The Barker‒Karpis gang robs South St. Paul's Swift and Company of its $30,000 payroll. Police officer Leo Pavlak dies in the ensuing shoot-out.

President Barack Obama starts a three-day bus tour with a town hall meeting in Cannon Falls. After the meeting his motorcade travels down Highway 52 through Zumbro, Rochester, Chatfield, Fountain, Preston, and Harmony on its way to the Seed Exchange in Decorah, Iowa.

Australia defeats Chile as Minneapolis hosts the Davis Cup tennis tournament.

Dan and Steve Buettner of Roseville complete the first north-to-south bicycle ride across Africa. They set their rear wheels in the Mediterranean Sea 272 days and 11,836 miles before rolling their front wheels into the Indian Ocean. In addition to such natural obstacles as the Sahara Desert, jungles, and mountains, the men faced malaria, civil war, thieves, and a lack of supplies.

The US government and several bands of Ojibwe sign a treaty establishing the Long Prairie Reservation (between the Watab and Crow Wing Rivers) for the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago). Originally from Wisconsin, the Ho-Chunk had been pushed to a reservation in Iowa and then were moved again to Long Prairie.

George W. Nims, a student at the Seabury Divinity School in Faribault, attempts to assassinate Bishop Henry B. Whipple. During a church service, Nims rises from the congregation, walks into the chancel, and points his pistol at Whipple. Luckily, he had forgotten to cock the hammer, giving bystanders enough time to tackle and subdue him. Whipple had turned him down for ordainment with his class as he had shown signs of being mentally unbalanced. Judged insane, he is sent to the asylum in St. Peter.

Albert Henry Woolson, described as the last surviving Union veteran of the Civil War, dies in Duluth at age 106. Woolson had enlisted in the First Minnesota Heavy Artillery when he was sixteen, serving as a drummer boy. He was the model for a bronze figure on the Memorial to the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) at Gettysburg, although he did not fight there. Woolson moved to Duluth in 1905 and remained active in the GAR for decades.

A group of abolitionists in Minneapolis persuades Judge Charles E. Vanderburgh to issue a writ of habeas corpus or an order to bring to court Eliza Winston, an enslaved woman of a visiting southern family. Vanderburgh then declares her to be free, as she is living in a free state. Her freedom provides a boost to the antislavery cause at the same time that it discourages Southerners from traveling to Minnesota, much to the dismay of the state's tourism industry.

A tornado strikes the city of Rochester and Olmsted County, killing thirty-eight people in fifteen minutes. The force of the winds is enough to drive a picket through a spruce tree and to pick up boxcars full of flour before gently setting them back down on the track.

Robert Blaeser (White Earth Ojibwe), co-founder of the Native American Bar Association, is sworn in as the Twin Cities' first judge of Native American descent.

Coya Knutson is born in Edmore, North Dakota. In 1954 she became the first woman member of Congress from Minnesota, and she was respected nationwide for her stance on agriculture issues and her championing of family farmers. In 1958, however, members of her own party conspired with her husband Andy Knutson to keep her from winning a third congressional term. Known as the "Coya Come Home" episode, the scandal is what most people remember about Knutson, rather than her political record as a congresswoman.