Local

March 11, 1990: Albert Lea firefighters were dispatched to Office II restaurant and lounge at 1119 S. Broadway after a police officer reported seeing smoke at the location. The blaze was brought under control and damage was estimated to be $100,000.

March 10, 1990: Sarah Johnson of Albert Lea was named Minnesota Journalist of the Year by The Journalism Educators Association. Johnson was a senior in high school, co-editor of the school paper and a part-time staff writer at the Albert Lea Tribune.

March 11, 1980: The Albert Lea Board of Education voted to close Ramsey Elementary School. The motion to close the school passed on a 5 to 1 vote.

 

National

2019: The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that gun-maker Remington could be sued over how it marketed the rifle that was used to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. (The U.S. Supreme Court later rejected an appeal from Remington Arms and allowed the lawsuit to go forward.)

2015: The police chief of the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson resigned in the wake of a scathing Justice Department report prompted by the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer.

Two Ferguson, Missouri, police officers were shot and wounded in front of the police department during a protest; U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder denounced the shooter as a “damn punk.”

2009: President Barack Obama lifted George W. Bush-era limits on using federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research.

Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history.

2004: Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced in Chesapeake, Virginia, to life in prison for his role in the October 2002 killing rampage in the Washington, D.C., area that left 10 people dead. (Malvo, 19, was sentenced a day after sniper mastermind John Allen Muhammad was given the death penalty.)

2003: Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. (Mitchell is serving a life sentence; Barzee was released from prison in September 2018.)

1997: Gangsta rapper The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) was killed in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles; he was 24.

1994: The Church of England ordained its first women priests.

March 12, 1980: A Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.)

1969: James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee (on his 41st birthday) to assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (Ray later repudiated that plea, maintaining his innocence until his death.)

The Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.

1967: The body of President John F. Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court, in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, raised the standard for public officials to prove they’d been libeled in their official capacity by news organizations.

A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, and sentenced him to death. (Both the conviction and death sentence were overturned, but Ruby died before he could be retried.)

March 9, 1945: During World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers began launching incendiary bomb attacks against Tokyo, resulting in an estimated 100,000 deaths.

1934: A gang that included John Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson robbed the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa, making off with $52,344.

1933: Congress, called into special session by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, began its “hundred days” of enacting New Deal legislation.

1913: Former slave, abolitionist and Underground Railroad “conductor” Harriet Tubman died in Auburn, New York; she was in her 90s.

1912: The Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia, founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant, Thomas Watson, heard Bell say over his experimental telephone, “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you” from the next room of Bell’s Boston laboratory.

1864: President Abraham Lincoln assigned Ulysses S. Grant, who had just received his commission as lieutenant-general, to the command of the Armies of the United States.

1841: The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. The Amistad, ruled 7-1 in favor of a group of illegally enslaved Africans who were captured off the U.S. coast after seizing control of a Spanish schooner, La Amistad; the justices ruled that the Africans should be set free.