A tractor truck made by the Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company receives nationwide attention during army battle maneuvers at Camp Ripley. Soldiers would call it the "jeep."

The first WeFest takes place in Detroit Lakes, featuring the band Alabama and the performers Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. The biggest country music and camping festival in the nation, it attracts tens of thousands of country music enthusiasts annually.

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

The council house of the Indian Agency at St. Peters is destroyed by arson. Arsonists strike again on February 24, 1831, burning the agency home. Indian agent Lawrence Taliaferro was unpopular with corrupt traders, who disliked his strict enforcement of federal rules.

Bishop Thomas L. Grace dedicates the Church of St. Michael in Stillwater, with Father John Ireland presiding. The press of the day acclaims it as the finest church in the state.

FBI and INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents arrest Zacarias Moussaoui in Minneapolis for an immigration violation. They find weapons and Boeing flight manuals in his possession, and in an ensuing trial (held after the terrorist attacks on September 11), Moussaoui admits to conspiring with al-Quaeda. The extent of his involvement in planning the September 11 attacks in particular is disputed.

Author Marchette Chute is born in Minneapolis. She published several award-winning children's books, including Shakespeare of London, Geoffrey Chaucer of England, and Ben Jonson of Westminster.

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 350-pound bear is killed in the Hotel Duluth's lounge. The bear had followed truck driver Arvid Peterson and his shipment of fish into the city, and, attracted by the smell of food in the Hotel Duluth's coffee shop, had broken through the window of the lounge. The hotel's night watchman, Albert Nelson, and a unnamed local resident confronted the bear, hitting it with a chair and a hammer. Others called the police, and Sergeant Eli LeBeau shot the bear after trying first to corner it unharmed to return it to the woods. The bear was the third killed in Duluth that year.

Flash flooding kills seven and causes $67 million in damages in Dodge, Fillmore, Houston, Olmsted, Steele, Wabasha, and Winona counties. People are evacuated from Rushford, Stockton, Houston, Elba, Minnesota City, and portions of Winona.

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.