Henry Wilson, a "professional burglar," and his pal Frank Wilmar, a horse thief, are caught by an alert janitor and the sheriff as they attempt to escape from the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul. They had stolen a sledgehammer from workmen and nearly managed to pound a hole through the stone floor of a cell into the basement.

During a heavy snowstorm, 325 cars are damaged in a pileup on a Minneapolis freeway.

A fierce, three-day blizzard strikes, bringing one to two feet of snow (with some drifts reaching twenty feet) and winds up to eighty miles per hour, closing most Minnesota roads, stranding a train at Willmar, and killing thirty-five people and 15,000 head of livestock. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that an offshoot of an Arctic storm has blasted into the Midwest, commenting that the "Wind ain't whistlin' Dixie."

"The Arrowhead" is selected as the official moniker for northeastern Minnesota, the result of a nationwide contest sponsored by the Northeastern Minnesota Civic and Commerce Association of Duluth.

In its fourth Super Bowl appearance in eight years, the Minnesota Vikings football team loses for the fourth time, to the Oakland Raiders, 32‒14.

Wisconsin Territory forms St. Croix County in the area between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers. Dahkotah, a town platted (surveyed and mapped) by Joseph R. Brown and now part of Stillwater, is the county seat.

Former Minnesota Twins and California Angels player Rod Carew is elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. A "wizard with the bat," Carew achieved a .328 lifetime batting average, hitting over .300 in fifteen consecutive seasons with both teams.

During the Great Depression, the US Supreme Court upholds a Minnesota mortgage moratorium law, a decision that state Attorney General Harry H. Peterson applauds as a "victory for the people of Minnesota that will enable many farmers and city dwellers to hold onto their homes until good times return."

Six people die when a car crashes through the ice on Lake Andrews, near Alexandria.

Jacob A. O. Preus Jr., son of soon-to-be Governor Preus Sr., is born in St. Paul. After becoming president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod in 1969, he, along with other advocates of traditionalism, would be troubled by alleged liberalism in the faculty at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and their attitude toward biblical authority. A crucial struggle about doctrinal purity would ensue, with Preus successfully being re-elected president in 1973 and thus securing the traditional ways of the synod.