Dakota Indian horseback riders and support teams are gathering in South Dakota on Monday for an annual memorial journey to southern Minnesota. Their ride will end in Mankato on Dec. 26, the 150th anniversary of the largest mass execution in U.S. history. On that day in 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged from a single gallows platform in downtown Mankato in retribution for the US-Dakota war.
The first book printed in what would become the United States was a Puritan hymnal of psalms, sturdy enough that 11 copies that came off a wooden Cambridge press in 1640 still exist. Now, a copy of the Bay Psalm Book may bring millions of dollars to the Boston church that owns it -- if a divided congregation agrees in a vote Sunday to sell it.
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Letters and diaries saved for 150 years from those who lived through the Civil War offer a new glimpse at the arguments that split the nation then and some of the festering debates that survive today.
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The commercial street connecting St. Paul to Minneapolis is like your favorite bawdy relative: quirky, over-sized, and rough around the edges. A new documentary suggests the avenue's glorious early days could provide some clues as to what its future might be.
A hatchet used to bust up saloons, the verdict sheet from Al Capone's trial, and lawman Eliot Ness' sworn oath of office are among the more sobering artifacts in a new exhibit documenting the driest period in U.S. history.
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Every November, America honors its veterans with grand parades, speeches and tributes. But more than 350 veterans of Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan have turned to art to preserve more intimate and enduring memories of war, and more than 2,500 of their works have found a home at Chicago's National Veterans Art Museum.
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To discuss the Battle of Antietam, the first fought on northern soil in the Civil War, MPR's Cathy Wurzer spoke with Morning Edition historian, Annette Atkins. Professor Atkins teaches history at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University.
If Yellowstone is part of your summer travel plans, you may be interested to hear that a Minnesotan played a key role in creation of the country's first national park. Nathaniel Pitt Langford of St. Paul was Yellowstone's first superintendent. But he was much more than that.
From MPR's Minnesota Sounds and Voices series come two accounts from Minnesotans caring for the wounded during World War II. Dr. John Linner was a Navy doctor and served in battles at both Normandy and Okinawa. Bloomington resident Avis Schorer talks about her harrowing experience as an Army nurse during the invasion of Anzio in Italy.
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