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

 

Local history

April 15, 1858: A question on whether to issue a $5 million bond loan was voted upon in Freeborn County, and the county voted against it.

Spring 1869: Pigeons were so plentiful in the region of Albert Lea that like clouds, they darkened the sun.

April 15, 1969: Three students were ran over as a group of students were getting onto a bus. They were taken to Naeve Hospital. According to Tribune archives, the bus driver had stopped at the intersection of Clark Street and Euclid Avenue to allow students to be let off for the high school and to pick up additional students en route to Brookside. A large group of students, scrambling to get onto the bus, caused the three boys to be pushed under the bus. There were nine witnesses to the incident.

April 17, 1999: A transformer fire caused an evacuation of Farmland Foods

April 18, 1969: Mower and Freeborn County officials were probing a joint hospital plan, including shared services. Representatives from St. Olaf and Naeve hospitals were in attendance, along with businessmen from both communities and representatives from business, industry, education and labor sectors.

 

U.S. history

1862: During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. The Confederacy conscripted all white men between the ages of 18 to 35.

1889: Comedian and movie director Charles Chaplin was born in London.

1963: Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which the civil rights activist responded to a group of local clergymen who had criticized him for leading street protests; King defended his tactics, writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1972: Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon with astronauts John W. Young, Charles M. Duke Jr. and Ken Mattingly on board.

2003: The Bush administration lowered the terror alert level from orange to yellow, saying the end of heavy fighting in Iraq had diminished the threat of terrorism in the United States.

2008: The Supreme Court upheld, 7-2, the most widely used method of lethal injection, allowing states to resume executions after a seven-month halt.

Pope Benedict XVI was welcomed by President George W. Bush as only the second pontiff to visit the White House (after John Paul II) and the first in 29 years.

 

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