Charles M. Loring is born in Portland, Maine. As Minneapolis park commissioner from 1883 to 1890, he would be a principal player in the development of the city's system of parks, public grounds, and children's playgrounds. He would be the driving force behind creation of Victory Memorial Drive; Loring Community School is named for him. Central Park would be renamed Loring Park, also in his honor.
Floyd B. Olson is born in Minneapolis. He was the first Farmer-Labor governor, serving from 1931 until his death on August 22, 1936. He is remembered for implementing New Deal policies and for his skilled negotiating during the 1933 Hormel strike in Austin and the 1934 teamsters' strike in Minneapolis.
Police arrest Ronald Reed, a twenty-year-old suspect in an Omaha bank robbery, on charges of conspiracy to kidnap Governor Harold LeVander and St. Paul city councilwoman Rosalie Butler and hold them hostage for exchange with African American political prisoners. Police connect Reed to the Black Panther Party, but Emory Douglass, the Black Panthers' national minister of culture, denies Reed's membership in the party. Reed, an ROTC member at the University of Minnesota, is held in Ramsey County jail on a $150,000 bond, the highest in the state's history.
Englishman Jonathan Carver enters Wakan Tipi, the cave and sacred site in present-day St. Paul, long used by Dakota people, that white settler-colonists would come to call by his name (Carver's Cave). Carver writes in his diary: "...came to the great stone cave called by the Naudowessies [Dakota] the House of Spirits. This cave is doubtless a greater curiosity than my short stay and want of convenience allowed me to sufficiently explore."
Harrison Salisbury is born in Minneapolis. A reporter and author, he was especially noted for his writing on the Soviet Union, and in 1955 he won the Pulitzer Prize for international correspondence.
Author Meridel Le Sueur dies in Hudson, Wisconsin. Born in Murray, Iowa, on February 22, 1900, Le Sueur moved with her family to Minnesota when she was twelve. A reporter and the author of novels and short stories, she was blacklisted for being a member of the Communist Party. Her work was rediscovered and heralded by feminists in the 1970s.
Pilgrim Baptist Church is formally organized. The African American congregation, granted mission status by the First Baptist Church of St. Paul, met at various residences for a number of years before constructing a church at Thirteenth and Cedar Streets in St. Paul. Robert Hickman was ordained eleven years later and became the congregation's official pastor.
A fire at St. Peter State Hospital (later renamed the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center), a mental asylum, kills between ten and fifteen inmates. The first mental institution in the state, the asylum had opened on December 6, 1866.
The preparatory (or high school) department of what is now Hamline University opens for business in Red Wing. Named for Leonidas L. Hamline, a Methodist bishop, the school suspends operations in 1869 and reopens in St. Paul in 1880, but its original founding date makes it the oldest college in the state.
The steamer Manistee sinks in Lake Superior. It had left Duluth on November 10, but a gale had driven it into port at Bayfield. Captain John McKay tries to force passage on this night, and twenty-three of the sailors aboard are never seen again. A lifeboat carrying three survivors washes ashore a few days later.
US Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler dies in Washington, DC. Born near Northfield, Minnesota, on March 17, 1866, Butler was a conservative judge who opposed many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Butler was the final justice to pass the bar exam after studying with an attorney rather than attending a law school. He served as lawyer for Ramsey County and as regent for the University of Minnesota before President Warren G. Harding appointed him to the high court in 1922.
The first commuter rail train in Minnesota carries passengers from Big Lake to downtown Minneapolis. The Northstar Rail Line cost $320 million and is funded by the federal and state governments, the regional rail authorities for Anoka, Hennepin, and Sherburne counties, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minnesota Twins.
Winfield Scott Hammond is born in Southborough, Massachusetts. Prior to becoming the state's eighteenth governor, he would function in various educational capacities: as high school principal in Mankato, superintendent of schools in Madelia, and president of the school board of St. James. He died on December 30, 1915, the second governor to die while in office.
Jackpot Junction Casino, run by the Mdewakanton Dakota on the Lower Sioux Reservation in Morton, celebrates its eighth anniversary (November 16–18). It is the first Native American casino in Minnesota. Originally a bingo parlor, by 1988 it had become a fully operational casino.
Measuring one-third of a township, tiny Manomin County (named for manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice) is abolished and transferred to Anoka County. Known as Mamomin Township until 1879, the territory is now the town of Fridley.
Hubert H. Humphrey wins Minnesota's race for US Senate. During three consecutive terms he supports a medicare bill, a nuclear test ban treaty, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sharon Sayles Belton is elected mayor of Minneapolis. She is the first African American and the first woman to hold the office. Having previously worked for the State Department of Corrections and as assistant director of the Minnesota Program for Victims of Sexual Assault, Belton would tout a family-centered platform and administer numerous successful community programs, including the annual youth-oriented event, "Dancin' in the Streets."
Indians of All Tribes (IAT), a group of activists including Adam Nordwall (Red Lake Ojibwe) occupies Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. IAT intends to force negotiation with the federal government and to assert the need for Native self-determination. Members of the group remained on the island until they were forcibly removed in 1971, bringing national attention to Native issues.
Artificial blood is used in the United States for the first time when Dr. Robert Anderson of the University Hospital injects Fluosol, a blood substitute developed in Japan, into a Jehovah's Witness individual who had refused a regular blood transfusion on religious grounds.