Alexander Ramsey is appointed the first governor of Minnesota Territory. The third choice of President Zachary Taylor, Ramsey is selected after the first, Edward W. McGaughey, is rejected by the Senate, and the second, William S. Pennington, declines the post. Appointed while Congress is out of session, Ramsey is already in Minnesota before the Senate approves his nomination in January 1850.

St. Paul's new 2,000-watt radio station KSTP inaugurates its illustrious broadcasting career in the Northwest with a seven-hour program that offers a "wide variety of entertainment" throughout the evening and runs until 2:00 A.M. the following morning. With beginnings in local stations WAMD (launched by Stanley E.

A tornado kills eleven and injures sixty individuals in Mankato and North Mankato, and a second tornado injures 200 people in Wells an hour later.

Five young Dakota men murder the Baker family on a farm near Acton in Meeker County. Upon hearing this news, some Dakota leaders decide to launch a general attack on settler-colonists near the Lower Sioux Agency, beginning the US–Dakota War of 1862.

A tornado strikes Austin, killing five.

A tornado with 110-mile-per-hour winds blows down St. Paul's High Bridge and kills fourteen in the Twin Cities and Stillwater.

On St. Paul's East Side, a five-story building collapses into Swede Hollow. The structure, home to twelve stores and twenty-five families, had been built on a landfill. Luckily, the tenants manage to evacuate the building before its slide into the hollow.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the airships that would be used to bomb London in World War I, enjoys a more conventional balloon ascension in St. Paul.

The biggest fire in Minneapolis history burns twenty-three square blocks of the city and more than 150 buildings, leaving 1,500 people without shelter.

Minnesota Territory's first court session is held in Stillwater. Reportedly, only one man on the jury wore boots. All the rest wore moccasins.