This Week in History: Longtime Albert Lea city councilor is sworn in as the city’s new mayor

Published 8:00 pm Friday, January 15, 2021

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Local

Jan. 13, 2011: Freeborn County Sheriff Bob Kindler answered questions at a press conference about the deaths of two women found in a home in Newry Township. Autopsy results indicated that the women, a mother and daughter, died from separate medical complications on the same day.

Jan. 18, 2011: The Shell Rock River Watershed District received the Minnesota Chapter of The Wildlife Society’s 2010 conservation award.

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Jan. 14, 1991: Long-time city councilor Marv Wangen was sworn in as mayor of Albert Lea.

National

1862: The U.S. Senate confirmed President Abraham Lincoln’s choice of Edwin M. Stanton to be the new Secretary of War, replacing Simon Cameron.

1865: As the Civil War neared its end, Union forces captured Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina, depriving the Confederates of their last major seaport.

1892: The original rules of basketball, devised by James Naismith, were published for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the game originated.

1929: Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta.

1943: Work was completed on the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of War (now Defense).

1973: President Richard M. Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

1974: The situation comedy “Happy Days” premiered on ABC-TV.

1976: Sara Jane Moore was sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford in San Francisco. (Moore was released on the last day of 2007.)

1993: A historic disarmament ceremony ended in Paris with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty banning chemical weapons.

2009: US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ditched his Airbus 320 in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disabled both engines; all 155 people aboard survived.

2014: A highly critical and bipartisan Senate report declared that the deadly Sept. 2012 assault on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, could have been prevented; the report spread blame among the State Department, the military and U.S. intelligence.

2011: Several international envoys — but crucially none from the world powers — got a look inside an Iranian nuclear site at the invitation of the Tehran government before a new round of talks on Iran’s disputed atomic activities. Miss Nebraska Teresa Scanlan won the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas. Actor Susannah York, 72, died in London.

2016: A federal judge rejected Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s bid for a new trial and ordered him to pay victims of the deadly attack more than $101 million in restitution. Actor Dan Haggerty, 74, died in Burbank, California.

2020: House Democratic leaders carried the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump across the U.S. Capitol in a formal procession to the Senate. The United States and China reached a trade deal easing tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.