Editor’s note: This is a weekly column dedicated to local and national history. It will appear in the newspaper every Tuesday.

 

Local history

April 23, 1969: Hawthorne Elementary School teacher Gary Koeder was elected president of the Albert Lea Jaycees at the club’s annual election meeting at Elks Lodge. Koeder succeeded Walter Dahl.

April 23: 1969: Patty Shea was named editor of the Ahlahasa and Kathy Gilbert the editor of the Tiger, following the traditional candle ceremony at the Town House.

1969: The Freeborn County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution providing for the advancement of funds from Freeborn County for the construction of the Turtle Creek Watershed bordering Freeborn, Steele and Mower counties. 

April 24, 1919: The 41st session of the Minnesota Legislature was completed. The Tribune article stated, “legislators passed a constitutional amendment for a $100 million bond issue for good roads. For the most part, however, curative acts and local measures make up the big bulk of the work.”

 

U.S. history

1898: Spain declared war on the United States, which responded in kind two days later.

1943: U.S. Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy assumed command of PT-109, a motor torpedo boat, in the Solomon Islands during World War II. (On Aug. 2, 1943, PT-109 was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, killing two crew members; Kennedy and 10 others survived.)

1968: Student protesters began occupying buildings on the campus of Columbia University in New York; police put down the protests a week later.

The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.

1969: Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. (The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.)

1971: Hundreds of Vietnam War veterans opposed to the conflict protested by tossing their medals and ribbons over a wire fence in front of the U.S. Capitol.

1988: A federal ban on smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went into effect.

1998: James Earl Ray, who confessed to assassinating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and then insisted he’d been framed, died at a Nashville, Tennessee, hospital at age 70.

2009: President Barack Obama met privately with leading executives of credit-card issuing companies; afterward, the president said he was determined to get a credit-card law passed that eliminated the tricky fine print, sudden rate increases and late fees.

 

— Information from “History of Freeborn County,” Albert Lea Tribune archives and the Associated Press.