The St. Paul Saints minor league baseball team beats a team from Indianapolis 4-0 in the first American Association game at Lexington Park.

St. Augusta Township in rural Stearns County becomes the city of Ventura as five new city officials take the oath of office to serve this community, which was named for Governor Jesse Ventura as part of a political strategy to prevent annexation attempts by St. Cloud, the county seat. The former township clerk comments, "We are about to form the newest city in the state of Minnesota." In November voters overwhelmingly choose to change the city's name from Ventura to St. Augusta.

Minneapolis-born aviator Charles "Speed" Holman is killed during an air show in Omaha. A pioneer of aviation, his best-known aerial stunt was looping, and he had won the US air speed trials in 1930. At his funeral, four 109th Air Squadron planes flew in the first recorded Missing Man formation, with a vacant spot reserved in Holman's memory. Holman Field at the St. Paul Downtown Airport is named in his honor.

Five doctors at St. Paul's Ancker Hospital strike to protest the tyrannical ways of hospital director Dr. Arthur Ancker, who had suspended Dr. William Frost on "unsubstantiated grounds." The striking doctors were later dishonorably discharged from their duties. On May 15, 1923, Ancker died of a heart attack while screaming at two surgeons he accused of not properly washing their hands.

Minnesota becomes the thirty-second state. The enabling act for statehood had been passed on February 26, 1857, and the state's constitution was written that summer and ratified in October. Full statehood had been held up by southern senators who wanted Kansas to enter the Union as a slave state. Finally approved by Congress, the bill is signed by President James Buchanan. Word of statehood would not reach St. Paul until May 13.

James Shields is born in Ireland. He would be a US senator for three different states: Illinois, Minnesota, and Missouri. After moving to Faribault in 1855, he would be one of the first two senators selected by the state's legislature, and while in office he would encourage Irish immigration to Minnesota. Shieldsville in Rice County is named for him. He died in 1879.

Kiowa elder Ralph Ware, Jr., who played an instrumental role in creating the Heart of the Earth Survival School, dies in Oklahoma. Founded in 1972, the school at the Center for American Indian Education in Minneapolis was one of the nation's first alternative schools for Native Americans.

Elvis Presley performs at the Minneapolis Auditorium for a crowd of 3,000.

The Lindbergh colony of Swedish settler-colonists, headed by Mans Olsson Lindbergh, arrives in St. Paul. The group would eventually settle in Sherburne County.

Samuel R. Van Sant is born in Rock Island, Illinois. He later became Minnesota's fifteenth governor (1901–1905) and established the State Board of Control to handle issues affecting criminals and people with mental disabilities. He died on October 3, 1936, in Attica, Indiana.