Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey declares Minnesota's first Thanksgiving Day. He cites good crops; no hurricanes, droughts, or diseases; and friendly relations between Native Americans and settler-colonists as worthy reasons to give thanks.

On Christmas morning, firemen at St. Paul's No. 3 engine house on the corner of Leech and Ramsey Streets brawl with each other in "a very disgraceful fight" that leaves two seriously injured, several badly bruised, and five arrested on a charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm. The fight is apparently caused by an "unpleasant feeling" between the principal parties, an insulting remark about a piece of equipment not working properly, and a cigar stump thrown at one of the men.

The Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team plays its first game, losing to the Seattle Supersonics 106-94.

The Wilson & Company packinghouse strike begins in Albert Lea. Lasting 109 days, it receives national attention.

A fire begins in a flour mill and destroys the town of Walcott, in Rice County. Walcott had prospered for nearly fifty years, but the community decided not to rebuild.

Hubert H. Humphrey wins Minnesota's race for US Senate. During three consecutive terms he supports a medicare bill, a nuclear test ban treaty, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Measuring one-third of a township, tiny Manomin County (named for manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice) is abolished and transferred to Anoka County. Known as Mamomin Township until 1879, the territory is now the town of Fridley.

The first issue of the Circle newsletter is published by the Minneapolis American Indian Center. Containing stories about the lives and values of Native Americans in the Twin Cities metro area, the newsletter would become a newspaper in March 1980 with a grant from the Dayton Hudson Foundation.

The legislature establishes funding for the territory's public schools. By decree of the Northwest Ordinance, one section in each township had been set aside to support a school, and in Minnesota these lands are not sold for short-term cash but are rented out to provide a steady and long-term cash flow. Martin McLeod authored the bill, which Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey would consider his administration's most important piece of legislation.

Father Lucien Galtier dedicates his log church to "St. Paul, the apostle of nations." This name is deemed superior to "Pig's Eye," the community's previous moniker, and St. Paul is incorporated as a town on this date in 1849. The log structure later serves as the first school of the Sisters of St. Joseph, and in 1856 its logs are dismantled, numbered, and hauled up the hill to the St. Joseph's Academy construction site.