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

 

Local history

May 31, 1989: Missy Loper, candystriper at Naeve Hospital, was pictured in the Albert Lea Tribune receiving an award from Terry Maxhimer, executive director of Naeve Hospital. Loper was honored for giving 400 hours of service as a candystriper.

June 1, 1989: Brookside Elementary School students Billy Horecka, Meka Toenges and Kris Jensen were pictured in the Albert Lea Tribune with their winning conservation posters. The poster contest was sponsored by the Minnesota County Soil and Conservation Districts.

June 1, 1979: Angel Annette Abrego was pictured in The Evening Tribune receiving her high school diploma from Dr. Gerald Rasmussen, chairman of the Albert Lea Board of Education. The graduation ceremony, for a class of 504 students, was held at the Freeborn County Fairgrounds.

May 28, 1969: Mayor Francis Crawford participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony to mark the official opening of the Senior Citizens Center. The old Carnegie Library, renovated with the help of community volunteers, became the home of the much-anticipated center.

June 1, 1969: John Edwin Murtaugh died at the age of 95 in Naeve Hospital. Murtaugh was a native of Albert Lea and honorary lifetime president of the Freeborn County Historical Society. Murtaugh was printer for several local newspapers in the 1890s, worked at the post office and operated the “Casino” on Fountain Lake from 1910 to 1958.

 

U.S. history

A.D. 632: The prophet Muhammad died in Medina.

1845: Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, died in Nashville, Tennessee.

1920: The Republican National Convention opened in Chicago; its delegates ended up nominating Warren G. Harding for president.

1939: Britain’s King George VI and his consort, Queen Elizabeth, arrived in Washington, D.C., where they were received at the White House by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1948: The “Texaco Star Theater” made its debut on NBC-TV with Milton Berle guest-hosting the first program. Berle was later named the show’s permanent host.

1966: A merger was announced between the National and American Football Leagues, to take effect in 1970.

1967: During the six-day Middle East war, 34 American servicemen were killed when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel later said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.

June 8, 1968: Authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1978: A jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled the so-called “Mormon will,” purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery.

1995: U.S. Marines rescued Capt. Scott O’Grady, whose F-16C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2.

Mickey Mantle received a liver transplant at a Dallas hospital; however, the baseball great died two months later.

1998: The National Rifle Association elected actor Charlton Heston to be its president.

2003: Frustrated and angry over delays, a coalition of the nation’s mayors meeting in Denver asked federal officials to bypass state governments and give them the money they needed to beef up homeland security.

2017: Former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before Congress, asserted that President Donald Trump fired him to interfere with his investigation of Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign.

 

— Information from Albert Lea Tribune archives and the Associated Press.