This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events that took place Aug. 16-22.

August 17

1862 Five young Dakota men murder the Baker family on a farm near Acton in Meeker County. Upon hearing this news, some Dakota leaders decide to launch a general attack on settler-colonists near the Lower Sioux Agency, beginning the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862.

August 18

1929 A 350-pound bear is killed in the Hotel Duluth's lounge. The bear followed truck driver Arvid Peterson and his shipment of fish into the city, and, attracted by the smell of food in the hotel coffee shop, broke through the window of the lounge. The hotel's night watchman, Albert Nelson, and an unnamed local resident confronted the bear, hitting it with a chair and a hammer. Others called the police, and Sergeant Eli LeBeau shot the bear after trying first to corner it unharmed to return it to the woods. The bear was the third killed in Duluth that year, which was dry and with an inadequate supply of berries in the woods. The bear went to a taxidermist and is on display today at Grandma's Saloon & Grill in Canal Park.

August 21

1893 A tornado sweeps through Dodge County, killing five, and then lands in Rochester, killing more than 30 people. Mother Alfred Moes and the Sisters of St. Francis convert their school into an emergency hospital, with Dr. William Mayo supervising. Realizing the need for a permanent hospital in the city, Moes helps establish St. Mary's Hospital, which opened on Oct. 1, 1889. This facility would evolve into the Mayo Clinic.

1965 The Beatles perform at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington to an estimated crowd of 4,000 teenagers, mostly young women, turning the event into what one writer described as "Shrieksville, USA." With the continued popularity of Beatles's recordings long after their breakup in 1970, the irony of early panning is shown in sharp relief by a St. Paul Pioneer Press comment on the performance: "The Twin Cities was visited Saturday by some strange citizens from another world. They wore long hair and wide grins and were easily identified as Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney. They were the Beatles - alleged musicians."

This columnis derived from MNopedia,

an online encyclopedia project that has a "This Day in Minnesota History" feature on its website,

mnopedia.org. Developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners, it is a free, curated, and authoritative resource about state history. The information here is culled from "The Minnesota Book of Days," published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.