History

Split Rock Lighthouse will welcome visitors to this year's Fitzgerald beacon lighting
The annual Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Beacon Lighting at Split Rock Lighthouse is one month away. This year the historic site along Minnesota's North Shore will welcome visitors back in-person for the ceremony.
Minnesotans remember bravery, service, sacrifice, unity on 20th anniversary of 9/11
Hundreds of people including Minnesota veterans, first responders, Gold Star families and political leaders gathered at the state Capitol on Saturday morning to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The Pagami Creek Fire in 2011 blew up into Minnesota’s biggest wildfire in over a century, burning more than 90,000 acres in the Superior National Forest. Ten years later, the forest has been reborn and lessons learned from Pagami now shape how rangers and firefighters respond to wilderness wildfires.
Survivors reflect on the day the Pagami Creek Fire exploded 10 years ago
Ten years ago this weekend, the Pagami Creek Fire exploded into the biggest wildfire Minnesota had seen in over a century. What had been burning slowly in the Boundary Waters for weeks became an inferno, sweeping across 16 miles of the wilderness in a single day, overtaking campers and Forest Service rangers caught in its path.
Remembering the father of blood banking, a Black doctor who took a stand
At StoryCorps, Charlene Jarvis spoke with her son Ernest about the legacy of her father, Charles Drew, a doctor who developed a way to get life-saving blood plasma to soldiers during World War II.
Iranian railway, ancient Chinese city among new UNESCO World Heritage sites
What do a railway in Iran, a mountainous national park in Thailand and a spa town in the Czech Republic have in common? They're all part of a newly announced group of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Beneath Istanbul, archaeologists explore an ancient city's Byzantine basements
Below the surface of the sprawling, modern metropolis is a different world. Archaeologists are gaining insights into the city's ancient past by examining the basements of ordinary buildings.
How a medieval city dealing with the Black Death invented quarantine
The wealthy merchant city of Dubrovnik, Croatia, had a problem. The Black Death was killing much of Europe, but Dubrovnik didn't want to lock down and lose business.