1911 – The superintendent of the School for the Feeble Minded in Faribault wanted to find out what had caused his charges to get so “defective.” In an era of Eugenics, the finger seemed to point to subpar family relations.
An Illinois researcher wanted to track down the son of an indentured servant freed with the help of lawyer Abraham Lincoln in 1941. Could the son be the same William Costley who died at Rochester State Hospital in 1888?
1980 – Nobel laureate and Rochester High School graduate Luis Alvarez had done money great things in his career. But now he wanted geologists to swallow an unusual theory: that an asteroid was responsible for killing off the dinosaurs.
March 28, 1969 – Pat O’Connor, 18, had only gone pro 10 months ago. Now he was meeting the formidable middleweight Duane Horsman for a record crowd at the Mayo Civic Auditorium.
Dr. Philip S. Hench was a Nobel laureate with a research job at Mayo, and a passion for collecting anything having to do with the yellow fever experiments in Cuba.
1966 – Jackie May and Barney Code savored the wilds near where they lived in the Cannon River Valley. They wanted to turn it into a park so it would be preserved for everyone to enjoy.
August 1965 – Revernd Gallagher had only stopped out of the rectory for an errand. But he was gone long enough that scruffy Beatle-type ran off with the coin collection.
