A fierce fire discovered shortly after 2:00 A.M. at the School for the Feeble-Minded in Faribault badly damages the main building and causes the safe evacuation of more than 300 people who had been sleeping in the structure. Unable to get their ladder wagon to the school, local firemen drag a hose through the building and up four flights of stairs to the attic and bring the flames under control.

The last Boeing 747 jumbo jet in Delta Airlines' fleet makes its final landing at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The long-distance luxury jet, introduced in 1968, put Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines (which merged with Delta in 2008) on the international flight map.

Television's original Betty Crocker, Adelaide Hawley Cumming, dies in Seattle. Cumming starred in the Betty Crocker Show beginning in 1949 and remained General Mills' advertising icon until 1964, after which she taught English as a second language in Seattle.

The first US flag in St. Paul is raised on a pole in front of Richard Mortimer's house. Born in England, Mortimer had served successively in both the British and American armies and been a commissary and quartermaster sergeant at Fort Snelling before settling in upper St. Paul. The flag flies briefly and then is cut down by "some wicked scamp" from the lower—and rival—part of town.

On Christmas morning, firemen at St. Paul's No. 3 engine house on the corner of Leech and Ramsey Streets brawl with each other in "a very disgraceful fight" that leaves two seriously injured, several badly bruised, and five arrested on a charge of assault with intent to do great bodily harm. The fight is apparently caused by an "unpleasant feeling" between the principal parties, an insulting remark about a piece of equipment not working properly, and a cigar stump thrown at one of the men.

Citizens of Minneapolis are shocked when the body of the year's ninth murder victim is found. There had been only one murder the previous year.

Thirty-eight Dakota men, convicted of crimes committed during the US-Dakota War, are hanged by the federal government in Mankato. Their trials were brief and carried out with little legal authority. It was the largest mass execution in American history.

David M. Clough is born in Lyme, New Hampshire. He settled in Isanti County and served as governor of Minnesota from 1895 to 1899. During his tenure, the state raised four army regiments for service in the Spanish-American War and began building a new Minnesota State Capitol. Clough died in 1924.

Mahnomen County is formed. Mahnomen (manoomin) is an Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) word for wild rice. Many Anishinaabe peoples, including the Ojibwe, have a historical and spiritual relationship with the plant.

The state of Iowa is admitted to the Union. Iowa Territory had extended north into what is now western Minnesota, and this area was without a formal government until Minnesota Territory was created in 1849.

The first legal execution in Ramsey County, Minnesota Territory, takes place when Yuha Zi, a Dakota man convicted of murdering an immigrant woman named Bridget Keanor, is hanged on a gallows on St. Anthony Hill (now Cathedral Hill) in St. Paul.

During Alexander Ramsey's term as mayor of St. Paul, the city council establishes its first professional fire department, which succeeds a volunteer hook and ladder company and inherits its equipment, including an engine, ladders, ropes, hooks, and axes, as well as a church bell donated by the Reverend Edward D. Neill.