Pionerd

Here is our last installment of archival episodes, returning to fresh episodes on August 31.

On May 9, 1972, a peaceful anti-war rally at the University of Minnesota transformed into eight days of chaos, complete with burning barricades, Minnesota National Guard deployments, and police dropping tear gas from helicopters over campus. We explore the turbulent history of the UMN anti-war protests, Minnesota’s local ties to Honeywell cluster bombs, and a Grand Jury investigation that shocked the Twin Cities.

This is a good one if you haven't heard and a crowd favorite to share. It made the top of the list for some listeners from their feedback. It helps to know what resonates. 

On the evening of May 6th, 1965, six tornadoes, four of them among the most violent on the Fujita scale, tore through the Twin Cities over three hours. Thirteen people were killed. This is the story of the storms. It is also the story of a debate inside a Weather Bureau office, a physical key, and one forecaster's decision to repurpose Cold War infrastructure. This episode is dedicated to Paul Huttner, who retired on May 1 after forty years as chief meteorologist at Minnesota Public Radio News. He was four years old on May 6th, 1965. It is the night that inspired him to be a meteorologist. Thank you for your service to our communities.

I'm on vacation with the family so playing this one from the archives. This episode was released a few weeks after the premiere of the podcast, so this one was truly a popular one.

Minnesota hasn't executed anyone in over a century, and we reveal the gruesome reason why. Discover how a smooth talking Minneapolis sociopath and a catastrophic mathematical error in a St. Paul basement collided on the exact same calendar day to force a statewide moral reckoning. This is the dark history the state tried to censor until the newspapers risked everything to print it.

On May 3rd, 1959, a British cargo ship named the Ramon de Larrinaga sailed under Duluth's Aerial Lift Bridge and became the first oceangoing vessel in history to reach the western end of Lake Superior. She had crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool. She had navigated sixteen sets of locks through the newly opened St. Lawrence Seaway. And she had arrived in a city that sixty years earlier had been described as a lifeless corpse. Today's episode is the story of how Minnesota's Iron Range helped build a waterway, how entire communities were flooded to make it possible, and how a port city at the heart of the continent became connected to the world.

On May 2nd, 1878, a flour dust explosion destroyed the Washburn A Mill in Minneapolis, the largest flour mill in the world, killing eighteen men and devastating the city's milling capacity. What followed transformed not just Minneapolis but the entire country, from the safety innovations that changed flour milling worldwide, to the birth of the Minneapolis Fire Department, to the brands that are still in your kitchen today. General Mills, Gold Medal Flour, Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, WCCO Radio, and the Washburn Center for Children, all trace their origins to one catastrophic Thursday evening on the banks of the Mississippi River.

We’re taking a brief break to recharge, so we’re diving into the archives to bring back one of our favorite episodes. Sit back and enjoy this classic release, we'll be back with a brand-new episode August 31.

It's May 1st, 1951. A nineteen-year-old from Alabama wakes up in Minneapolis to snow on the ground and has no idea what happens next. His name is Willie Mays.

Following the August 1862 attack at Lake Shetek, Minnesota, Santee Dakota warriors took two white women and six children captive into Dakota Territory. In November 1862, eleven young Lakota warriors marched 100 miles into a sub-zero blizzard to trade away everything they owned, their horses, blankets, food, and arms, to rescue eight starving hostages. They were mocked as "Fool Soldiers" and later imprisoned by the U.S. Army, but their act of moral courage defined civilian protection decades before international law.

In the late summer of 1918, wartime paranoia in Rock County, Minnesota, boiled over into extralegal violence. When John T. Meints Sr., a German-American farmer and Nonpartisan League supporter, exercised his legal right to dissent by refusing to support local war-bond drives, his community labeled his neutrality as treason.

We explore the harrowing story of John Meints, from the back roads of Luverne to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is a story of state-sanctioned mob rule, the weaponization of patriotism, and the quiet persistence of one man who demanded that equal justice under the law apply to everyone, even in the darkest moments of collective fear.

On August 18, 2007, an off-the-charts storm system dumped up to 15.10 inches of rain on southeastern Minnesota, claiming seven lives and submerging entire communities. We uncover the immediate human tragedy and the extraordinary utility crisis that followed. Discover how emergency crews in flood-bound Rushford fought a hidden contamination crisis, tracing abandoned 1800s wells beneath city streets and bank boardrooms to restore clean drinking water.

On August 17, 1985, fifteen hundred meatpackers at the Hormel plant in Austin, Minnesota walked off the job. What began as a stand against severe wage cuts and rapid line speeds spiraled into an iconic chapter of American labor history, complete with National Guard deployments, chemical gas on Interstate 90, and a bitter fight between rank-and-file workers and national union leadership. We break down the rise and fallout of UFCW Local P-9.