The Agriculture School of the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus, which was known as University Farm, opens with forty-seven students and W. W. Pendergast as principal.

A statue of Governor John A. Johnson, sculpted by Andrew O'Connor, is unveiled in St. Paul on the grounds of the Minnesota capitol.

The Minnesota Historical Society is incorporated by an act of the territorial legislature, and Alexander Ramsey is elected its first president.

The brothel of St. Paul's most famous madam, Nina Clifford, is demolished after fifty years of business at 147 Washington Street.

Filmmaker Ali Selim debuts his movie Sweet Land, which is based on a short story by Minnesota author Will Weaver. Selim shot the film in twenty-four days near Montevideo and featured many locals as extras.

Sinclair Lewis's novel Main Street is published. In 1930, the Sauk Centre native would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

A railroad line reaches Breckenridge in the Red River valley.

James H. Burrell becomes the first African American member of the St. Paul police force, and the first documented African American police officer in Minnesota.

Novelist Anne Tyler is born in Minneapolis. She published many popular books, including The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons, for which she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1989.

Meng Kruy Ung, founder of the first Cambodian refugee center in Minnesota, dies. Born in Prey Veng, Cambodia, Ung immigrated to the United States in 1984 and later established the Refugee and Immigrant Resource Center in Farmington. In 1993 the center merged with the Khmer Association of Minnesota to form the United Cambodian Association of Minnesota, offering cultural, legal, and employment services to refugees and immigrants.

Edward Calvin Kendall and Philip Showalter Hench, Mayo Clinic doctors, and Tadeus Reichstein, a Swiss doctor, are awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their development of cortisone.

Christopher C. Andrews is born in New Hampshire. An advocate of the application of European forestry principles to American conditions and a persistent sponsor of the preservation of forests for posterity, he served as the state's first chief fire warden and as the commissioner of forestry from 1905 to 1911.