Short answers, pulled from the story.
Minnesota takes its name from the Dakota name for the Minnesota River, derived from either mní sóta, meaning "clear blue water", or Mníssota, meaning "cloudy water". Four spellings were considered before "Minnesota" was established in 1849 when the territory was formed. Dakota people demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mní sóta.
Minnesota has 11,842 lakes larger than ten acres in size, plus 6,564 natural rivers and streams that cumulatively flow for 69,000 miles. The state's nickname "Land of 10,000 Lakes" is an undercount. Minnesota's portion of Lake Superior is the largest and deepest body of water in the state, covering 962,700 acres.
The Dakota War of 1862 began on the 17th of August when four young Dakota men killed a family of white settlers while searching for food. In the weeks that followed, hundreds of settlers were killed and thousands fled the Minnesota River valley. The six-week war ended with around 2,000 Dakota taken into custody; 303 men were sentenced to death, and Abraham Lincoln approved 39 of those sentences, leading to the hanging of 38 men in December 1862.
Minnesota has cast its Electoral College votes for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election since 1976, a streak longer than any other U.S. state. It is the only state that did not vote for Ronald Reagan in either of his presidential campaigns. The state has historically strong roots in labor activism, immigrant radicalism tied to the failed European revolutions of 1848, and a Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party formed in 1944 from an alliance of progressive movements.
Minnesota has the largest Somali American population in the United States and the second-largest Hmong community. As of 2018, Minnesota held the largest refugee population per capita of any state, accounting for 2% of the national population but 13% of its refugees. The largest refugee groups over recent decades have been Hmong, Somali, Ethiopian, and Vietnamese people.
Engineering Research Associates was formed in Minnesota in 1946 to develop computers for the U.S. Navy, eventually leading to the formation of Control Data Corporation and later Cray Research. Medtronic opened in the Twin Cities in 1949. The Mayo Clinic, founded in Rochester in 1864 by William Worrall Mayo, became one of the country's leading medical systems and Minnesota's largest private employer. By 2025, Minnesota was home to 33 of the top 1,000 publicly traded U.S. companies by revenue, including Target, UnitedHealth Group, 3M, and General Mills.