The printing press of the St. Cloud Visiter is destroyed by a mob. The paper's editor, Jane Grey Swisshelm, a feminist and abolitionist, had angered local businessman and slave owner Sylvanus B. Lowry. Swisshelm obtained a new press and printed the story of her press's destruction and the names of the culprits, which resulted in a libel case and the termination of the paper. A week later she began publishing the St. Cloud Democrat, which she ran for eight years.

Electric streetcars begin running in Minneapolis.

Robert Bly is born in Madison, Minnesota. After becoming a poet, translator, editor, and activist in the men's movement, he wrote numerous books, including the best-selling nonfiction work on men and myth Iron John: A Book About Men.

A bill is introduced in Congress to create a territory called "Minasota." Although the bill fails, this is the first legislative use of the name.

Swedish settlement in Minnesota begins when Carl A. Fernstrom, Oscar Roos, and August Sandahl build a log cabin on Hay Lake in Washington County.

A blizzard marks the beginning of the "winter of the deep snow" and kills at least six individuals in Pipestone and Cottonwood Counties. During that winter, the Pipestone County Star is printed on brown wrapping paper for eight weeks while the snow blocks supply trains.

Daily mail service between Prairie du Chien and St. Anthony begins.

William G. LeDuc is born in Wilkesville, Ohio. After moving to St. Paul in 1850, he opened a law office and bookstore and published three yearbooks publicizing the territory. In 1857 he moved to Hastings, where he built a Gothic Revival home and ran a mill that processed spring wheat flour. He became a general in the Civil War, served as US commissioner of agriculture, and helped develop the Remington typewriter. LeDuc died in 1917.

William Maupins, Duluth's premier civil rights leader, dies. He served as president of the Duluth NAACP chapter, and, when an African American family was prevented from moving into a Duluth neighborhood, he launched a campaign that led to a city fair-housing ordinance. He also organized a food drive for poor African Americans in Mississippi; when white truckers in the South tried to block the shipments, he persuaded Duluth teamsters to deliver the food.

President James Monroe appoints Lawrence Taliaferro Indian agent of St. Peters (later called Mendota). Taliaferro moved his operations across the river to Fort St. Anthony (later Snelling) when that post opened.