This Week in History: Youth confess to series of crimes in 3 states

Published 8:00 pm Monday, September 2, 2019

Local

Sept. 3, 1949: The Interstate Power Co. completed installing 42 new light poles on Broadway between Pearl and Seventh streets. The new lights gave Albert Lea the longest “white way” of any city in southern Minnesota.

Sept. 3, 1949: Five youths, all related, confessed to a bizarre series of 22 crimes committed in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. One of the robberies occurred in Albert Lea at the Norby Texaco station on 313 W. Main St.

Email newsletter signup

Sept. 4, 1949: William Wohlhuter, former mayor of Albert Lea and one-time member of the state House of Representatives, died at his home at 716 Fountain St.

Sept. 7, 1969: Albert Lea police officers Gene Hansen and Clarence Ayers won trophies at the annual pistol shoot of the Southeastern Minnesota Police Officers Association in Winona.

Sept. 9, 1969: The Albert Lea City Council approved the $38,000 purchase of a building on East William Street to be cleared for the construction of a city parking lot.

Sept. 6, 1989: Nineteen hopper cars on a southbound Chicago and North Western Railroad unit train derailed a half mile north of Gordonsville.

National

1783: Representatives of the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the Revolutionary War.

Sept. 3, 1943: Allied forces invaded Italy during World War II, the same day Italian officials signed a secret armistice with the Allies.

1962: Poet E.E. Cummings died in North Conway, N.H., at age 67.

1970: Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, 57, died in Washington, D.C.

1976: America’s Viking 2 lander touched down on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the red planet’s surface.

1978: Pope John Paul I was installed as the 264th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

1995: The online auction site eBay was founded in San Jose, California, by Pierre Omidyar under the name “AuctionWeb.”

2003: Paul Hill, a former minister who said he murdered an abortion doctor and his bodyguard to save the lives of unborn babies, was executed in Florida by injection, becoming the first person put to death in the United States for anti-abortion violence.

2005: President George W. Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast as his administration intensified efforts to rescue Katrina survivors and send aid to the hurricane-ravaged region in the face of criticism it did not act quickly enough.

2005: U.S. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died in Arlington, Virginia, at age 80, after more than three decades on the Supreme Court.

2009: Vice President Joe Biden told a Brookings Institution gathering that the Obama administration was fiercely determined to get a health care overhaul, although he conceded it likely wouldn’t happen without “an awful lot of screaming and hollering.”

2009: A private funeral service was held in Glendale, California, for pop superstar Michael Jackson, whose body was entombed in a mausoleum more than two months after his death.

2014: President Barack Obama, during a visit to Estonia, harshly condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine as a threat to peace. President Obama also said the United States would not be intimidated by Islamic State militants after the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff.

2018: President Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, suggesting that the Justice Department had hurt the chances of Republicans in midterm elections with the recent indictments of two GOP congressmen.

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