More than 400 bookbinders in the Twin Cities area go on strike against the Quality Park, Minnesota, Heinrich, Mackay, and Tension envelope companies after a bargaining session fails to resolve differences about a new contract, including a disagreement about a cost-of-living clause. The striking members of the Graphic Arts International Union would settle with all their employers two months later.

The Fort Snelling post band travels to Stillwater to play for a Valentine's Day dance.

Henry B. Whipple is born in Adams, New York. As Minnesota's first Episcopalian bishop, Whipple worked tirelessly to promote his church in the state. After moving to Faribault in 1852, he built the first Episcopal cathedral in the country, as well as the Shattuck School, Seabury Divinity School, and St. Mary's Hall.

Faribault is platted (surveyed and mapped). Trader Alexander Faribault, a son of Jean-Baptiste and Pelagie Faribault, had settled there in 1826.

The Waseca County Horse Thief Detectives are organized in Wilton. One of several such settler-colonist groups, it continued to hold social meetings after 1880 and, when horse-thieving became a thing of the past, it focused its energies on tracing stolen cars.

The Minnesota legislature reorganizes the University of Minnesota into a central college of science, literature, and the arts, with various associated colleges. Although the university had been incorporated on February 25, 1851, no classes had been held. In 1869, the board of regents elected William W. Folwell as the institution's first president, and classes began soon afterward.

William R. Merriam, the state's eleventh governor, dies in Washington, D.C. Born on July 26, 1849, in New York, he served as governor from 1889 to 1893. He was also director of the U.S. Census of 1900.

Andrew R. McGill is born in Saegerstown, Pennsylvania. He served as the state's tenth governor from 1887 to 1889 and, later, as state senator and St. Paul's postmaster. He died in St. Paul on October 31, 1905.

The pink-and-white lady slipper (Cypripedium reginae) is named the state flower by the legislature (following the discovery that the previously chosen variety of lady slipper is not native to Minnesota). This wild orchid has a brilliantly colored bloom and thrives in damp woods, swamps, and bogs; it would be protected by a state law passed in 1925 that forbids picking the flower.

Stillwater replaces Dahkotah as the county seat of St. Croix County, Wisconsin Territory. Later annexed by Stillwater, Dahkotah had been the county seat for six years.

Minnesota's coldest temperature is recorded at Tower, a minimum extreme of 60 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) that bests by one degree the previous scientifically measured low established in 1899.