Lewis S. Judd and David Hone open the Marine Lumber Company on the St. Croix River.

Interurban streetcar service between St. Paul and Stillwater begins. The ride costs thirty cents and lasts about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Twenty-four townspeople are killed at the second Battle of New Ulm during the US–Dakota War of 1862. Although the Dakota come close to victory, the barricaded defenders, led by Judge Charles E. Flandrau, manage to hold the town's center. Among the dead is Captain William Dodd, who had founded St. Peter in 1853 and laid out the Dodd Road from St. Paul to Mankato.

The Minnesota [Farmers'] Alliance and the Knights of Labor hold a conference to organize the Farm and Labor Party, nominating Ignatius Donnelly as their gubernatorial candidate. Donnelly, however, withdrew from the race, and the nascent party collapsed.

The Beatles perform at Metropolitan Stadium to an estimated crowd of 4,000 teenagers, mostly young women, turning the event into what one writer described as "Shrieksville, USA." With the continued popularity of Beatles's recordings long after their breakup in 1970, the irony of early panning is shown in sharp relief by a Pioneer Press comment on the performance: "The Twin Cities was visited Saturday by some strange citizens from another world.

A tornado sweeps through Dodge County, killing five, and then lands in Rochester, killing thirty-one. Mother Alfred Moes and the Sisters of St. Francis convert their school into an emergency hospital, with Dr. William Mayo supervising. Realizing the need for a permanent hospital in the city, Moes establishes St. Mary's Hospital on October 1, 1889. This facility would evolve into the Mayo Clinic.

A group of abolitionists in Minneapolis persuades Judge Charles E. Vanderburgh to issue a writ of habeas corpus or an order to bring to court Eliza Winston, an enslaved woman of a visiting southern family. Vanderburgh then declares her to be free, as she is living in a free state. Her freedom provides a boost to the antislavery cause at the same time that it discourages Southerners from traveling to Minnesota, much to the dismay of the state's tourism industry.

Dan and Steve Buettner of Roseville complete the first north-to-south bicycle ride across Africa. They set their rear wheels in the Mediterranean Sea 272 days and 11,836 miles before rolling their front wheels into the Indian Ocean. In addition to such natural obstacles as the Sahara Desert, jungles, and mountains, the men faced malaria, civil war, thieves, and a lack of supplies.

Frenchman Pierre La Verendrye and his voyageurs land at Grand Portage to begin a fur-trading expedition into the region west of the Great Lakes. La Verendrye eventually establishes a trading post, Fort St. Charles, on Lake of the Woods.

Mary Grant, the youngest of Sauk Centre's fabled Grant Sisters, is born. She later played the French horn in venues around the world.