Dakota people who had opposed the 1862 war gain control of 269 white captives and release them to General Henry H. Sibley at a location later marked by Camp Release Monument in Lac qui Parle County.

Elmer A. Benson is born in Appleton, Minnesota. He served as governor from 1937 to 1939, representing the Farmer‒Labor Party. Under his watch, the state's first workers' compensation law was passed. His sympathy for communist principles led to distrust among members of his party, but he retained control of the Farmer‒Labor Party until 1944, when it merged with the Democratic Party.

Isaac I. Stevens and his surveying crew leave Minneapolis to plot a rail route to Puget Sound. In 1870 the Northern Pacific Railroad followed this route.

William W. Mayo is born in England. One of the first doctors to use a microscope to aid in diagnosis, he arrived in Minnesota Territory in 1855 and settled in Rochester in 1863. His sons, Will and Charlie Mayo, founded the Mayo Clinic in St. Mary's Hospital in 1889.

Noted aesthete Oscar Wilde lectures at the Opera House in St. Paul. He had spoken the day before at the Academy of Music in Minneapolis.

Stillwater's first sawmill, owned by John McKusick, cuts its first board, the start of over sixty years of milling in the city. Stillwater's mills cut primarily white pine, a wood prized for ornamental carving.

Winona County is established. It is named for a Dakota woman—a relative of the Mdewakanton leader Wabasha. Winona means "first-born daughter" in the Dakota language.

The Mille Lacs Ojibwe are offered $40,000 to move to the White Earth Reservation so that their land can be sold to developers. In August, seventy-four men (of 125 available) sign the agreement, and by 1914 1,152 individuals had moved to White Earth while 276 remained at Mille Lacs.

Minnesota gets its taste of the nationwide savings and loan debacle when Hal Greenwood, Jr., former chairman and CEO of the failed Midwest Federal Savings and Loan Association, is sentenced by a federal judge in St. Paul to forty-six months in prison and ordered to forfeit $3.6 million. Following federal deregulation of the thrift industry during the 1980s, savings and loans around the country had become over-extended, and many engaged in loans without sufficient reserves to cover themselves if the loans failed. Greenwood was one of the few savings and loan officials to be sentenced.

More counties are created. Three are named for bodies of water; Big Stone for Big Stone Lake, Chippewa for the Chippewa River, and Traverse for Lake Traverse; and two for notable individuals; General John Pope, cartographer (see June 6), is honored with Pope County, and Isaac I. Stevens, railroad surveyor (see May 31), is remembered with Stevens County.