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.

A drug raid leaves an eleven-year-old boy injured by a policeman's bullet and incites violent protests in North Minneapolis.The protest comes two weeks after another young African American man was shot by police in the same neighborhood, and protesters accuse the police of targeting African Americans. The press are targets of violence during the protest.

Twenty-four townspeople are killed at the second Battle of New Ulm during the US–Dakota War of 1862. Although the Dakota come close to victory, the barricaded defenders, led by Judge Charles E. Flandrau, manage to hold the town's center. Among the dead is Captain William Dodd, who had founded St. Peter in 1853 and laid out the Dodd Road from St. Paul to Mankato.

After cutting their teeth at Minneapolis venues like the Cabooze and the 7th Street Entry, the members of Babes in Toyland play a set at the Reading Festival in England. They perform alongside like Sonic Youth, Iggy Pop, and Nirvana.

Lewis S. Judd and David Hone open the Marine Lumber Company on the St. Croix River.

Elmer Engstrom is born in Minneapolis. He would be involved in the development of color television during his career with the RCA Corporation.

Congress establishes the state's first national monument: Pipestone National Monument in southwestern Minnesota. Native people, including the Dakota, have mined pipestone (catlinite) from the quarry inside the monument for hundreds of years.

The Stillwater Convention petitions Congress to establish the Territory of Minnesota. Wisconsin's recent admission into the Union meant that settlers in the area between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers were without a government. Minnesota Territory would be officially recognized on March 3, 1849.

The one-day "Cornstalk War" occurs between a group of six Ojibwe and the St. Paul Light Cavalry Company, which had been summoned after reports of thefts. Each side loses one man after exchanging shots in a cornfield near Sunrise.

Lake City's Ralph Samuelson, the "father of water-skiing," dies. In 1922 Samuelson had successfully tested water skis on Lake Pepin, having fashioned the skis by boiling and curving the tips of boards purchased at a local lumberyard.

The first of the Selkirk colonists reach the Red River valley, where the Earl of Selkirk had claimed land covering much of present-day Manitoba and parts of present-day North Dakota and Minnesota. A flood, grasshoppers, and rivalries between fur companies in the 1820s eventually led to the colony's failure, and many of the settler colonists would move to the vicinity of Fort Snelling.

H. F. Pigman, a "human fly," loses his grip and falls seventy feet from the courthouse tower in Albert Lea. He survives the fall but sustains serious injuries. Said the Minneapolis Tribune of human flies, "When he meets with disaster his title to sympathy is decidedly clouded."