Henry A. Swift is born in Ravenna, Ohio. He served as governor for six months during the Civil War, succeeding Alexander Ramsey, who left office for the US Senate. Swift died on February 25, 1869, in St. Peter.

Minnesota is among the first states to ratify the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, which gives US citizens eighteen years of age or older the right to vote in local, state, and national elections. Both Minnesota and Delaware claim to be the initial actor on this important issue, although one Minnesota legislator who voted against ratifying calls his state's role a "dubious pleasure." Ratification by the necessary number of states would be completed later in the year.

The printing press of the St. Cloud Visiter is destroyed by a mob. The paper's editor, Jane Grey Swisshelm, a feminist and abolitionist, had angered local businessman and slave owner Sylvanus B. Lowry. Swisshelm obtained a new press and printed the story of her press's destruction and the names of the culprits, which resulted in a libel case and the termination of the paper. A week later she began publishing the St. Cloud Democrat, which she ran for eight years.

The UMD Bulldogs Women's Ice Hockey team win their second consecutive national championship.

The inaugural issue of the Progress is published at the White Earth Indian Reservation (Ojibwe). The first English-language paper to be published on an Indian reservation, the Progress is edited by missionaries Gus H. and Theodore H. Beaulieu. The second issue is not published until October 8, 1887, because of interference by an Indian agent who was concerned about the intentions of the paper, in which the Office of Indian Affairs was often criticized.

Karl F. Rolvaag is sworn in as governor, having beaten Elmer L. Andersen by ninety-one votes in the state's closest gubernatorial election. The recount of the election had taken four months.

Inkpa Duta (Scarlet Point) and a band of Dakota attack Springfield (now Jackson) in Jackson County. Settler-colonists gather in two cabins to defend the town. During the battle, one child dies and several adults are wounded. This incident is part of the so-called "Spirit Lake Massacre" (only one death actually occurred, at Spirit Lake, Iowa).

The Aerial Bridge, spanning the Duluth Ship Canal, carries its first passengers across the harbor inside a carriage suspended from the bridge's framework. The system would be replaced with a lift bridge in 1930.

William Maupins, Duluth's premier civil rights leader, dies. He served as president of the Duluth NAACP chapter, and, when an African American family was prevented from moving into a Duluth neighborhood, he launched a campaign that led to a city fair-housing ordinance. He also organized a food drive for poor African Americans in Mississippi; when white truckers in the South tried to block the shipments, he persuaded Duluth teamsters to deliver the food.

In St. Anthony, Minnesota's Republicans hold their first formal meeting, during which they discuss the group's strong antislavery stance.

St. Paul's new 2,000-watt radio station KSTP inaugurates its illustrious broadcasting career in the Northwest with a seven-hour program that offers a "wide variety of entertainment" throughout the evening and runs until 2:00 A.M. the following morning. With beginnings in local stations WAMD (launched by Stanley E.

Ferocious tornado touchdowns strike a dozen communities eastward from Nobles to Wabasha Counties in south-central Minnesota, causing at least one death and numerous injuries, damaging Comfrey and St. Peter, and carrying debris many miles away. Extensive damage in Comfrey forces residents to evacuate from their homes, while the devastation in St. Peter prompts an eyewitness to remark that the city looks "decapitated" and a man in far-off Dakota County catches a falling page from a Le Center school-library book.