Fort Gaines is renamed Fort Ripley in honor of Eleazar Ripley, a general in the War of 1812. The fort would be abandoned in 1878, but the National Guard's Camp Ripley preserves the name.

Popular candidate Jon Grunseth withdraws from the gubernatorial race. Grunseth had been affected by incumbent Rudy Perpich's mud-slinging campaign, but his candidacy was ultimately destroyed by accusations of sexual impropriety. Grunseth's withdrawal opens the door for Arne H. Carlson, state auditor, to run on the Republican ticket. Public disgust with the entire campaign helps Carlson win, and he proves to be a popular governor.

President Harry S. Truman appoints Eugenie Moore Anderson of Red Wing as ambassador to Denmark, making her the United States' first woman ambassador.

Bemidji native Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe, her costar in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, immortalize their handprints in the "Forecourt of the Stars" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, California.

The Minnesota Library Association is organized in St. Paul. Professor William W. Folwell, the librarian of the University of Minnesota, is elected president of this first state library association, and other members of "that useful profession" fill the offices of vice president (Helen J. McCaine of the St. Paul Public Library) and secretary and treasurer (J. Fletcher Williams of the Minnesota Historical Society).

The first legal execution in Ramsey County, Minnesota Territory, takes place when Yuha Zi, a Dakota man convicted of murdering an immigrant woman named Bridget Keanor, is hanged on a gallows on St. Anthony Hill (now Cathedral Hill) in St. Paul.

W. E."Pussyfoot" Johnson, who had the authority to enforce federal liquor laws on Native American reservations, leads a raid on the saloons of Park Rapids, which were illegally serving residents of the White Earth Reservation of Ojibwe (considered wards of the state and protected by an 1855 treaty). Johnson and a trainload of US marshals gather all the bottles they can find and demolish them on Main Street.

The state of Iowa is admitted to the Union. Iowa Territory had extended north into what is now western Minnesota, and this area was without a formal government until Minnesota Territory was created in 1849.

David M. Clough is born in Lyme, New Hampshire. He settled in Isanti County and served as governor of Minnesota from 1895 to 1899. During his tenure, the state raised four army regiments for service in the Spanish-American War and began building a new Minnesota State Capitol. Clough died in 1924.

Governor Orville L. Freeman announces that Minnesota will crack down on "drinking drivers," urging sheriffs in the state to resist local pressures to reduce drunk driving charges to charges of careless driving.