Local

Jan. 13, 1990: After more than 60 years in downtown Albert Lea, Gildner’s closed its doors. The men’s clothing store decided to close after a water main on the building’s fourth floor broke and destroyed the store’s entire inventory.

Jan. 8, 1990: Warren Johnson received the Ed Fleming Award for his many years of volunteer work with Albert Lea youth hockey. Johnson was a long-time friend of Ed Fleming.

Jan. 8, 1970: The Evening Tribune ran a photo showing the condition of the pressroom and printing press of the Austin Daily Herald after a fire destroyed the facility. The 1904 Goss-Rotary printing press was pictured encased in a block of ice after firefighters doused the blaze in sub-zero temperatures.

Jan. 7, 1960: Two cars were burned, another pushed into Fountain Lake, and at least three people were threatened with death in the 12 hours after the National Guard left Albert Lea. All of the incidents were in connection to a Wilson & Co. labor dispute.

 

National

2015: Masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French newspaper that had caricatured the Prophet Mohammad, methodically killing 12 people, including the editor, before escaping in a car. (Two suspects were killed two days later.)

2011: U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot and critically wounded when a gunman opened fire as the congresswoman met with constituents in Tucson; six people were killed, 12 others also injured. (Gunman Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced in November 2012 to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years.)

2006: Jill Carroll, a freelance journalist for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped and her translator shot dead in Baghdad. (Carroll was freed almost three months later.)

2005: Former Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen was arrested on murder charges 41 years after three civil rights workers were slain in Mississippi. (Killen was later convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison.)

Jan. 7, 2004: President George W. Bush proposed legal status, at least temporarily, for millions of immigrants improperly working in the U.S.

2001: With Vice President Al Gore presiding in his capacity as president of the Senate, Congress formally certified George W. Bush the winner of the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election.

1999: For the second time in history, an impeached American president went on trial before the Senate. President Bill Clinton faced charges of perjury and obstruction of justice; he was acquitted.

1994: Figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the leg by an assailant at Detroit’s Cobo Arena; four men, including the ex-husband of Kerrigan’s rival, Tonya Harding, went to prison for their roles in the attack. (Harding pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution, but denied any advance knowledge about the assault.)

1968: A surgical team at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California, led by Dr. Norman Shumway, performed the first U.S. adult heart transplant, placing the heart of a 43-year-old man in a 54-year-old patient (the recipient died 15 days later).

1953: President Harry Truman announced in his State of the Union message to Congress that the United States had developed a hydrogen bomb.

Jan. 6, 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address, outlined a goal of “Four Freedoms”: Freedom of speech and expression; the freedom of people to worship God in their own way; freedom from want; freedom from fear.

1789: America held its first presidential election as voters chose electors who, a month later, selected George Washington to be the nation’s first chief executive.