Baseball slugger Roger Maris is born in Hibbing. In 1961 he would hit sixty-one home runs for the Yankees, breaking Babe Ruth's single season record, which had stood for thirty-four years. Maris's record would be broken thirty-seven years later by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Englishman George Featherstonhaugh reaches Fort Snelling. He had been hired by the US War Department to explore the geology of the Upper Midwest. He continues up the Minnesota River to Lake Traverse, and in 1847 he published the book A Canoe Voyage up the Minnay Sotor.

A group of Minnesota Ojibwe takes a special train to see the Buffalo Bill Wild West show in Ashland, Wisconsin, which in turn causes settler-colonists to come see them.

The first Minnesota Renaissance Festival opens at Lake Grace in Jonathan. One of the largest of its kind, the festival now operates from a permanent encampment near Shakopee.

The Little Sisters of the Poor establish their convent in St. Paul. The Sisters began as a Hospitallers Order in Saint Servan, Brittany, France, dedicated to serving the elderly poor and infirm, and they maintain convents and hospitality houses all over the world.

The Chicago Electric Vehicle Company test-drives its first car, in Faribault.

Commercial production of taconite at the Reserve Mining Company's plant in Silver Bay begins. Taconite had been developed in 1919, in Babbitt, but large-scale production wasn't begun until Edward W. Davis had perfected a method to process it and the richer parts of the iron ranges had been mined out.

Newspaper editor Horace Greeley gives the principal address at a Hennepin County agricultural fair held in Minneapolis. In his speech he advocates federal and state regulations for the protection of farmers.

Alexander Henry II arrives at the Pembina River to begin his trading business.

The state of Minnesota and the Ojibwe living near Crow Wing sign a peace treaty. Negotiated to alleviate settler-colonists' fears that the Ojibwe would join in the US–Dakota War, in truth the agreement was void because the state did not have the power to make treaties.

Macalester College opens its St. Paul campus. Originally known as Baldwin School, it had been renamed for Charles Macalester. Macalester owned the Winslow House, a hotel in Minneapolis where classes were first held. Macalester agreed to donate the hotel to the college in 1874.