A UFO sighting in Marshall County? In the early morning, sheriff's deputy Val Johnson is driving his car when he sees a bright light and then loses consciousness. An investigation by Sheriff Denis Brekke finds the car's windshield inexplicably damaged. The Ford Motor Company determines that the windshield cracked due to a combination of high pressure inside the car and low pressure outside. Later it is discovered that Johnson's wristwatch and the car's clock are both fourteen minutes slow.

A giant windstorm causes heavy damage to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The 100-mile-per-hour winds blow down trees on a ten- to twelve-mile front for a stretch of thirty miles. One person is killed.

The Minneapolis Journal is the first American newspaper to use halftones, black-and-white illustrations in which gradations of light and dark are created by dots photographed through a screen.

The first settler-colonists from Iceland arrive in Lyon County, having traveled by oxcart from Iowa. Their leader, Gunnlaugur Petursson, sets up camp near present-day Minneota.

Dr. Thomas Foster nicknames Duluth "Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas" during a rousing Independence Day speech at Minnesota Point.

During a raucous Independence Day celebration, downtown Winona catches fire. Hannibal Choate keeps members of the fire department near his store by supplying them with whiskey, and his business is the only one saved.

The temperature falls below freezing.

Charles Haralson dies in Excelsior at the age of seventy-eight. The first resident superintendent of the University of Minnesota's Fruit Breeding Farm (now the Horticultural Research Center) at Excelsior, the Swedish-born Haralson served as superintendent from 1908 to 1925, an especially creative period during which several outstanding hardy trees and fruits were developed and introduced, including his namesake Haralson apple (1922), a tart, long-keeping, winter variety that remains popular with both home and commercial growers.

The Dandelion is the first ship to pass through the Minneapolis locks, which connect the upper Mississippi to water traffic from below St. Anthony Falls (Owamniyomni).

Minnesota's first railroad fatality: a train strikes a wagon driven by Captain Abraham Bennett at the Como Road crossing in St. Paul. There had been talk of building a bridge at the site, but, ironically, Bennett himself had opposed it.