Pilgrim Baptist Church is formally organized. The African American congregation, granted mission status by the First Baptist Church of St. Paul, met at various residences for a number of years before constructing a church at Thirteenth and Cedar Streets in St. Paul. Robert Hickman was ordained eleven years later and became the congregation's official pastor.
A fire at St. Peter State Hospital (later renamed the St. Peter Regional Treatment Center), a mental asylum, kills between ten and fifteen inmates. The first mental institution in the state, the asylum had opened on December 6, 1866.
The preparatory (or high school) department of what is now Hamline University opens for business in Red Wing. Named for Leonidas L. Hamline, a Methodist bishop, the school suspends operations in 1869 and reopens in St. Paul in 1880, but its original founding date makes it the oldest college in the state.
The steamer Manistee sinks in Lake Superior. It had left Duluth on November 10, but a gale had driven it into port at Bayfield. Captain John McKay tries to force passage on this night, and twenty-three of the sailors aboard are never seen again. A lifeboat carrying three survivors washes ashore a few days later.
US Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler dies in Washington, DC. Born near Northfield, Minnesota, on March 17, 1866, Butler was a conservative judge who opposed many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Butler was the final justice to pass the bar exam after studying with an attorney rather than attending a law school. He served as lawyer for Ramsey County and as regent for the University of Minnesota before President Warren G. Harding appointed him to the high court in 1922.
The first commuter rail train in Minnesota carries passengers from Big Lake to downtown Minneapolis. The Northstar Rail Line cost $320 million and is funded by the federal and state governments, the regional rail authorities for Anoka, Hennepin, and Sherburne counties, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minnesota Twins.
Winfield Scott Hammond is born in Southborough, Massachusetts. Prior to becoming the state's eighteenth governor, he function in various educational capacities: as high school principal in Mankato, superintendent of schools in Madelia, and president of the school board of St. James. He died on December 30, 1915, the second governor to die while in office.
Jackpot Junction Casino, run by the Mdewakanton Dakota on the Lower Sioux Reservation in Morton, celebrates its eighth anniversary (November 16–18). It is the first Native American casino in Minnesota. Originally a bingo parlor, by 1988 it had become a fully operational casino.
The Liberian freighter Socrates runs aground on Minnesota Point in Duluth. Excursion buses carry tourists to view the stranded ship, which is later freed by tugs.
The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota opens. Sculptor and architect Frank O. Gehry won an award from Progressive Architecture magazine in 1991 for his design of the building.
Minnesota's first German-language newspaper, the Minnesota Deutsche Zeitung, is published in St. Paul by editors Friedrich Orthwein and Albert Wolff. It is the second non-English newspaper in Minnesota, the first being Dakota Tawaxitu Kin (Dakota Friend), published in English and Dakota by missionary Gideon H. Pond from 1850 to 1852.
The singing Hutchinson family of New Hampshire founds the town of Hutchinson in McLeod County. From 1841 until the close of the Civil War, the Hutchinsons toured the United States giving concerts of popular and patriotic songs.
Two masked men rob Anoka's Monte Carlo casino. An article in the Anoka Herald reports that "the whole thing was carried out with good humor," although it was likely not humorous for the attendant who was shot twice by the robbers when he tried to escape.
Super Value Groceries receives Minnesota's first shipment of air freighted vegetables. The cargo includes tomatoes, asparagus, figs, and avocados, and a special basket is given to Minneapolis Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey and Governor Edward J. Thye.
Measuring one-third of a township, tiny Manomin County (named for manoomin, the Ojibwe word for wild rice) is abolished and transferred to Anoka County. Known as Mamomin Township until 1879, the territory is now the town of Fridley.
Hubert H. Humphrey wins Minnesota's race for US Senate. During three consecutive terms he supports a medicare bill, a nuclear test ban treaty, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sharon Sayles Belton is elected mayor of Minneapolis. She is the first African American and the first woman to hold the office. Having previously worked for the State Department of Corrections and as assistant director of the Minnesota Program for Victims of Sexual Assault, Belton would tout a family-centered platform and administer numerous successful community programs, including the annual youth-oriented event, "Dancin' in the Streets."
Indians of All Tribes (IAT), a group of activists including Adam Nordwall (Red Lake Ojibwe) occupies Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. IAT intends to force negotiation with the federal government and to assert the need for Native self-determination. Members of the group remained on the island until they were forcibly removed in 1971, bringing national attention to Native issues.
Artificial blood is used in the United States for the first time when Dr. Robert Anderson of the University Hospital injects Fluosol, a blood substitute developed in Japan, into a Jehovah's Witness individual who had refused a regular blood transfusion on religious grounds.
