Pionerd

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 Hut...

On May 5th, 1975, fifty artists and neighbors marched through the Powderhorn neighborhood of South Minneapolis — one of the most culturally diverse communities in the state — with giant puppets, two accordions, and an idea. What they started that day, five days after the end of the Vietnam War, grew into one of Minnesota's most beloved civic traditions. This is the story of In the Heart of the Bea...

On May 4th, 1925, the first Model T rolled off the assembly line at Ford's new Twin Cities plant on the bluffs above the Mississippi River in St. Paul. What followed was eighty-six years of automobiles, union wages, wartime production, and four generations of St. Paul families who built their lives inside those walls. But the story of how the plant got there — and what it left behind — is one most...

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 des...

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 s...

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.

Welcome to Pionerd — your daily Minnesota history podcast. One story, every day. Follow now so you don't miss day one.