stints in the big leagues?

Post-It Notes are the Result of a Colossal Failure

Put “discovery of the Post-it note” next to “discovery of America” on the list of totally worthwhile things that were discovered by accident. As it happens, in 1968, the Christopher Columbus of the chemistry world, Dr. Spencer Silver, failed miserably in his attempts to formulate a mega-strong adhesive for 3M when he accidentally created the polar opposite: a low-tack, reusable adhesive. Sensing he’d actually stumbled upon something good, Silver didn’t let the idea die. In 1974 his colleague Art Fry used Silver’s adhesive to make a bookmark stick to his hymnbook. The rest is list-making history.

Honeycrisp Apples are the State Fruit

The beluga caviar of the apple world was created 55 years ago (and brought to market 24 years ago), the brainchild of University of Minnesota researchers David Bedford and Jim Luby. Thanks to a petition brought before the Minnesota State Legislature by Bayport’s Andersen Elementary School in 2006, these tasty, pricey apples are now the official state fruit.

Mark Mallman’s Magnificent Marathon Songs

In 1999 Minneapolis musician Mark Mallman decided to perform a 26-hour-long live song called “Marathon 1.” Not satisfied, in 2004 he upped the ante with a three-day-long “Marathon 2” at the Turf Club in St. Paul. Then, in 2010, he outdid himself with a 78-hour-long song with more than 400 pages of lyrics, earning him the honor of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman proclaiming October 7–10, 2010, “Mark Mallman Days.” And then in 2012, just when it seemed like Mallman’s antics couldn’t get any gnarlier, he performed an eight-day, 150-hour nonstop performance in the back of a van driving from New York City to Los Angeles. It was called “Marathon IV: Road Rogue” and is said to be “the first-ever intercontinental mobile musical webcast in the history of the Internet.”

Tiny Tim Wasn't Born Here, But He Sure Did Die Here

Somewhere along the line, the Tiny Tim narrative started pegging the campy ukulele player as a Minnesotan, even though Herbert “Tiny Tim” Khaury was actually born April 12, 1932, in Manhattan. After surviving a heart attack while onstage at a ukulele festival in Massachusetts earlier that fall, he met his maker on November 30, 1996, when a second heart attack struck while onstage at the Minneapolis Woman’s Club Theatre. He’s buried at a tomb in Uptown’s Lakewood Cemetery.

The Kensington Runestone

You’ve likely heard tell of the 200-pound sandstone tablet purportedly discovered in 1898 by Swedish immigrant Olof Ohman on his farm outside of Solem in Douglas County. It’s the tablet covered in inscriptions (“runes”) that, if the date “1362” on the stone is to be believed, were the doing of Scandinavian explorers in the mid-14th century. Although it’s hard to imagine that an immigrant farmer would have the wherewithal, expertise, or even desire to fabricate such elaborate, antiquated-looking inscriptions, as early as 1910 the prevailing belief was that the Runestone was a fraud due to some grammatical anomalies in the inscription that were inconsistent with Scandinavian dialects of the 14th century. Yet, to this day, believers in the Runestone’s authenticity persist, including the staunch support of Dr. Richard Nielsen, a marine engineer and mathematician, and Scott Wolter, a forensic geologist and host of the History Channel’s America Unearthed. Using a method of his own invention called archaeopetrography, a scientific process for dating stone artifacts, Wolter concluded that the carvings vastly predated 1898 and could theoretically date back to the 14th century. Oh, and according to Wolter, the perpetrators of the stone were not the Scandinavians at all; they were none other than the Knights Templar. All we know is, real or not, all this hotly contested Kensington Runestone debate sure has runed the good name of the tablet’s discoverer, Olof Ohman.

The Bundt Pan isn't Nordic Ware's Most Interesting Invention

By now you've heard that H. David Dahlquist invented the iconic Bundt cake pan (and with it, the iconic Bundt cake) in 1950 and parlayed its massive popularity into St. Louis Park cookware company Nordic Ware. But tasty ridged cakes aren't even close to the most essential innovation Nordic Ware is responsible for. The company also introduced and patented the "Micro-Go-Round," the automated food rotator used in most microwaves. BONUS FACT! The iconic Nordic Ware sign at the corner of Highway 100 and Highway 7 is painted on the first reinforced circular concrete grain elevator in the United States.

Peanuts is the Longest Story Ever Told by One Human Being

Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, dropped this incredible trivia nugget on the PBS program NewsHour following the death of St. Paul native Charles Schulz in 2000. Thompson based this claim on the fact that Schulz drew more than 17,000 strips over nearly 50 years, making it longer than any epic poem, Tolstoy novel, or Wagner opera.

Speaking of Peanuts, Charlie Brown Never Actually Kicks the Football

In all of those strips, Chuck never actually makes contact with the ball. He came close in 1979, when Lucy finally made good on her promise not to pull the ball away at the last second. Charlie, ever the tragicomic hero, accidentally kicked her instead of the ball. His baseball team does, however, win a game. Ten, in fact. But all but two of their victories came during games that Charlie Brown missed.

Minnesota is Not the Land of 10,000 Lakes

We’ve actually got 11,842 lakes, amounting to nearly 90,000 miles of shoreline. While that’s more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined, it doesn’t hold a candle to Alaska, which has 3 million lakes amounting to a shoreline total that puts the lower 48 to shame.

Minnesota is also the Land of 123 Rice Lakes

. . . and 201 Mud Lakes . . . and 154 Long Lakes.

Nirvana’s Hidden Local Connection

In 1993 Nirvana recorded In Utero, the follow-up to its 1991 grunge opus Nevermind, at Cannon Falls’ Pachyderm Studio. What’s lesser known is that Kurt Cobain’s eventual wife, Courtney Love, was briefly in Minneapolis-based band Babes in Toyland before being kicked out and forming Hole, the group she fronted when she first met Cobain.

First Ave’s Ghost Story

Our State Fair is Bigger Than Yours

Sure, Texas’s state fair has a larger annual attendance, but it runs twice as long as the “Great Minnesota Get-Together,” making ours bigger by daily attendance. C’mon, Texas. You get all the big stuff. Give us this one.

The "Wendigo" of the Northwoods

Forget Sasquatches, yetis, and chupacabras, apparently we've got our own cannibalistic man-beast in the Northwoods: the Wendigo. Appearing in one form or another in various northern Native American tribal legends including Ojibwe, the Wendigo has an elk-like head and is a gaunt, gigantic, always-ravenous beast. Artists' depictions of it are pretty much as terrifying as you'd imagine them to be.

Before the Choo Choo Bar Was a Campy Place in Loretto, It Was a Candy Bar

Turns out St. Paul candy purveyor Pearson's legendary Salted Nut Roll was so popular in the 1930s that other manufacturers began mimicking it. Pearson's responded by changing the name to the Choo Choo Bar, but sales took a nosedive so it switched back to the original name and increased the size of the Pearson's logo on the packaging. Mmm, Salted Nut Rolls.

Bob Dylan Didn't Put Minnesota Music on the Map

The Andrews Sisters—of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" fame—were already household names when little Bobby Zimmerman was born in 1941. They went on to sell more than 90 million records, making them arguably the most successful musical group in Minnesota history.

Blood On The Tracks was Recorded in a Soundproof Room . . . Kinda

In 1975 Bob Dylan’s 15th album was recorded in south Minneapolis at digital recording pioneer Sound 80. While Sound 80 is no longer in that space, an even more intriguing resident now occupies 2709 East 25th Street: sound and acoustic dynamics research facility Orfield Laboratories. The private facility is home to an anechoic chamber believed to be the quietest place on earth.

The Mississippi is Not the Country's Longest River

That distinction goes to the Missouri River, whose 2,341 miles make it all of 21 miles longer than the Mighty Miss.

Our Water Flows Outwards in Three Directions

It turns out all the water of ours has a funny way of leaving the state, as it flows north to Hudson Bay via the currents of the Red River, rides the Mississippi south tot he Gulf of Mexico, and, perhaps most interestingly, flows east to the Atlantic Ocean on the strength of the 15.3-mile-long East Savannah River, which starts in northeastern Aitkin County, flows into the St. Louis River and then into Lake Superior, and pushes east through the Great Lakes, eventually connecting with the St. Lawrence River and ultimately the Atlantic.

Dear Abby’s Twin Cities Story

Advice columnist Abigail “Dear Abby” Van Buren moved to Minneapolis to marry Morton Phillips, heir to the Phillips Beverage Company. Her real name was Pauline Esther Phillips, and her twin sister, Esther Pauline Lederer, was rival advice columnist Ann Landers. When Dear Abby was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2002 (she died in 2013 at the age of 94), her daughter, Jeanne Phillips, assumed the Dear Abby mantle.

A Hutchinson Guy Was Possibly Miscredited With Being the First U.S. Soldier to Set Foot in Europe During WWII

On January 26, 1942, U.S. Private First Class Milburn Henke, a member of Company B of the 133rd Infantry of the still-existing-to-this-day 34th “Red Bull” Division, was at the right place at the right time when the transatlantic troop ship Stratford arrived in Belfast. Henke was the first off and became the de facto poster boy for the mighty Yanks officially joining the war. The only problem was that another troop ship, the Chateau Thierry, had departed New York City simultaneously and arrived and disembarked in Belfast earlier that same day. Charles Leighton, a member of the 119th Engineers, who came over on the Chateau Thierry, was already on the ground in Belfast: “My mother had saved all the souvenirs from the first troops—and I saw this picture of the arrival. I picked out a few of the buddies that were in the picture. We were standing on the side there, watching these other troops march by. The headline read: ‘First Troops Arrive in Ireland.’ And I thought, ‘Can’t be, if they’re talking about the guys marching in.’ We were already there.”

Bob Dylan Lived Here

After breaking from the University of Minnesota chapter of Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity, a slightly older, more musically evolved Bob Dylan version of Robert Zimmerman lived above Gray’s Campus Drug in Dinkytown on the corner of Southeast 4th Street and 14th Avenue Southeast, the property that is now the Loring Pasta Bar.

Weird Al Yankovic Owes Everything to a Minnesotan

While Weird Al was born Alfred Matthew Yankovic in Downey, California, in 1959, the bizarro syndicated radio host who ultimately made him famous (and in turn made himself famous-er), Dr. Demento, was born Barret Eugene Hansen in Minneapolis in 1941.

Halsey Hall’s “Holy Cow”

Legendary Minnesota sports broadcaster Halsey Hall beat both Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray to the “holy cow” home run announcement punch, but his legend doesn’t stop there. The charismatic wordsmith who got his start writing for almost every Twin Cities newspaper of the day (Minneapolis Tribune, Minneapolis Star, and the St. Paul Pioneer Press) was known for his sharp, irreverent in-game wit, like his famous quip during a Minnesota Golden Gophers and Michigan Wolverines football game: “Michigan comes onto the field in blue jerseys and maize pants. And how they got into Mae’s pants, I’ll never know.” He was known for traveling with a satchel full of booze and always having a full glass of scotch and a cigar in the broadcast booth. Once, during a 1968 broadcast in Chicago, the ash ignited some papers on the floor of the booth, and that in turn ignited Hall’s sport coat draped over his seat. When he got back to town, 3M presented him with an asbestos sport coat. Holy cow, that probably seemed like a better idea at the time.

A Legendary Leak in Stanley’s Bar Room’s Art Deco Urinals

As urinals go, the art deco centenarians at Stanley’s Northeast Bar Room in Minneapolis are about as magnificent as they come—and not just because they’re amazing looking. No, the urinals that have been in the space since then-Stasiu’s Bar bought them from the defunct West Hotel in the 1940s are rumored to have had no less famous a men’s room patron than Al Capone.

Sonia Peterson was at Least Partially Responsible for George Clinton's Iconic Dreads

The founder of punky, trendsetting hair shop Hairpolice, the late Sonia Peterson was a pioneer in the use of synthetic dreadlocks with her game-changing innovation of the "pinch braid" method of attaching them to human hair, quickly adopted by George Clinton, among other notable musicians.

The Cosmopolitan’s Minneapolis Origin Story

While most cocktail historians peg the drink’s roots to 1980s Miami, a local bartender named Neal Murray claimed that he happened upon the recipe in 1975 at Minneapolis steak house Cork & Cleaver. He decided to add cranberry juice to a kamikaze, to which someone said, “how cosmopolitan.”

Water Skis Were (Mostly) Invented Here . . .

In 1922, 18-year-old lake rat Ralph W. Samuelson of Lake City steam-bent the tips of a pair of eight-foot-long pine boards into the world’s first water skis. The problem was, he got so wrapped up in figuring out how to use said skis that on October 27, 1925, serial inventor Fred Waller of upstate New York filed U.S. Patent 1,559,390 for water skis, which he marketed as Dolphin Akwa-Skees, proving he was a better invention stealer than speller. Waller would go on to invent the first widescreen motion-picture format, Cinerama, and proceeded to release a (you guessed it) water ski film.

. . . The Snowmobile, as it Happens, Wasn’t

The first U.S. patent for a track-and-ski snow vehicle was granted in 1915 to Ray Muscott of . . . Michigan. The first commercial snowmobile, however, was created here. The Polaris Sno Traveler debuted in 1956.

Southdale Mall was the First Enclosed, Climate-Controlled Mall in America

But that distinction is small potatoes when you compare it to its superhuman spawn the Mall of America, which is the size of 78 football fields (9.5 million square feet).

The Burial Mounds of Grey Cloud Island

While it's, um, debatable that Cottage Grove's sparsely populated township Grey Cloud Island (sandwiched between Highway 61 and the Mississippi River) is actually haunted, it's not debatable that the 3.9-square-mile island has an insanely high concentration of Native American burial grounds . . . and that never seems to be good juju for people looking to live in peace in their suburban split-levels.

Rollerblades Aren’t Scott Olson’s Strangest Invention

The Waconia-based action sports inventor has spent the time since Rollerblades debuted in 1982 refining and marketing a suspended monorail “fitness machine” called Skyride Technologies. While Skyride hasn’t exactly become the overnight sensation Rollerblades did, it is undeniably cool looking.

Morris, MN’s Maybe Skyjacker

On November 24, 1971, Dan “D.B.” Cooper purchased a one-way ticket on Northwest Orient flight 305 from Portland to Seattle. He boarded, ordered a bourbon, and threatened to blow the flight up if he wasn’t given $200,000 in unmarked $20 bills and flown to Mexico City. The plane landed, passengers were exchanged for cash, and the plane took off again. That’s when Cooper strapped on a parachute, grabbed his money, and disappeared into lore. Despite countless manhunts in Washington’s dense woods, various physical clues surfacing over the years, and literally thousands of potential suspects the FBI has vetted and dismissed, the mystery of who D.B. Cooper really is endures.

In 2003, while watching a Cooper documentary, a retired postal worker from Morris, Lyle Christiansen, became convinced that his dead brother Kenny was Cooper. A paratrooper in WWII, Kenny became a mechanic at Northwest Orient in the early ’50s and worked for the airline for most of his life. Though he was smaller and lighter skinned than most descriptions of Cooper, there was a facial resemblance, and friends say bourbon was his drink of choice. What’s more, shortly after the hijacking Kenny bought a house using cash, abruptly stopped saving Northwest Orient newspaper clippings (which he’d done his entire career), and whispered to Lyle on his deathbed, “There is something you should know but that I cannot tell you.” By 2010 the case for Kenny as Cooper had gained real momentum and detective Skipp Porteous published a book theorizing that Kenny and Cooper were one. In 2011 the History Channel’s Brad Meltzer’s Decoded summarized all the evidence linking the two, but drew no firm conclusions. So, was D.B. Cooper Kenny Christiansen? Despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence, the FBI maintains he’s not even a suspect worth taking seriously.

The Minnesota Iceman

In the late 1960s, a Minnesotan named Frank Hansen started touring carnivals, fairs, and sideshows with a man-beast frozen in a block of ice. Hansen claimed that a reclusive millionaire living in California had discovered the “Minnesota Iceman” in Siberia and charged Hansen with the task of showing him to the world. Although most believed it to be an outright hoax, in 1968 a pair of cryptozoologists who were, as cryptozoologists do, trying to find Bigfoot examined the iceman and concluded that it was a new species of Neanderthal. They published their results in a Belgian scientific journal called Argosy, which piqued the Smithsonian’s interest. It didn’t take long, however, for the Smithsonian to determine that the Minnesota Iceman was commissioned by Hansen in 1967 and was, in fact, just a “carnival exhibit made of latex rubber and hair” frozen in ice. In 2013 the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas, won the Minnesota Iceman in an eBay auction and currently has it on display.

The Other Minnesota Iceman

Before hitting it big as Maverick’s cocky gum-smacking nemesis, Val Kilmer co-starred with Patti LuPone in the Guthrie Theater’s 1982 production of As You Like It.

Minnesota North Star Dino Ciccarelli's Pants Problem

Minnesota sports fans have seen their share of bizarro athlete arrests. But perhaps none was more mystifying than the curious case of North Stars forward Dino Ciccarelli. The former goal scorer with a short fuse, who was once charged with assault in a court of law for a play that occurred during an NHL game, was arrested mid-season in 1987 and charged with indecent exposure for repeatedly walking outside his Eden Prairie home with no pants on.

Wabasha Street Caves’ Ghost

St. Paul’s sandstone caves aren’t caves at all, they’re mines from the 1840s. And, while they’ve been used for everything from storage to growing mushrooms, they became infamous as a 1920s speakeasy where the likes of Ma Barker and John Dillinger unwound after a long day of crime-ing. Still, rumors of gangster ghosts aren’t worth much, and not just because ghosts aren’t real, but because there’s little evidence of the murders said to have created the angry souls in the first place. The only real haunting ties back to Castle Royal, a bar that opened in 1933. The ghost of the bar returned to haunt the caves in the form of 1970s disco venue Castle Royal 2.

IDS Crystal Court's Morbid Past

Myths abound about the Crystal Court. Some stories have a mysterious man paying a stranger to clear people out of the atrium and then, 10 minutes later, jumping from the IDS Center above through the glass ceiling to his death. Some theories say that the IDS jumper was in fact a window washer who made a costly wrong step. As fate would have it, all that speculation is just a conflation of the actual truth of the Crystal Court: It's been the very public scene of three deaths. The first two, in 1996 and 2001, were workday suicides from the 30th and 51st floors, respectively, while the second occurred when a man who was removing snow from the glass roof slipped, broke through, and fell six stories.

The WWE Heritage of Zubaz

Before becoming the obnoxiously unstylish sports fan’s game-day accessory of choice, Zubaz were marketed as pants for bodybuilders. But the coolest thing about the decidedly uncool pants is that their inventors, Joseph Laurinaitis and Michael Hegstrand, made them popular by wearing them to work at their ho-hum day job as the professional wrestling tag-team duo The Road Warriors. Doubling down on that coolness, Joseph’s son James, a Wayzata High School grad, plays for the St. Louis Rams. It is not known whether or not he ever wears Zubaz to work.

The Truth About The Stones in Excelsior

Legend has it that before the Rolling Stones played Big Reggie’s Danceland at the Excelsior Amusement Park on June 12, 1964, Mick Jagger stopped by Bacon Drug to grab a cherry Coke, but the store didn’t have any cherry. Excelsior fixture Jimmy “Mr. Jimmy” Hutmaker was there and said, “Well, you can’t always get what you want.” And, thus, Jagger wrote “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” about the encounter and included a hat tip to “Mr. Jimmy” in the third verse. While Jagger has never officially denied that lovely legend, conventional wisdom is that “Mr. Jimmy” is actually a reference to Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller, who was also the drummer on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” We do know this about the Stones’ show at Big Reggie’s: They were nearly booed off the stage. If only Jagger had gotten the cherry in his Coke.

The Washburn A Mill Explosion Made The Mill Way Better

Shortly after a shift change on the evening of May 2, 1878, the Washburn A Mill exploded in grand fashion. The disaster, determined to have been caused when a rogue spark from dry millstones ignited flour dust that then combusted, left 18 dead and decimated neighboring flour mills Diamond and Humboldt. Cadwallader Washburn’s supermill was the largest industrial building in the world when it was reduced to a pile of rubble, but when he rebuilt it in 1880 on the same spot, it was more advanced, safer, and had an even greater production capacity. Fully operational until 1965, it then sat vacant until a 1991 fire turned it into what is now Mill City Museum’s Ruin Courtyard. A monument to the 18 victims was erected in Uptown’s Lakewood Cemetery in 1885.

Three Things People Have Wrong About Purple Rain

Nobody’s ever accused Prince’s seminal 1984 slice of the Minneapolis music scene of being a bulletproof historical document, but dangit if three of its most monumental moments aren’t twisted truths at best:

1. THE SONG “PURPLE RAIN”
Most assume the recording of the album version of “Purple Rain” is from the First Avenue performance in the film, but it turns out that what you hear on the album was recorded at a benefit for the Minnesota Dance Theatre.

2. LAKE MINNETONKA
The Kid tells Apollonia she must purify herself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka, but when she jumps into the lake, he reveals that they’re not actually at ’Tonka. In reality they were in the backwaters of the Minnesota River and the water was freezing.

3. BACKSTAGE AT FIRST AVE
The movie makes First Avenue’s backstage look copious and serpentine, even though its green rooms and halls are tight and unglamorous. Most of the film’s footage was nabbed down the street in the underbelly of the Orpheum Theatre.

You've Got It Wrong About The Rembrandts

Remember when "local" boys The Rembrandts done good in 1994 when they landed their terrifyingly catchy single "I'll Be There for You" as the theme song for late '90s sitcom Friends? And how, while you secretly enjoyed their moment in the sun, you also kinda felt bad that they were likely destined for the same one-and-done fate as David Schwimmer? Well, uh, you were wrong. To begin, only one of The Rembrandts, Phil Solem, is from here (he was born in Duluth), while the other, Danny Wilde, was born in Maine. And then there's the supposed one-hit-wonder nature of the endeavor. Turns out "Just the Way It Is, Baby," the first single of their self-titled 1990 debut, hit number 14 on the Billboard singles chart, and their 1992 follow-up album also had a single that broke the top 100, plus a track called "Rollin' Down the Hill," which was featured in Dumb and Dumber. And save a three-year split in the late '90s, they're still together performing and writing songs for other artists like the Gin Blossoms.

The Replacements Threw Their Master Recordings into the Mississippi

It turns out that while, yes, the definitive ’80s Minneapolis rock band totally did commit that quintessentially punk bit of river pollution, thankfully for young, naive them, they had backups.

Minnesota’s Pro Hoops Haven’t Always Been Rotten

Before the team moved to Los Angeles, the Minneapolis Lakers were the NBA’s first dynasty, winning five of the league’s first six championships from 1949–1954.

Sid Hartman Hasn’t Always Just Been a Reporter

While he was still a cub reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, Sid Hartman served as one of the Minneapolis Lakers’ first general managers. He was only 27 at the time.

Yanni Played Keyboards in 1970s Minneapolis Rock Band Chameleon. Yes. Chameleon.

The globally renowned Greek-born musician also graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in psychology in 1976.