Congress establishes the state's first national monument: Pipestone National Monument in southwestern Minnesota. Native people, including the Dakota, have mined pipestone (catlinite) from the quarry inside the monument for hundreds of years.

The Stillwater Convention petitions Congress to establish the Territory of Minnesota. Wisconsin's recent admission into the Union meant that settlers in the area between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers were without a government. Minnesota Territory would be officially recognized on March 3, 1849.

A UFO sighting in Marshall County? In the early morning, sheriff's deputy Val Johnson is driving his car when he sees a bright light and then loses consciousness. An investigation by Sheriff Denis Brekke finds the car's windshield inexplicably damaged. The Ford Motor Company determines that the windshield cracked due to a combination of high pressure inside the car and low pressure outside. Later it is discovered that Johnson's wristwatch and the car's clock are both fourteen minutes slow.

The one-day "Cornstalk War" occurs between a group of six Ojibwe and the St. Paul Light Cavalry Company, which had been summoned after reports of thefts. Each side loses one man after exchanging shots in a cornfield near Sunrise.

Lake City's Ralph Samuelson, the "father of water-skiing," dies. In 1922 Samuelson had successfully tested water skis on Lake Pepin, having fashioned the skis by boiling and curving the tips of boards purchased at a local lumberyard.

Minnesota experiences the first ripple of the Panic of 1857 as the William Brewster and Company bank goes out of business, soon followed by the Marshall and Company bank on October 3 and the Truman M. Smith bank on October 4.

French Canadian canoe paddlers at the North West Company's fur-trading post at Rainy Lake threaten to quit unless they are given a raise.

Martin McLeod is born in Montreal. Arriving at Fort Snelling in 1837, he would trade furs in the Minnesota Valley for twenty years, be instrumental in persuading the Dakota to sign the treaties of Mendota and Traverse des Sioux, and, as a member of the legislature, write the law that created the Minnesota Public School Fund. He died in 1860.

A race riot begins during a dance at Stem Hall in St. Paul. Ignited by an alcohol violation, the riot continues through the next day, resulting in twenty-six arrests, numerous police and civilian injuries, and thousands of dollars in property damage from fire and vandalism, mostly in St. Paul's Selby–Dale neighborhood.

The Foshay Tower is dedicated in Minneapolis. Hiring John Sousa to write and perform a march for the occasion, Wilbur Foshay throws a splendid grand-opening party, a final display of extravagance before the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent economic depression that ruins him.

One of a series of arson fires in St. Paul destroys virtually all the buildings between Market, St. Peter, St. Anthony (Third), and Fourth Streets. These fires led to looting, and citizens formed a vigilance committee to patrol the streets.

Amos Owen is born on Sisseton Reservation, South Dakota. He moved to the Prairie Island Indian Reservation at age sixteen and later become a prominent spiritual leader, tribal chairman, and pipe carrier of the Dakota, working to broker understandings between Native and non-Native peoples. He died on June 4, 1990.