Workers at the Hormel meat packing plant in Austin stage the first sit-down strike in American labor history, occupying the factory to prevent non-strikers from operating the equipment. The strike is settled on December 8 after hearings by the Industrial Commission of Minnesota.

Bemidji native Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, her costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, immortalize their handprints in the "Forecourt of the Stars" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California.

Governor Clyde Elmer Anderson signs a bill establishing the red pine (Pinus resinosa), commonly known as the Norway pine, as the Minnesota state tree.

The Minnesota Library Association is organized in St. Paul. Professor William W. Folwell, the librarian of the University of Minnesota, is elected president of this first state library association, and other members of "that useful profession" fill the offices of vice president (Helen J. McCaine of the St. Paul Public Library) and secretary and treasurer (J. Fletcher Williams of the Minnesota Historical Society).

The first legal execution in Ramsey County, Minnesota Territory, takes place when Yuha Zi, a Dakota man convicted of murdering an immigrant woman named Bridget Keanor, is hanged on a gallows on St. Anthony Hill (now Cathedral Hill) in St. Paul.

W. E."Pussyfoot" Johnson, who had the authority to enforce federal liquor laws on Native American reservations, leads a raid on the saloons of Park Rapids, which were illegally serving residents of the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe (considered wards of the state and protected by an 1855 treaty). Johnson and a trainload of US marshals gather all the bottles they can find and demolish them on Main Street.

The state of Iowa is admitted to the Union. Iowa Territory had extended north into what is now western Minnesota, and this area was without a formal government until Minnesota Territory was created in 1849.

David M. Clough is born in Lyme, New Hampshire. He settled in Isanti County and served as governor of Minnesota from 1895 to 1899. During his tenure, the state raised four army regiments for service in the Spanish-American War and began building a new Minnesota State Capitol. Clough died in 1924.

Governor Orville L. Freeman announces that Minnesota will crack down on "drinking drivers," urging sheriffs in the state to resist local pressures to reduce drunk driving charges to charges of careless driving.

Mahnomen County is formed. Mahnomen (manoomin) is an Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) word for wild rice. Many Anishinaabe peoples, including the Ojibwe, have a historical and spiritual relationship with the plant.