Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Local

Jan. 26, 2011: The Albert Lea unit of the Minnesota Army National Guard was notified that it would be deployed in support of Operation New Dawn. Operation New Dawn was the name of the U.S. drawdown phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Jan. 30, 2011: Albert Lea fire investigator Doug Johnson ruled that a fire at Lakeview Elementary School on Jan. 27, 2011, was arson.

Jan. 30, 1991: Mary Sheeran, a social worker at Sibley and Brookside elementary schools, accepted the 1991 District 241 Teacher of the Year award at Albert Lea Technical College.

Jan. 29, 1971: Don Norton of Norton Ford was kind enough to offer a cold elephant a place to stay. Maiti the elephant was being transported from Como Park Zoo when her transport was involved in an accident on Highway 65. Norton opened up his body shop to Maiti for the night.

National

1911: The notorious Hope Diamond was sold by jeweler Pierre Cartier to socialites Edward and Evalyn McLean of Washington, D.C., for $180,000.

1915: The American merchant vessel SS William P. Frye, en route to England with a cargo of wheat, became the first U.S. ship to be sunk during World War I by a German cruiser, the SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich, even though the United States was not at war.

1916: Louis D. Brandeis was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson to the Supreme Court; Brandeis became the court’s first Jewish member.

1956: Elvis Presley made his first national TV appearance on “Stage Show,” a CBS program hosted by Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

1973: A cease-fire officially went into effect in the Vietnam War, a day after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords by the United States, North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

1977: Actor-comedian Freddie Prinze, 22, co-star of the NBC-TV show “Chico and the Man,” shot and mortally wounded himself at the Beverly Comstock Hotel (he died the following day).

1980: Six U.S. diplomats who had avoided being taken hostage at their embassy in Tehran flew out of Iran with the help of Canadian diplomats.

1982: Italian anti-terrorism forces rescued U.S. Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier, 42 days after he had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades.

1985: The charity supergroup USA for Africa recorded the Michael Jackson-Lionel Richie song “We Are the World” at A&M Studios in Los Angeles.

2011: The nation’s largest cable TV company, Comcast Corp., took control of NBC Universal, capping a 13-month bid.