The first issue of Ignatius Donnelly's newspaper the Emigrant Aid Journal is published in Philadelphia. The publication encourages recent immigrants to move to Nininger, a town Donnelly had founded on the Mississippi River downstream from St. Paul. Although 1,000 people lived there at its peak, the town eventually failed. The editor of the Emigrant Aid Journal was A. W. MacDonald, who later edited Scientific American.

At the Washington Navy Yard, Susan L. Mann christens the steam frigate Minnesota with a bottle of Minnesota water. On April 6 of the previous year, Congress had authorized construction of this ship and, coincidentally, the frigate Merrimac. Rebuilt as a Confederate ironclad and renamed the Virginia, it attacked the Minnesota during the Civil War.

Clement Haupers dies in St. Paul, in the same Ramsey Hill house in which he was born in 1900. Known for developing the Minnesota State Fair art show into a major exhibition of local work, he also led the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in Minnesota. Throughout his career, Haupers insisted that artists should support themselves without government grants.

Against a background of war in Europe and bitter pro- and anti-union activity in the Twin Cities, eighteen members of the Socialist Workers Party are found guilty in Minneapolis on a count of conspiring to undermine the loyalty of U.S. military forces and of publishing material advocating the overthrow of the government. Vincent R. Dunne, a leader in Teamsters Local 544, and the other defendants are, however, found not guilty on a count of seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government by force.

Tabloid editor Walter W. Liggett is killed by machine-gun fire at his Minneapolis home. A crusading reporter, Liggett had ties with right- and left-wingers, was accused of blackmail, and was an opponent of Governor Floyd B. Olson. Gangster Kid Cann (Isadore Blumenfeld) was tried for the crime but found not guilty.

The University Avenue streetcar line from Minneapolis to St. Paul begins operating.

The first state legislature convenes, five months before Minnesota is admitted to the Union. Despite its questionable legality, the session passes over ninety laws and elects Henry M. Rice and James M. Shields as US senators. The pair travel to Washington, DC, and wait for statehood to become official so that their terms can begin.

Henry H. Sibley is born in Detroit, Michigan. A major player early in the state's history, Sibley would be a fur trader, politician, businessman, military leader, and university regent. He died in St. Paul on February 18, 1891.

Faribault's waterworks pass their operations test, and the system is accepted on December 31.

The term "Land of Lakes" is first applied to Minnesota in the St. Anthony Falls newspaper the Falls Evening News.