This week in state history

Historic Minnesota events with anniversaries this week.

June 26

1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II open the St. Lawrence Seaway in an official ceremony in Montreal. The seaway connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, making Duluth and other lake cities international ports.

June 27

1977 Elizabeth Congdon and her nurse are murdered at Glensheen mansion in Duluth. In a sensational trial, Congdon’s son-in-law, Roger Caldwell, is convicted of the murders and sentenced to life but faulty evidence leads to a retrial and conviction but just a five-year sentence. He committed suicide in 1988 after he had been released from prison. Marjorie is acquitted of the murders but later found guilty in two arson cases as a series of mysterious deaths and other crimes dogged her life. She served 11 years in an Arizona prison for the arsons. She is reportedly living in Tucson, now in her late 80s.

June 28

1880 Dr. H. S. Tanner of Minneapolis begins a 40-day fast in New York in an effort to prove his theory that neither the human stomach nor food is required in order to sustain life. He resides in a room in Clarendon Hall that had been carefully searched for any morsel. Dropping fifty pounds and shrinking two inches, he makes it to the end, breaking his fast on a meal of milk, watermelon and half a pound of beefsteak. He claimed a 42 day fast in Minneapolis in 1877, but was unable to prove it. Tanner moved to California and died in 1919 at the age of 87.

June 29

1837 Eliza Hamilton, 80-year-old widow of Alexander, visits Fort Snelling and views points of interest including Bde Maka Ska (then called Lake Calhoun by settler-colonists), Mni Haha (Minnehaha Falls), and Owamniyomni (the Falls of St. Anthony). She is one of the first female tourists of the area. The Hamiltons’ second-youngest son, William, lived in Illinois and Wisconsin as a soldier and backwoodsman. Eliza went on a five-month steamboat tour from upstate New York to visit him.

1905 Chisholm’s Archibald “Moonlight” Graham plays his only game as a major leaguer, with the New York Giants. He would be celebrated in W. P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Joe, later translated to the screen as Field of Dreams.

1916 Reflecting nationwide attitudes about prohibition, Duluth adopts a ban on alcohol sales within the city.

June 30

1888 Alexander McDougall launches the first whaleback freighter onto Lake Superior.

1992 A train derailment in Superior, Wisconsin, spills benzene into the Nemadji River. The resulting cloud of possibly toxic smoke leads to the evacuation of 50,000 residents of Superior and Duluth.

July 1

1922 A nationwide walkout by railroad shop craft and other employees includes 8,000 workers in the Twin Cities. The strike ends in defeat for the workers, with scab labor permanently replacing many of them, but the new Farmer-Labor Party’s assistance during the strike encourages the workers’ support of the party in later elections, making the Farmer-Labor Party, rather than the Democratic Party, the principal opposition party in Minnesota.

July 2

1679 Daniel Greysolon, the Sieur Du Luth, attaches the coat of arms of King Louis XIV to a tree on the shore of Mille Lacs, thereby claiming the land for France.

1863 At Gettysburg, 262 members of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment charge a much larger Confederate force, succeeding in slowing their advance but resulting in 215 casualties—a stunning 82 percent. The next day, the remaining soldiers help repel Pickett’s charge, capturing the flag of the Twenty-eighth Virginia Regiment in the process.

This column is derived from MNopedia.org and developed by the Minnesota Historical Society.