Faribault Chief of Police David J. Shipley is fatally shot by Lewis M. Sage. Shipley had attempted to arrest him after Sage threatened to shoot his own wife. Sage is later convicted of manslaughter in the fourth degree and sentenced to four years in the Minnesota State Prison at Stillwater.

The Coast Guard closes Split Rock Lighthouse after fifty-nine years of service. Its grounds become a state park the following year.

On an unusually balmy day, the steamer Aunt Betsy carries a load of passengers from St. Paul to Fort Snelling. Crowds line the Jackson Street landing, the bluffs, and the Wabasha Street Bridge to watch, and the passengers carry palm-leaf fans to stave off the heat.

African American Minnesotans hold a grand convention in St. Paul's Ingersoll Hall "to celebrate the Emancipation of 4,000,000 slaves, and to express...gratitude for the bestowal of the elective franchise to the colored people of this State."

At the Minnesota Historical Society's first annual meeting, the Reverend Edward D. Neill gives a lecture, the Sixth Regiment's band provides music, and a grand ball is held in St. Paul's Central House.

Lawrence Taliaferro, tired of bribery attempts by crooked individuals, steps down as Indian agent of St. Peters (outside Fort Snelling), a position he had held since 1820. Native Americans and settler-colonists alike appreciated his honesty and intelligence, and his journals about life at Fort Snelling provide a detailed record of frontier Minnesota. He died on January 22, 1871, aged eighty-one.

The worst natural disaster in Minnesota history—over 450 dead, fifteen hundred square miles consumed, towns and villages burned flat—unfolded at a frightening pace, lasting less than fifteen hours from beginning to end. The fire began around midday on Saturday, October 12, 1918. By 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, all was over but the smoldering, the suffering, and the recovery.

In April 1965, the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers crested at record levels, flooding cities and towns across the Upper Midwest. The disaster was especially evident in Chaska and Carver, where the Minnesota River reached its highest-recorded local level on April 12. While much of the two communities was severely damaged, residents pulled together to save the new Carver County courthouse.

The July 13, 1890, capsizing of the steamer Sea Wing on Lake Pepin and the deaths of ninety-eight of its passengers horrified Minnesota and the nation. The accident ranks among the most deadly on America’s inland waterways.

Founded by Swedish Americans in St. Peter in 1862, Gustavus Adolphus College attracted a mostly white student body for much of its history. In the 1960s, the college took steps to diversify its campus by recruiting and retaining African American students from the South. This effort made Gustavus unique among Midwestern liberal arts colleges.