Franklin Steele formally takes possession of the Fort Snelling military reservation, which he had bought from the government for $90,000. Although Steele envisioned a city on the grounds of the fort, this idea failed and Steele was unable to keep up the payments. During the Civil War the government reasserted its claim to the fort, which would remain in government hands until after World War II.

Sergeant Louis Cukela, a Croatian-born Minneapolitan serving in France, performs a feat of heroism that earns him two Congressional Medals of Honor, one from the navy and one from the army. Cukela, a member of the Fifth Marine Regiment, was pinned down with his company by machine-gun fire. Cukela worked his way around the side of the emplacement and used his bayonet to kill or capture members of the crew. He then threw a grenade into another machine gun nest, capturing it as well. A number of Minnesotans have won the nation's highest honor for bravery, but only Cukela has won two.

Harriet E. Bishop arrives in St. Paul to open her public school. She wastes no time, starting school the next day. Although Bishop is usually remembered as Minnesota's first public school teacher, Matilda Runsey had taught for several months before Bishop's arrival, and there had been a number of missionary teachers. In addition to teaching for many years, Bishop wrote two books, Floral Home and Dakota War Whoop. She died on August 9, 1883.

Congress passes an act to settle disputes about the so-called "Half-Breed" Tract, a reservation for mixed-race Indigenous-European people in Wabasha and Goodhue counties. Land titles had been confused; with many white settler-colonists migrating to the area, unaware that it was a legal reservation, some of the recipients of scrip sold the deeds to their parcels of land, although there was no individual ownership of reservation land.

The state seal is adopted. Modifying the territorial seal, the design includes the slogan L'Etoile du Nord (Star of the North) and depicts a white man plowing eastward and looking over his shoulder at a Native American man on horseback riding toward the setting sun. Minor changes have been made to the seal since then, including the addition of Norway pines in the background and a shift of the Native man's route so that he rides toward the south.

African American lawyer William T. Francis, appointed US minister to Liberia by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, dies of yellow fever in Monrovia, Liberia. Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Francis moved to Minnesota in 1888 and later took over Frederick McGhee's law practice. As a well-known St.

While charting the Mississippi River for the US Army on the site of present-day St. Paul, Major Stephen H. Long comes across a cavern known to local Dakota people as Inyan Tipi (settler-colonists came to call it Fountain Cave). The cave, located a few blocks west of present-day Randolph Avenue near Shepard Road, had many curious rooms and a cold crystal spring.

Hubert H. Humphrey gives a rousing speech on the subject of civil rights for African Americans at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Humphrey opposed an effort by Harry S. Truman's supporters to put a weak civil rights plank in the Democratic platform in order to carry the southern states.

A special act of the state legislature releases Jim and Cole Younger from the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater. They had been incarcerated for the murder of an employee during the Northfield Bank Raid. Jim would commit suicide in St. Paul, but Cole would tour on a Wild West show with Frank James, lecturing on "What My Life Has Taught Me." He died in 1915, his body still holding seven bullets.

The Rice County Historical Society acquires the Alexander Faribault House, which it maintains as a historic site in Faribault. The house was built in Rice County at the confluence of the Cannon and Straight Rivers.