1. The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is the largest urban sculpture garden in the country.
2. In 1919 a Minneapolis factory turned out the nations first armored cars.
3. Minneapolis’ famed skyway system connecting 52 blocks (nearly five miles) of downtown makes it possible to live, eat, work and shop without going outside.
4. Minneapolis has a total area of 58.4 square miles.
5. Minneapolis is the third-largest theater market in the U.S. after New York and Chicago.
6. Minneapolis has more golfers per capita than any other city in the country.
7. The snowiest winter of record was 1983–84, when 98.4 inches (250 cm) of snow fell.
8. The climate-controlled HHH Metrodome is the only facility in the country to host a Super Bowl, a World Series and a NCAA Final Four Basketball Championship.
9. The first official hit in the Metrodome in Minneapolis was made by Pete Rose playing for the Cincinnati Reds in a preseason game.
10. Minneapolis and Seattle are tied as America’s most literate city.
11. The first Children’s department in a Library is said to be that of the Minneapolis Public Library, which separated children’s books from the rest of the collection in Dec. 1889.
12. The Mall of America is the size of 78 football fields — 9.5 million square feet–and attracts 43-million visitors each year.
13. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is the United States’ 10th best art museum.
14. Minneapolis was host to the Republican Convention in 1892 when Benjamin Harrison was nominated.
15. 6% of the city is water.
16. Minneapolis led the country in flour production from 1880 to 1930. In 1886 Twenty-Six Mills in Minneapolis consumed  24,000,000 bushels of wheat and made 5,450,163 barrels of flour – an amount more than sufficient to supply with bread the entire population of the city of New York.
17. Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County.
18. The city’s lowest elevation of 686 feet (209 m) is near where Minnehaha Creek meets the Mississippi River.
19. Minneapolis’s Old City Hall and Courthouse, located on South Fifth Street, took over 16 years to build. The clock tower reaches a height of more than 340 feet and boasts four clock-faces that are larger than those of London’s Big Ben. The building was constructed of pink and purple granite mined in Minnesota, and nearly bankrupted the city before it saw completion in 1905.
20. Over ten thousand cyclists use the bike lanes in the city each day, and many ride in the winter.
21. Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye met while attending the Pentecostal North Central University in downtown Minneapolis.
22. Minneapolis has seven hospitals, four ranked among America’s best by U.S. News & World Report.
23. Chippewa make up roughly 1.0% of the city’s population. Of the 5,983 Native Americans, 3,709 are of the Chippewa tribe.
24. Minneapolis served as the home of Mary Richards, the all-American, career-oriented girl of the ’70s. The opening credits of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” placed Moore in many different locations around the Minneapolis area.
25. The warmest temperature ever recorded in Minneapolis was 108 °F (42 °C) in July of 1936
26. The most significant collection of Chinese jade in the United States is housed at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Pillsbury and Walker families left the collection to the museum. The collection includes the largest piece of historic jade in the Western hemisphere, Jade Mountain, a 16th century sculpture carved from a 640-pound piece of jade.
27. New England poet William Wadsworth Longfellow based his epic poem, “The Song of Hiawatha,” on Minnehaha Falls, a beautiful 25-foot cascade at Minnehaha Park. Wadsworth never visited the waterfall.
28. Minneapolis has more public tennis courts per capita than any other city in the country!
29. Southdale was the first enclosed mall in the U.S.
30. The city center is located just south of 45° N latitude. Half way between the equator and the North Pole.
31. Saint Anthony Falls was the natural waterfall on the Mississippi River.
32. People from Minneapolis are called Minneapolitans.
33. It snows more in the Grand Canyon than it does in Minneapolis.
34. The Aquatennial had its own Woodstock in 1967 with “Happening ’67″ a three-day psychedelic band concert featuring rock stars like Jefferson Airplane and Buffalo Springfield.
35. The Upton Block on Main Street is the oldest standing commercial building in the city of Minneapolis. It was designed by B. O. Cutter and built in 1855. The Astor Cafe occupies the buildings first floor.
36. The Young, Quinlan Building is the last building in Minneapolis to have manually operated elevators.
37. The first Automatic Pop-up toaster was marketed in June 1926 by McGraw Electric Co. in Minneapolis under the name Toastmaster. The retail price was $13.50.
38. Lakewood is the largest cemetery within the city, home to former Governors, and the movers and shakers of the city. Of special interest is the Cass Gilbert designed chapel and the monument to the millers who died in the 1868 Washburn Crosby “A” Mill explosion.
39. The nation’s first Better Business Bureau was founded in Minneapolis in 1912.
40. The first open heart surgery and the first bone marrow transplant in the United States were done at the University of Minnesota.
41. The first bridge to cross the Mississippi was placed where the Hennepin Avenue Bridge is presently located. The Anchor stones are visible at the base of the present bridge.
42. The first park in Minneapolis was Murphy Square, located in the Cedar Riverside area at 22nd Ave. S. The land was donated to the city in 1857.
43. Vice President Richard Nixon served as the Aquatennial’s Grand Marshal in 1958
44. Softball was invented by a Minneapolis Fire Department Lieutenant in 1900. He called it “Kitten Ball” Can you guess why?
45. The St. Anthony Lock takes 8 minutes to fill with 8 million gallons of water.
46. The biggest fire in Minneapolis history occurred on August 13, 1893. It burned 23 square blocks of the city, more than 150 buildings, and acres of stacked lumber. Only the old Grain Belt Brewery remains among the buildings that survived the fire.
47. Prospect Park Water Tower was built to be both a water tower and a bandstand; however, there was only on concert in the band shell because of the difficult of the musicians in carrying their instruments up the tower.
48. In 1993, Tetra Pak, a Minneapolis packager, used 25,000 milk cartons to make a one-hundred-foot boat in the shape of an aircraft carrier. This was to honor those who had served in Operation Desert Storm. Nearly 150 people rode on the boat.
49. A Jehovah’s Witness was the first patient to receive a transfusion of artificial blood in 1979 at the University of Minnesota Hospital. He had refused a transfusion of real blood because of his religious beliefs.
50. The ninth Federal Reserve Bank of the United States opened in Minneapolis in 1914

Distantly Related Posts

• On Colfax Then and Now
• Cinerama at the Century
• Beverly Bayne