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August 21, 2024 6 mins

On this day in 1883, three powerful tornadoes wreaked havoc in southeast Minnesota.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that charts the storms of history every day of
the week. I'm Gabe Lusier, and today we're looking at
how one of the worst tornadoes in Midwest history led

(00:21):
to the creation of the now world famous Mayo Clinic.
The day was August twenty first, eighteen eighty three. Three
powerful tornadoes wreaked havoc in southeast Minnesota. They touched down

(00:43):
throughout the day in parts of three different counties, killing
roughly forty residents and injuring more than two hundred others.
At the time, there was not yet a formal system
for classifying tornado intensity, but decades later, doctor Tetsua Theodore
Fujita would introduce the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale. This allowed

(01:06):
researchers to rate a tornado's intensity and estimate its wind
speed based on the damage left in its wake. The
scale ran from F zero to F five, with F
five being the most intense damage category. The scale could
be applied to any storm past or present as long
as there was sufficient data, so in the nineteen seventies,

(01:29):
renowned meteorologist Thomas P. Grajulis used the scale to rate
the three tornadoes that struck Minnesota in eighteen eighty three.
The first of the trio had kicked up in the
mid afternoon on August twenty first, just outside Pleasant Grove, Minnesota.
It moved northeast on the ground for about three miles,

(01:51):
damaging four farms and killing two people along the way.
Gradulis rated this one in F three, right in the
mid middle of the scale. He gave the same rank
to the final tornado of the day, which touched down
around eight thirty that night, two miles north of Saint Charles.
The twister moved east for twelve miles, injuring nineteen people

(02:15):
and killing one. That means the other thirty seven fatalities
that day and most of the two hundred injuries were
caused by the middle storm, the one that Grajulis ranked
an F five. That mile wide tornado formed suddenly at
about six thirty that evening, just a few miles southwest

(02:36):
of Rochester. Thankfully, the roar of the storm was so
loud that many residents heard it coming and were able
to seek shelter, but others weren't so lucky. The tornadoes
stayed on the ground for twenty five miles, with wind
speeds exceeding two hundred miles per hour. It leveled more
than a dozen farmsteads and destroyed over one hundred and

(03:00):
thirty five homes. Another two hundred buildings were badly damaged,
and the North Broadway Bridge was torn from its moorings.
When the storm finally dissipated ten miles east of Rochester,
a third of the city was in ruins and several
dozen people were dead. The surrounding rural area looked like

(03:20):
a war zone. Fields were strewn with debris and with
the bodies of horses, cows, and fish that had been
swept up from the local farms and rivers. The town
would have a long and difficult recovery ahead of it,
but the most immediate concern was tending to the more
than two hundred people who were in dire need of
medical attention. At the time, there were only three hospitals

(03:45):
in the state of Minnesota outside of the Twin Cities,
and none of them were located anywhere near Rochester. Luckily,
the town did have a few doctors, including William Worrel
Mayo and his sons William and Charles. The morning after
the storm, the city converted its local dance hall into
a makeshift emergency room. Doctor Mayo and his sons took

(04:09):
charge of the operation, and their efforts were greatly assisted
by the convent of the Sisters of Saint Francis. A
few months later, once most patients were back on their feet,
Mother Mary Alfred proposed that the Sisters and the Mayos
keep their partnership going. The disaster had shown that the
people of Rochester needed a permanent hospital, and Mother Alfred

(04:31):
thought they should be the ones to give it to them.
Her idea was for the Sisters to train to be
nurses and hospital administrators, and for the Mayos to serve
as the resident physicians and surgeons. The Mayos weren't convinced
their small town could sustain an expensive hospital, but once
the Sisters had raised all the funds needed to build it,

(04:51):
they happily signed onto the project. The medical center opened
in eighteen eighty nine as Saint Mary's Hospital, but everyone
in town called it the Mayo Clinic, and in nineteen
fourteen that became its official name. The hospital's reputation grew quickly,
and the small staff was soon joined by other doctors.

(05:12):
The Sisters of Saint Francis also opened a nursing school,
and in this way, the Mayo Clinic grew from a
small community hospital into one of the largest and most
respected medical centers in the world. In the years since then,
the organization has developed a reputation for its breakthrough work
in medicine, including real time tumor analysis and the discovery

(05:34):
of cortisone. Its doctors were also the first to develop
a standardized patient medical record, an innovation that's now become
the norm worldwide. Despite what Hollywood might tell us, it's
not currently possible to disrupt or control a tornado, but
as the founders of the Mayo Clinic showed, we can

(05:55):
influence what happens once the storm has passed. I'm Gabe Bluesyay,
and hopefully you now know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep
up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have

(06:18):
any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my
way by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com.
Thanks to kazb Bias for producing the show, and thanks
to you for listening. I'll see you back here again
tomorrow for another day in history class.

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