Knute Nelson is born in Evanger in the Voss district of western Norway. He moved to Alexandria, Minnesota, in 1871, and from 1893 to 1895 he held the state's highest office, serving as the first Scandinavian-born governor in US history. After this stint as governor, Nelson served in the US Senate, where he wrote the bills creating the departments of commerce and labor. He died on April 28, 1923.

Jonathan Carver dies in London. Arriving at the future site of St. Paul in 1766, Carver met with Dakota leaders and witnessed ceremonies in Wakan Tipi (Dwelling Place of the Sacred), a cave and sacred site that settler-colonists named after him. His descendants later alleged that the Dakota had ceded him a sizeable tract of land, but the US Senate rejected that bogus claim in 1823.

The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, the founding organization of the Minneapolis Institute of Art(s) and the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design), is incorporated, with William W. Folwell of the University of Minnesota as its first president.

Frank O. Lowden is born near Sunrise City (later Sunrise) and later moves to Illinois, where he becomes a lawyer and marries Florence, daughter of George M. Pullman, the wealthy inventor of the railway sleeping car. After Pullman's death, Lowden would manage some of the Car King's enterprises, serve in Congress, become governor of Illinois, lose a nomination for president, and decline a vice-presidential nomination.

The Minnesota Twins baseball team trades future hall-of-famer Rod Carew to the California Angels in exchange for outfielder Ken Landreaux, right-handed pitcher Paul Hartzell, two rookies (left-handed pitcher Brad Havens and catcher-third baseman Dave Engle), and an estimated $200,000. Carew, who bats left-handed and throws right-handed, remarks, "I love the Minnesota fans and like living here. But it was no longer any fun playing . . .

As a group of Ojibwe assembles for a Ghost Dance, a rumor of an uprising at Lake of the Woods spreads, and many white settler-colonists flee the Roseau Valley. Upon investigation, Sheriff Oscar Younggren discovers that the gathering is peaceful. Fearing that the colonists might take revenge upon their return, a few Ojibwe feed and water their animals in their absence.

Airmail service between the Twin Cities and Winnipeg begins.

Congress creates the Illinois Territory, which includes all of present-day Minnesota east of the Mississippi River.

Grand Portage National Monument, established by Congress in 1958 and located within the Grand Portage Indian Reservation, is dedicated when Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton accepts the site from the Grand Portage Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. The eight-and-a-half-mile Gichi Onigamiing (the Great Carrying Place) near the mouth of the Pigeon River was a major gateway into the interior of North America for exploration, the fur trade, and commerce.

Citizens of St. Croix County, Wisconsin Territory, protest a plan to incorporate their county into the new state of Wisconsin. St. Croix County became part of Minnesota Territory in 1849.