This Week in History: 2 A.L. students given citizen awards

Published 8:00 pm Friday, May 14, 2021

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Local

May 10, 2011: Former Minnesota Vikings defensive end Bob Lurtsema met with football fans at Northbridge Mall.

May 13, 2011: Albert Lea High School student Mary Paul and Brooke Thompson received Citizen’s Awards for their efforts to raise awareness about the consequences of drinking and driving. Paul and Thompson were pictured in the Tribune with Mayor Vern Rasmussen and members of the Albert Lea Police Department.

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May 13, 2011: A 12-member jury found former Albert Lea City Manager Jim Norman guilty of seven out of eight counts tied to misusing the city-issued credit card.

National/international

1643: Louis XIV became King of France at age 4 upon the death of his father, Louis XIII.

1787: Delegates began gathering at the State House in Philadelphia to draw up the United States Constitution; the convention did not achieve a quorum of seven states until May 25.

1796: English physician Edward Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps against smallpox by using cowpox matter.

1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest left camp near present-day Hartford, Illinois.

1863: Union forces defeated the Confederates in the Battle of Jackson, Mississippi.

1914: Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis was born in Lafayette, Alabama.

1917: Three shepherd children reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary near Fatima, Portugal; it was the first of six such apparitions that the children claimed to have witnessed.

1940: In his first speech as British prime minister, Winston Churchill told Parliament, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

1940: The Netherlands surrendered to invading German forces during World War II.

1948: According to the current-era calendar, the independent state of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv by David Ben-Gurion, who became its first prime minister; U.S. President Harry S. Truman immediately recognized the new nation.

1958: Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, were spat upon and their limousine battered by rocks thrown by anti-U.S. demonstrators in Caracas, Venezuela.

1961: Freedom Riders were attacked by violent mobs in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.

1961: Actor Gary Cooper died in Los Angeles six days after turning 60.

1985: A confrontation between Philadelphia authorities and the radical group MOVE ended as police dropped a bomb onto the group’s row house, igniting a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed 61 homes.

1987: Film star Rita Hayworth died in New York at age 68.

1998: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra died at a Los Angeles hospital at age 82. The hit sitcom “Seinfeld” aired its final episode after nine years on NBC.

2001: The Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that there is no exception in federal law for people to use marijuana for medical purposes.

2008: The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice. Justine Henin, 25, became the first woman to retire from tennis while atop the WTA rankings.

2011: At New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and potential candidate for president of France, was removed from a Paris-bound plane and charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid, Nafissatou Diallo. (Strauss-Kahn later resigned; the charges against him were eventually dropped.)

2016: A charter bus headed to a casino in rainy conditions crashed north of Laredo, Texas, killing eight people and injuring 44 others.

2020: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned doctors about a serious rare inflammatory condition in children linked with the coronavirus. Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise company, said it would lay off hundreds of employees due to the coronavirus pandemic. Producers of the big-budget musicial “Frozen” announced that the show would not reopen when Broadway theaters were allowed to restart. Phyllis George, a former Miss America who became a female sportscasting pioneer on CBS’s “The NFL Today” and served as the first lady of Kentucky, died at the age of 70.