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Oct. 11, 1990: Ken Hakes, general manager of Hudson Foods, announced the business would expand operations in Albert Lea, adding about 100 jobs and investing $2 million.

Oct. 7, 1970: State Highway Department officials announced their decision to open Interstate 90 to Highway 13 before January. Albert Lea resident engineer Louis Anderson and project engineer Herb Saline were pictured on the front page of the Evening Tribune surveying the I-90 construction site.

Oral testimony concluded in Police Chief Clifford Bailey’s lawsuit against the city of Albert Lea. Bailey took legal action after the city attempted to force him to retire when he turned 60 years old — the mandatory retirement age for police and fire department personnel at the time. Bailey contended he was entitled to remain in his position until age 65.

Oct. 6, 1960: Many Albert Leans reported witnessing a mysterious object in the western sky at dusk. Lee Jackson observed the object through binoculars, reporting that it traveled at a high rate of speed and had flames shooting out the rear, but that it was not a jet. Authorities could not explain the object.

 

National

2017: Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein announced that he was taking a leave of absence from his company after a New York Times article detailed decades of alleged sexual harassment against women including actor Ashley Judd.

Vice President Mike Pence left the 49ers-Colts game in Indianapolis after about a dozen San Francisco players took a knee during the national anthem.

2016: Amid controversy over Donald Trump’s past sexual comments about women, House Speaker Paul Ryan effectively abandoned his party’s nominee, telling anxious fellow lawmakers he would not campaign for or defend Trump in the election’s closing weeks; pro-Trump members rebelled in anger, accusing Ryan of conceding the election to Hillary Clinton.

2014: The Supreme Court unexpectedly cleared the way for a dramatic expansion of gay marriage in the United States as it rejected appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans, effectively making such marriages legal in 30 states.

2012: Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison following his conviction on 45 counts of sexual abuse of boys.

2009: President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Oct. 5, 2005: Defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. government custody. (A reluctant President George W. Bush later signed off on the amendment.)

2004: The top U.S. arms inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer, reported finding no evidence Saddam Hussein’s regime had produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney conceded that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction as they tried to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue, arguing that Saddam was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

2003: California voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger their new governor.

2001: The war in Afghanistan started as the United States and Britain launched air attacks against military targets and Osama bin Laden’s training camps in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

1998: Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, was beaten and left tied to a wooden fencepost outside of Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days later. (Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney are serving life sentences for Shepard’s murder.)

The House triggered an open-ended impeachment inquiry against President Bill Clinton in a momentous 258-176 vote; 31 Democrats joined majority Republicans in opening the way for nationally televised impeachment hearings.

1997: Scientists reported the Mars Pathfinder had yielded what could be the strongest evidence yet that Mars might once have been hospitable to life.

1991: University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill publicly accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of making sexually inappropriate comments when she worked for him; Thomas denied Hill’s allegations.

1970: Rock singer Janis Joplin, 27, was found dead in her Hollywood hotel room.

1962: President John F. Kennedy, responding to the Thalidomide birth defects crisis, signed an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act requiring pharmaceutical companies to prove that their products were safe and effective prior to marketing.

1958: Racially-desegregated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, was mostly leveled by an early morning bombing.

Oct. 4, 1957: The Space Age began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit.

1927: The era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of “The Jazz Singer” starring Al Jolson, a feature containing both silent and sound-synchronized sequences.

1916: In the most lopsided victory in college football history, Georgia Tech defeated Cumberland University 222-0 in Atlanta.

1913: The Panama Canal was effectively completed as President Woodrow Wilson sent a signal from the White House by telegraph, setting off explosives that destroyed a section of the Gamboa dike.

1910: A major wildfire devastated the northern Minnesota towns of Spooner and Baudette, charring at least 300,000 acres; some 40 people are believed to have died.

Oct. 8, 1871: The Great Chicago Fire erupted; fires also broke out in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and in several communities in Michigan.