The temperature falls below freezing.

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

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.

Fairmont's first passenger train arrives.

Bavarian immigrant Anthony Yoerg opens Minnesota's first brewery, located in St. Paul below the later site of the River Center parking ramp.

Police and striking workers (most of them gas- and water-system maintenance crews) clash in Duluth. Police mortally wound four workers before Mayor John B. Sutphin sends in the militia and empties the streets.

Minnesota Territory is divided into seven "council districts." Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey declares that elections will be held August 1.

Stillwater lumbermen descend the St. Croix River at Hudson, Wisconsin, just after dawn to remove wooden pilings underneath a bridge. Although the pilings support the bridge, they are blocking navigation along the river. Lumber companies in Stillwater had obtained a court injunction requiring a 200-foot clearance between the pilings to allow timber rafts to float through, but workers building the bridge had ignored the order. The lumberjacks return to Stillwater with about 100 pilings, and the event becomes known as the "Battle of the Piles."

A police officer is shot while trying to break up a riot at a saloonkeepers' picnic in St. Paul.

Duluth's streetcars operate for one final day before being replaced by trolley buses.

Lewis Cass, territorial governor of Michigan, forbids the sale of liquor on Native American lands under his control, including the area around Fort Snelling.

The National Afro-American Council, a precursor to the NAACP, holds a meeting at the state capitol, and business, social, education, and religious leaders discuss strategies for improving the position of African Americans nationwide.