Off to Minneapolis, Minnesota today. Cokato from the STCC lives there.

The photos are: 1) downtown Minneapolis skyline, 2) the James J. Hill Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River, 3) nighttime in Calhoun Square (in downtown Minneapolis), 4) the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, 5) Saint Anthony Falls (formed by glacial melt waters), and 6) the Minnehaha Falls in a frozen state.

Minneapolis is the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Hennepin County. The city lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the river's confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul, the state's capital. Known as the Twin Cities, these two form the core of Minneapolis-St. Paul, the sixteenth-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with 3.2 million residents. The United States Census Bureau estimated the city's population at 372,833 people in 2006. Minneapolis and Minnesota celebrate their sesquicentennials in 2008. The city's celebration coincides with the 150th anniversary of its first town council meeting thought to have been held July 20, 1858.
The city is abundantly rich in water with twenty lakes and wetlands, the Mississippi riverfront, creeks and waterfalls, many connected by parkways in the Chain of Lakes and the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway. Minneapolis was once the world's flour milling capital and a hub for timber, and today is the primary business center between Chicago, Illinois, and Seattle, Washington. Among America's most literate cities, Minneapolis has cultural organizations that draw creative people and audiences to the city for theater, visual art, writing, and music. The community's diverse population has a long tradition of charitable support through progressive public social programs and through private and corporate philanthropy.
The name Minneapolis is attributed to the city's first schoolmaster, who combined mni, the Dakota word for water, and polis, the Greek word for city. Minneapolis is nicknamed the "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City".

Dakota Sioux were the region's sole residents until explorers arrived from France in about 1680. Nearby Fort Snelling, built in 1819 by the United States Army, spurred growth in the area. Circumstances pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, allowing people arriving from the east to settle there. The Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized present day Minneapolis as a town on the Mississippi's west bank in 1856. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the year rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago, and joined with the east bank city of St. Anthony in 1872.

Minneapolis grew up around Saint Anthony Falls, the only waterfall on the Mississippi. Millers have used hydropower since the 1st century B.C., but the results in Minneapolis between 1880 and 1930 were so remarkable the city has been described as "the greatest direct-drive waterpower center the world has ever seen." In early years, forests in northern Minnesota were the source of a lumber industry that operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses including flour mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes, and planing wood. The farmers of the Great Plains grew grain that was shipped by rail to the city's thirty-four flour mills where Pillsbury and General Mills became processors. By 1905, Minneapolis delivered almost 10% of the country's flour and grist. At peak production, a single mill at Washburn-Crosby made enough flour for twelve million loaves of bread each day.
Minneapolis made dramatic changes to rectify discrimination as early as 1886 when Martha Ripley founded Maternity Hospital for both married and unmarried mothers. When the country's fortunes turned during the Great Depression, the violent Teamsters Strike of 1934 resulted in laws acknowledging workers' rights. A lifelong civil rights activist and union supporter, mayor Hubert Humphrey helped the city establish fair employment practices and a human relations council that interceded on behalf of minorities by 1946. Minneapolis contended with white supremacy, participated in desegregation and the African-American civil rights movement, and in 1968 was the birthplace of the American Indian Movement.
During the 1950s and 1960s as part of urban renewal, the city razed about two hundred buildings across twenty-five city blocks—roughly 40% of downtown, destroying the Gateway District and many buildings with notable architecture including the Metropolitan Building. Efforts to save the building failed but are credited with jumpstarting interest in historic preservation in the state.

Today's Jumble (10/03/08):

BYNAD = BANDY; LITEE = ELITE; EMFLEA = FEMALE; CAUTAL = ACTUAL

CIRCLED LETTERS = ADITELTU

It doesn't exist at the equator.

"LATITUDE"

Today is Captain Kangaroo Day. The show premiered on this day in 1955. Bob Keeshan (the original Clarabell the Clown from Howdy Doody) was great and I once met him along with Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose, and Dancing Bear in person. It is also National Custodial Workers Day.

Other things on this day in history:

2333 BC - The state of Gojoseon (Modern-day Korea) founded by Dangun Wanggeom during the reign of the Chinese Emperor Yao.
42 BC - First Battle of Philippi: Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight an indecisive battle with Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius.
1283 - Dafydd ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd in Wales, becomes the first person executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered.
1574 - The Siege of Leiden is lifted by the Watergeuzen.
1683 - The Qing Dynasty naval commander Shi Lang reaches Taiwan (under the Kingdom of Tungning) to receive the formal surrender of Zheng Keshuang and Liu Guoxuan after the Battle of Penghu.
1712 - The Duke of Montrose issues a warrant for the arrest of Rob Roy MacGregor.
1739 - The Treaty of Nissa is signed by the Ottoman Empire and Russia at the end of the Russian-Turkish War, 1736-1739.
1778 - British Captain James Cook anchors in Alaska.
1795 - General Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence being named to defend the French National Convention against armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the three year old revolutionary government.
1835 - Staedtler Company was founded by J.S. Staedtler in Nuremburg, Germany.
1849 - American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore, Maryland under mysterious circumstances; it is the last time he is seen in public before his death.
1863 - Thanksgiving Day declared as the fourth Thursday in November by President Abraham Lincoln.
1873 - Captain Jack and companions are hanged for their part in the Modoc War.
1908 - The Pravda newspaper founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles in Vienna.
1918 - King Boris III of Bulgaria takes the throne.
1929 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, "Land of the South Slavs".
1932 - Iraq gains independence from Britain.
1935 - Italy invades Ethiopia under General de Bono.
1942 - Spaceflight: First successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany: the first man-made object to reach space.
1951 - "Shot Heard 'Round the World" One of the greatest moments in Major League Baseball history occurs when the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hits a game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games.
1952 - United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon.
1955 - Captain Kangaroo debuts on the CBS television network.
1955 - The Mickey Mouse Club debuts on ABC.
1957 - Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems is ruled not obscene.
1962 - Project Mercury: Sigma 7 launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.
1964 - First Buffalo Wings were made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.
1981 - The Hunger Strike by Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after seven months and ten deaths.
1981 - The Communist Party of Namibia is founded at a conference in Angola.
1985 - Space Shuttle Atlantis flies its maiden voyage. (STS-51-J)
1986 - TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, was officially opened.
1990 - Re-unification of Germany. The German Democratic Republic ceased to exist and its territory became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the European Community, which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day.
1993 - Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.
1995 - O.J. Simpson found not guilty of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.
2003 - Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the shows tigers, canceling the show for good.