On this Sunday, all Catholic priests in the St. Cloud diocese are required to give at least one sermon in English.

The Blizzard of 1873 strikes, with temperatures of forty-nine degrees below zero and winds of seventy-five miles per hour. Over the next two days, at least seventy people die in the western and southern parts of the state. Conditions are so blinding that in New Ulm a boy who has to cross the street from a barn to his home is found frozen eight miles away, and a rural man and his ox team freeze to death just ten feet from his house.

The Congregational church in Faribault is dedicated, with the Reverend Lauren Armsby serving as its first pastor.

John R. Irvine obtains a license to operate a ferry across the Mississippi River at St. Paul's Upper Landing (formerly at the foot of Chestnut Street). The city's Irvine Park is named for him.

William E. Colby is born in St. Paul. He would serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1973 to 1976, under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

The Territorial Agricultural Society holds its first meeting. This group evolves into the State Agricultural Society, the governing body of the State Fair. On the same day, the fifth territorial legislature convenes in an official capitol building for the first time.

The Marlborough Apartment Hotel burns in Minneapolis, leaving at least four people missing, twenty-five in hospitals, and eighteen dead. Apparently caused by a burning cigarette carelessly thrown into a garbage chute, the fire is described by the Minneapolis Journal as the worst catastrophe in the city since the explosion of the Washburn "A" Mill on May 2, 1878.

Maxene Andrews is born in Minneapolis. With her sisters LaVerne (born July 6, 1911) and Patty (born February 26, 1918), she would form the Andrews Sisters singing group, known as "America's wartime sweethearts" and remembered for their 1941 hit "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."

About 1,000 lumbermen walk away from their jobs on the second day of a strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World. The workers, employed by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company and the International Lumber Company, demand a pay increase, a nine-hour day, and sanitary living conditions.

Hjalmar Petersen is born in Eskildstrup on the island of Fyn in Denmark. A veteran country-newspaper editor, he would serve as the state's governor for four months in 1936 and 1937 (the shortest gubernatorial term in Minnesota history), following the death in office of Floyd B. Olson. Petersen died on March 29, 1968, while vacationing in Columbus, Ohio.