This Day in Minnesota History
Today's Date:
The celebrated Norwegian violinist Ole Bull performs in the capitol building in St. Paul, a heady concert for a territorial capital.
The Twin Cities' first streetcar, a horse-drawn affair, begins operation.
A tornado kills six in New Ulm. It also blows through Palmyra, Wellington, and Cairo in Renville County, killing eleven more.
African American lawyer William T. Francis, appointed US minister to Liberia by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, dies of yellow fever in Monrovia, Liberia. Born in Indianapolis in 1869, Francis moved to Minnesota in 1888 and later took over Frederick McGhee's law practice. As a well-known St. Paul attorney, Francis participated in many racially charged trials, including the 1920 appeal of the Duluth lynchings trial, in which he represented the defendants.
Jesse Ventura is born in Minneapolis. His given name is James Janos, but he would adopt the Ventura moniker at the start of his professional wrestling career. Running as an anti-establishment candidate with the Reform Party, Ventura's defeat of St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman (Republican) and State Attorney General Hubert "Skip" Humphrey III (Democratic-Farmer-Labor) in the 1998 gubernatorial race was national news.