The Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railroad is established by the Merritt brothers to carry iron ore from the Mesabi Range to Lake Superior ports. Leonidas Merritt had discovered iron near Mountain Iron the previous November.

The Town and Country Club is founded in St. Paul. First located on the shores of Lake Como, in 1891 the club would move to its present location near the Marshall Avenue Bridge. A golf course, originally tomato cans sunk in a pasture, is set up in 1893, and it is now the second oldest course in the country.

Henry Jackson is born in the state of Virginia. He would move to St. Paul in 1842 and rent a place from Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant. A trader and merchant, he would serve as the city's first postmaster and its first justice of the peace.

Famed restaurateur Gim Joe Huie dies in Duluth. Born in Guangdong province, China, in 1892, Huie first came to the city in 1909 and made it his American home while returning to the land of his birth for extended stays until the Communist government established control there in the late 1940s. In 1951 he opened Joe Huie's Cafe, on Lake Avenue in Duluth, which for twenty-two years offered authentic Asian food in a companionable atmosphere.

More than 3,000 people (two-thirds of them children) escape death or serious injury when they rush out of the Amphitheatre in Duluth seconds before the steel-and-wood roof of the expansive sports arena collapses under the weight of snow during an intermission in the annual Duluth police department and Virginia (Minn.) fire department hockey game.

Minnesota is the first state to declare Abraham Lincoln's birthday a legal holiday.

Leeann W. Chin is born in Canton, China. She immigrated to the United States in 1956 and opened her first restaurant in Minnetonka's Bonaventure Shopping Mall in 1980. Today, her chain of Chin's Asia Fresh restaurants specializes in Asian fusion.

Patty Berg is born in Minneapolis. A consummate golfer and member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, she won the US Women's Open in 1946 and claimed victory in seven Western Open Tournaments and four Titleholders Championships.

President Theodore Roosevelt establishes the Superior National Forest. Six weeks later Ontario's government responds in kind by creating Quetico Provincial Forest Reserve. Exploitative practices are restricted in these areas, preserving the beauty of lakes and trees for future generations.

Isanti County is created and named for an eastern group of Dakota: the Isaŋyathi (dwellers at the knife camp; literally, "they live on knives"). The Isaŋyathi are the Mdewakanton, Sisseton, Wahpeton, and Wahkpekute bands.