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Local

April 19, 2011: Freeborn County Recorder Kelly Callahan announced that his office would no longer be an agent for passport applications to the U.S. Department of State.

April, 20, 2011: Riverland Community College biology instructor Pamela Anne Tranby was presented with the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees highest academic honor, Educator of the Year.

April 19, 1961: The Evening Tribune publisher Paul C. Belknap was given a key to the city by Mayor Niles Shoff, in appreciation of his efforts to promote Albert Lea as he traveled around the country.

April 23, 1961: The Evening Tribune held an open house to show-off its new publishing plant on Front Street. Minnesota Gov. Elmer L. Andersen sent a note of congratulations to the Tribune staff and said he looked forward to visiting.

National/international

1862: During the Civil War, a Union fleet commanded by Flag Officer David G. Farragut captured the city of New Orleans.

1864: Congress authorized the use of the phrase “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins.

1898: The United States Congress declared war on Spain; the 10-week conflict resulted in an American victory.

1915: During World War I, Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war.

1917: Legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia.

1944: The United Negro College Fund was founded.

1945: During World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany’s defenses. Delegates from some 50 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.

1959: The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping.

1990: The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in orbit from the space shuttle Discovery. (It was later discovered that the telescope’s primary mirror was flawed, requiring the installation of corrective components to achieve optimal focus.)

1992: Islamic forces in Afghanistan took control of most of the capital of Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.

1994: Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, died at a New York hospital four days after suffering a stroke; he was 81.

2000: In a dramatic pre-dawn raid, armed immigration agents seized Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of a custody dispute, from his relatives’ home in Miami; Elian was reunited with his father at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.

2002: Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of the Grammy-winning trio TLC died in an SUV crash in Honduras; she was 30.

2011: President Bashar Assad of Syria sent the military into the southern city of Daraa, where an anti-government uprising had begun the previous month.

2015: A federal judge in Philadelphia approved a settlement agreement expected to cost the NFL $1 billion over 65 years to resolve thousands of concussion lawsuits. A federal appeals court in San Francisco overturned home run leader Barry Bonds’ obstruction of justice conviction, ruling 10-1 that his meandering answer before a grand jury in 2003 was not material to the government’s investigation into illegal steroids distribution.

2016: The city of Cleveland reached a $6 million settlement in a lawsuit over the death of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy shot by a white police officer while playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center. A panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled 2-to-1 that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady had to serve a four-game “Deflategate” suspension imposed by the NFL, overturning a lower judge and siding with the league in a battle with the players union. (Brady ended up serving the suspension.)

2019: Former Vice President Joe Biden entered the Democratic presidential race, declaring the fight against Donald Trump to be a “battle for the soul of this nation.”

2020: As the global death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 200,000, countries took cautious steps toward easing lockdowns. The U.K. became the fifth country in the world to report 20,000 virus-related deaths.