The North Star State
Fittingly, Minnesota has more than one of these per every six people, amounting to 909,528 (more than the population of South and North Dakota combined).
What are boats?
This Dungeons & Dragons species (one of Maggie's two favorites) stands unusually tall and serpentine, and their ancestry usually includes a breath weapon and an increased strength score.
What is a Dragonborn?
The Ferengi are a comically capital-driven species featured in a variety of Star Trek series, most prominently as this character from Deep Space Nine. His counterpart, one of Maggie & Parth's cats, is greedy only for snuggles.
Who is Quark?
This landmark looking over the New Mexico institute of Mining and Technology has two names, but is best known by this name. Hint, the eponymous letter bedecks its side.
What is M Mountain?
In 1909, New York City gifted eight new furry friends to Vancouver. All of these rodents in Stanley Park are descended from the original mates.
What are grey squirrels?
This West coast basketball team originally hailed (as their name suggests) from Minnesota.
Who are the Lakers?
In "Kirsten's Surprise," the pioneering American girl celebrates her family's Swedish Catholic tradition named after this saint by dressing up in a crown of candles and a white gown. Could this outfit be Maggie's next sewing project?
Who is Santa Lucia or Saint Lucy?
The very first gift Parth ever gave Maggie has interesting origins. These candies may have been inspired by a much sourer sort the creator encountered during his time in the Spanish Civil War. He sought to create a sugar coating which made the new candy easy to travel with in warm climates.
What are M&Ms?
The first nuclear device ever detonated was an implosion-type bomb during the Trinity test, conducted within a testing range near this National Park where families might now visit for off-season sledding.
What is White Sands?
When you bite into this crowd-pleasing uramaki, full of avocado, crab, and carrot, you may be thinking of a U.S. state, but this sushi roll was actually created by Chef Hidekazu Tojo right here in Vancouver.
What is a California roll?
Before it became a cult sensation, this offbeat science fiction comedy series premiered on public television in Saint Paul, Minnesota before it was picked up by a nationwide broadcast.
What is Mystery Science Theater 3000?
Invented in Boston in 1850, this sewing machine brand quickly became a standard necessity for everyone from hatters to hobbyists. While named for its inventor, one might imagine a perfectly working machine so smoothly operating as to be akin to someone with this occupation.
What is Singer?
Parth proposed to Maggie on the Stone Arch Bridge, which overlooks the ruins of an old mill that exported this surprisingly explosive substance and helped put Minneapolis on the map.
What is flour?
Although the title "U.S. city with the highest elevation" belongs to Alma, Colorado, this city in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains is the nation's highest and oldest state capital at 7,000 feet.
What is Santa Fe?
Do you want to be forever young? Or at least...maybe sort of look it? This game changer in plastic surgery was invented in Vancouver.
What is Botox?
Minnesota gets its name from an Anglicized form of this major Native nation's word for "sky-tinted" or "cloudy water."
Who are the Sioux? (or the Dakota, more specifically)
This type of rock, laboriously extracted from quarries in the Carraran mountain range (a setting in Maggie and Ellie's novel, Due Santi), is known for its capacity to hold very fine detail. It has been used since Ancient Rome for more than just veiled statues, including for landmarks such as the Pantheon.
What is marble?
This precious gemstone, the orange version of which makes up Maggie's engagement ring, contains trace amounts of iron, titanium, silicon, and lead, as well as the mineral corundum.
What is a sapphire?
Considered a gay icon in New Mexico and dubbed the "leaping lesbian lizard," the more common name for this female-only blue-tailed state reptile is a little less colorful.
What is the New Mexico whiptail?
While this Vancouver sports team wasn't the first on the NBA court, they were the first on the 'net... as in the internet.
Who are the Grizzlies?
During the Precambrian, Minnesota was covered by an ocean. Later on, in the Paleozoic, the North Star State, which now receives on average over 50 inches of snowfall a year, had this surprising sort of climate due to its relation near the equator. Brachiopods, pteropods, and corals thrived.
What is a tropical climate?
Railway surgery was a branch of medical practice in the 19th and early 20th century sponsored by rail companies themselves due to the high number of workers injured in industrial accidents. Thanks to this precedent, as well as the work of good doctors like Hannaniah Mueller, the practice eventually influenced the development of this much more convoluted modern system in which employers and physicians (in the best-case scenario) work together for employees' sake.
What is health insurance?
At the end of 2025, Parth and Maggie took a trip to India to find their wedding outfits. They found them in their trips to two cities, Thane and Pune, the former of which is a massive "suburb" of this coastal city on the country's west coast.
What is Mumbai?
The influx of tuberculosis sanitoriums during the 19th century in the region (and their primarily white patients) led to what surprising development for what would be "New Mexico"?
What is statehood?
Among the many nicknames for Vancouver, including "Raincouver" and Terminal City, as well as this category's title, this nickname was bestowed by early Chinese immigrants to the city and references the Pacific surrounds.
What is the Saltwater City?