Eli Pettijohn purchases the land-grant patent for a portion of the area that is now St. Paul's Hamline Midway neighborhood. Pettijohn farmed near Fort Snelling and later settled in Minneapolis. This plat of land was sold over time to other speculators and developers, including Horace S. Thompson, Amherst Wilder, and Henry H. Sibley.

A fierce fire discovered shortly after 2:00 A.M. at the School for the Feeble-Minded in Faribault badly damages the main building and causes the safe evacuation of more than 300 people who had been sleeping in the structure. Unable to get their ladder wagon to the school, local firemen drag a hose through the building and up four flights of stairs to the attic and bring the flames under control.

The last Boeing 747 jumbo jet in Delta Airlines' fleet makes its final landing at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The long-distance luxury jet, introduced in 1968, put Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines (which merged with Delta in 2008) on the international flight map.

Television's original Betty Crocker, Adelaide Hawley Cumming, dies in Seattle. Cumming starred in the Betty Crocker Show beginning in 1949 and remained General Mills' advertising icon until 1964, after which she taught English as a second language in Seattle.

Hans Mattson is born in Sweden. An advocate for Swedish immigration to Minnesota, he would establish the Vasa colony in Goodhue County in 1853. He would serve as colonel of the Third Minnesota Regiment during the Civil War and as US consul general in India from 1881 to 1883. In 1877 he would found the Swedish newspaper Minnesota Stats Tidning (Minnesota State Times).

Robert Bly is born in Madison, Minnesota. After becoming a poet, translator, editor, and activist in the men's movement, he wrote numerous books, including the best-selling nonfiction work on men and myth Iron John: A Book About Men.

Electric streetcars begin running in Minneapolis.

Red Lake County is established, named for the Red Lake River, which flows through it.

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.

Minneapolis's first public Christmas tree is lit in Gateway Park.

Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey declares Minnesota's first Thanksgiving Day. He cites good crops; no hurricanes, droughts, or diseases; and friendly relations between Native Americans and settler-colonists as worthy reasons to give thanks.

Sister Mary Giovanni Gourhan, founder in 1963 of Guadalupe Area Project alternative school, dies. A native of West St. Paul active in that neighborhood's Chicano community, Gourhan ran an unorthodox school, teaching the basics as well as Mexican history and effective living and meditation techniques.