This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this coming week.

Nov. 22

1995 A merger of giant railroad companies creates the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. The Burlington Northern had long been a major railroad in Minnesota, itself the result of mergers between the Great Northern Railroad, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.

Nov. 25

1903 Olive Fremstad, pictured, makes her debut with New York’s Metropolitan opera, singing the role of Sieglinde in Wagner’s “Die Walkure.” Born in Sweden, she grew up in St. Peter. She taught music in Minneapolis, Duluth and Chicago before going to Europe to seriously study opera. A true diva, Fremstad would be legendary for her vocal powers as well as her temperament. She died in New York in 1951. She is buried in a family plot in Grantsburg, Wisconsin.

Nov. 26

1922 Cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts,” cartoon, is born in Minneapolis.

Nov. 27

1930 St. Paul’s Frank B. Kellogg wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Kellogg had served as secretary of state during the Coolidge administration and as a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague.

Nov. 28

1950 Aaron Goodrich, Minnesota Territory’s first supreme court justice, is accused of adultery. An effort to impeach him fails. Several prominent Minnesota attorneys demanded Goodrich be removed for “incompetency, unfitness and improprieties committed on and off the bench,” in 1851. President Millard Fillmore exercised his executive power and removed Goodrich, who ignored the president’s actions, thinking he didn’t have the power.

1905 The freighter Mataafa wrecks near the lighthouse in Duluth harbor during a storm that sank eighteen ships on the Great Lakes in a 24 hour period. The crew suffers terribly from the cold winds of the storm, and nine freeze to death. The Mataafa is rebuilt and continues to sail until 1966.

This column is derived from MNopedia, an online project at mnopedia.org. and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society and its partners.