Samuel Medary takes office as Minnesota's third and final territorial governor. He steps down thirteen months later when Minnesota becomes a state and Henry H. Sibley is elected governor. Medary would later become territorial governor of Kansas. He died in Columbus, Ohio, in 1864.

Governor Adolph O. Eberhart signs a law abolishing the death penalty in Minnesota.

Alexander Ramsey dies at age eighty-eight. During his political career, Ramsey served as Minnesota's first territorial governor and second state governor, negotiated major land sales from the Dakota and Ojibwe, and served in the US Senate and as secretary of war. A founder of the Minnesota Historical Society, he was its president at the time of his death.

Cadwallader C. Washburn is born in Livermore, Maine. A pioneer in the state's flour-milling industry, Washburn built his first mill at St. Anthony Falls in 1866, and his Washburn-Crosby Company marketed Gold Medal flour. He died in 1882.

The Minnesota Twins (formerly the Washington Senators) play their first game at Metropolitan Stadium, losing to the new Washington Senators, 5-3.

World-famous soprano Lily Pons gives a concert as her husband, Andre Kostelanetz, conducts the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

The legislature creates a state public library commission, which establishes a system of traveling libraries to serve rural areas.

James K. Hilyard, an African American entrepreneur and intellectual, dies in St. Paul. In addition to being co-founder of the Western Appeal, one of Minnesota's first black-owned newspapers, Hilyard, by active recruitment through newspapers and personal connections, was largely responsible for the influx of African American professionals into the state in the 1800s.

Mark Pavelich becomes the first US-born National Hockey League player to score five goals in a game. The Eveleth native and member of the gold medal-winning "Miracle on Ice" 1980 US Olympic hockey team leads the New York Rangers to an 11 to 3 victory over the Hartford Whalers in New York City.

Frank McManus, charged with molesting a four-year-old girl, is lynched by a mob at Central High School in Minneapolis.