Melvin Calvin is born in St. Paul. Working as a biochemist decades later, Calvin discovered the details of the photosynthesis process, and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961.

Geographer David Thompson leaves the trading post of Jean-Baptiste Cadotte on Red Lake River, beginning the last part of his 4,000-mile survey of the northern wilderness, the first scientific study of the state. Beginning in Grand Portage in August 1788, he had traveled to the upper Missouri River and then through Minnesota, where he wintered with Cadotte. He completed his trip by returning to Grand Portage in June.

Minnesota receives word that it is a territory of the United States, a month after the bill is approved by President James K. Polk.

The Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota opens, named in honor of Elmer L. Andersen, former governor, university regent, and bibliophile. Library materials from around the state are stored in two manmade caverns, each two stories high and two football fields long, carved into the sandstone bluffs along the Mississippi River.

Though he originally hoped to accept a position on the East or West Coast, American musician-composer Dominick Argento began his career in 1958 at the University of Minnesota, where he taught composition and theory. He spent the next sixty years as Minnesota’s resident composer, crafting works for nearly every Minnesota performing group and gaining international acclaim.

Cecelia Regina Gonzaga, an African American assigned a male sex at birth, lived in St. Paul for four weeks during the summer of 1885. After a police officer arrested her for wearing women’s clothes on August 20, he took her into custody and questioned her at the Ramsey County Courthouse. He released her later the same day, but Gonzaga quickly left the city by train and returned to St. Louis.

While it was being fought, World War I (1914–1918) was dubbed “the war to end all wars.” Yet within the span of a single generation came World War II, a far bigger and bloodier conflict. Is war an inevitable consequence of our imperfect human condition? We may never know, but this is certain: more often than not, in Minnesota as in the rest of the United States, the tides of history have been driven by war or its threat, shaping who we are as a nation and a people.

Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory, negotiates a peace treaty between the Dakota and Ojibwe at Fort St. Anthony (later called Fort Snelling).

The Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad inaugurates rail travel between St. Paul and Duluth.

The Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapses during the evening rush hour. Thirteen people are killed and 145 are injured.

The Chicago Landverein, or land society, which eventually established the town of New Ulm, is formed by a group of German immigrants. At first, lawyers and preachers are banned from membership.

Mailcarrier John Beargrease dies. Born in 1858, the son of an Ojibwe leader and a white woman, Beargrease grew up in Beaver Bay and delivered mail along the north shore of Lake Superior from 1887 to 1904, his route being Two Harbors to Grand Marais. On open water the trip took him three days by rowboat, and in the winter he used a dogsled.