About 1,000 lumbermen walk away from their jobs on the second day of a strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World. The workers, employed by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the International Lumber Company, demand a pay increase, a nine-hour day, and sanitary living conditions.

Hjalmar Petersen is born in Eskildstrup on the island of Fyn in Denmark. A veteran country-newspaper editor, he would serve as the state's governor for four months in 1936 and 1937 (the shortest gubernatorial term in Minnesota history), following the death in office of Floyd B. Olson. Petersen died on March 29, 1968, while vacationing in Columbus, Ohio.

Faribault Chief of Police David J. Shipley is fatally shot by Lewis M. Sage. Shipley had attempted to arrest him after Sage threatened to shoot his own wife. Sage is later convicted of manslaughter in the fourth degree and sentenced to four years in the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater.

The Coast Guard closes Split Rock Lighthouse after fifty-nine years of service. Its grounds become a state park the following year.

Workers nail the final spike in the 818 miles of track stretching from Pacific Junction, Montana, to Everett, Washington, completing the Great Northern Railroad and connecting St. Paul to the Pacific Ocean.

On an unusually balmy day, the steamer Aunt Betsy carries a load of passengers from St. Paul to Fort Snelling. Crowds line the Jackson Street landing, the bluffs, and the Wabasha Street Bridge to watch, and the passengers carry palm-leaf fans to stave off the heat.

African American Minnesotans hold a grand convention in St. Paul's Ingersoll Hall "to celebrate the Emancipation of 4,000,000 slaves, and to express...gratitude for the bestowal of the elective franchise to the colored people of this State."

At the Minnesota Historical Society's first annual meeting, the Reverend Edward D. Neill gives a lecture, the Sixth Regiment's band provides music, and a grand ball is held in St. Paul's Central House.

Lawrence Taliaferro, tired of bribery attempts by crooked individuals, steps down as Indian agent of St. Peters (outside Fort Snelling), a position he had held since 1820. Native Americans and settler-colonists alike appreciated his honesty and intelligence, and his journals about life at Fort Snelling provide a detailed record of frontier Minnesota. He died on January 22, 1871, aged eighty-one.

The worst natural disaster in Minnesota history—over 450 dead, fifteen hundred square miles consumed, towns and villages burned flat—unfolded at a frightening pace, lasting less than fifteen hours from beginning to end. The fire began around midday on Saturday, October 12, 1918. By 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, all was over but the smoldering, the suffering, and the recovery.