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Local

Dec. 8, 2010: Albert Lea Mayor Vern Rasmussen Jr. held a press conference urging residents and business owners to speak out against a proposed Alliant Energy rate increase.

Dec. 11, 1990: Dale Alan Ellegaard of Albert Lea was charged in Freeborn County District Court with four counts of second-degree murder in connection with the death of Douglas Jacob Freese of Lyle.

Dec. 10, 1970: For the third time in four years, the Albert Lea Tiger High School football team won the state championship for Minnesota’s largest high schools.

 

National

2017: Democratic Sen. Al Franken said he would resign after a series of sexual harassment allegations; he took a parting shot at President Donald Trump, describing him as “a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault.”

1980: Rock star and former Beatle John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by an apparently deranged fan.

1972: America’s last moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral.

1969: A free concert by The Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Alameda County, California, was marred by the deaths of four people, including one who was stabbed by a Hell’s Angel.

1967: Singer Otis Redding, 26, and six others were killed when their plane crashed into Wisconsin’s Lake Monona; trumpeter Ben Cauley, a member of the group the Bar-Kays, was the only survivor.

Dec. 7, 1941: The Empire of Japan launched an air raid on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii as well as targets in Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines and Wake Island; the United States declared war against Japan the next day.

Dec. 6, 1907: The worst mining disaster in U.S. history occurred as 362 men and boys died in a coal mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia.

1865: The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was ratified as Georgia became the 27th state to endorse it.