The Yankton Dakota cede the area around their pipestone quarry in Pipestone County to the United States but retain free access to the quarry grounds.

Duluth's public library opens.

Alexander Ramsey is appointed the first governor of Minnesota Territory. The third choice of President Zachary Taylor, Ramsey is selected after the first, Edward W. McGaughey, is rejected by the Senate, and the second, William S. Pennington, declines the post. Appointed while Congress is out of session, Ramsey is already in Minnesota before the Senate approves his nomination in January 1850.

The last edition of the Minneapolis Star is printed, ending sixty-two years of publication. The following day marks the first publication of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, which later became the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Wisconsin Territory is established, extending westward to the Missouri River, including the area of present-day Minnesota. Two years later the land west of the Mississippi River becomes part of Iowa Territory.

Minnesota passes the nation's first direct primary election law, which applies to candidates running for city and county offices in counties with a population of 200,000 or more (at the time, only Hennepin County qualifies). Wisconsin would be the first state to make statewide direct primaries the law in 1903; while Minnesota had drafted similar legislation applicable to city and county offices in 1901, the state's officers and U.S. senators would not be elected by direct primary until 1912.

Jessica Lange is born in Cloquet. In 1995 she would win an Academy Award for best actress for her performance in the movie Blue Sky.

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.

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

Prince dies at his Chanhassen home, Paisley Park, from an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl. Millions of fans around the world mourn his loss.

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.