The territorial legislature creates the original nine counties of Minnesota. Benton County is named for Thomas Hart Benton, a senator from Missouri who promoted settler colonialism; Dakota is for the Dakota people; Itasca for the headwaters of the Mississippi River; Ramsey for the new territory's governor; Wabasha for multiple Dakota leaders; and Washington for our nation's first president.

Meng Kruy Ung, founder of the first Cambodian refugee center in Minnesota, dies. Born in Prey Veng, Cambodia, Ung immigrated to the United States in 1984 and later established the Refugee and Immigrant Resource Center in Farmington. In 1993 the center merged with the Khmer Association of Minnesota to form the United Cambodian Association of Minnesota, offering cultural, legal, and employment services to refugees and immigrants.

George Liscomb and Alexander Campbell, fur traders from Mankato, are lynched in New Ulm after they kill a town citizen, John Spinner, in a bar fight upon being ejected from the Hauenstein Saloon. The following day, 300 angry Mankato residents, along with a company of militia, marched to New Ulm to investigate the lynching. They found Liscomb's and Campbell's mutilated bodies stuffed under the ice of the Minnesota River. An investigation quickly named members of the mob, leading to indictments.

Fur trader Alexander Baker receives his patent on a land claim near International Falls, where he is the first settler-colonist.

The steamboat John Rumsey explodes near the lower levee in St. Paul, killing seven of the crew. Explosions, usually caused by excessive steam pressure, were a common occurrence on Mississippi riverboats.

Fort Gaines is renamed Fort Ripley in honor of Eleazar Ripley, a general in the War of 1812. The fort would be abandoned in 1878, but the National Guard's Camp Ripley preserves the name.

Popular candidate Jon Grunseth withdraws from the gubernatorial race. Grunseth had been affected by incumbent Rudy Perpich's mud-slinging campaign, but his candidacy was ultimately destroyed by accusations of sexual impropriety. Grunseth's withdrawal opens the door for Arne H. Carlson, state auditor, to run on the Republican ticket. Public disgust with the entire campaign helps Carlson win, and he proves to be a popular governor.

President Harry S. Truman appoints Eugenie Moore Anderson of Red Wing as ambassador to Denmark, making her the United States' first woman ambassador.

Richard C. Lillehei (brother of C. Walton Lillehei) and William Kelly of the University of Minnesota hospitals perform the world's first successful kidney and pancreas transplant.

James Arness, a Minneapolis native famous for his role as marshal Matt Dillon in the western series Gunsmoke, appears on the cover of TV Guide.