Local

March 8, 1990: After several hours of deliberation, the jury in the trial of Vernon Olaf Bentson returned a verdict of guilty on three counts of seconddegree murder and one count of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Bonnie Lou Haugen.

March 7, 1990: Farmstead worker Dean Peoples was pictured on the front page of the Albert Lea Tribune leaving the local plant. Six-hundred Farmstead employees were laid off as union officers and executives held meetings to determine the fate of the meatpacking plant.

March 6, 1990: Members of the Norwegian Youth Home Guard participated in an exchange training program with the Minnesota National Guard. Borgar Johnsen of Ntodden, Norway, and Alf Torstein Bjerklund of Ulefoss, Norway, were pictured in the Albert Lea Tribune with Janet and Dennis Vanderwoude, their host family.

March 5, 1990: San Juan Flores and Noemy Muggli, both of Albert Lea, were pictured in the Albert Lea Tribune with awards from the National Institute of Women of Color for their volunteer work in the area.

National

1791: Congress passed a measure taxing distilled spirits; it was the first internal revenue act in U.S. history.

1845: Florida became the 27th state.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the National Academy of Sciences.

1894: British Prime Minister William Gladstone submitted his resignation to Queen Victoria, ending his fourth and final premiership.

1934: Bank robber John Dillinger escaped from the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Indiana, along with another prisoner, Herbert Youngblood.

1943: In London’s East End, 173 people died in a crush of bodies at the Bethnal Green tube station, which was being used as a wartime air raid shelter.

1991: Motorist Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video. Twenty-five people were killed when a United Airlines Boeing 737-200 crashed while approaching the Colorado Springs airport.

2001: A plane carrying members of a National Guard engineering crew crashed in heavy rain near Macon, Ga., killing all 21 people on board.

2002: Voters in Switzerland approved joining the United Nations, abandoning almost 200 years of formal neutrality.

2010: Appearing before a White House audience of invited guests, many wearing white medical coats, President Barack Obama firmly rejected calls from Republicans to draft new health care legislation from scratch. Greece announced painful new austerity measures, cutting salaries for government workers and raising sales taxes as it tried to snuff out a financial crisis threatening Europe’s economy. British politician Michael Foot died in north London at age 96.

2015: In a direct challenge to the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Congress and bluntly warned the U.S. that an emerging nuclear agreement with Iran would pave “Iran’s path to the bomb.” President Barack Obama pushed back sternly, saying the U.S. would never sign such a deal and that Netanyahu was offering no useful alternative.

2019: A tornado roared into the small community of Beauregard, Alabama, killing 23 people; it was the nation’s deadliest tornado in nearly six years.