Local history

June 11, 1989: Fire destroyed a barn at the farm of Wallace Jensen in Bath Township. Fire departments from Geneva, Hartland, Clarks Grove and Hollandale responded to the blaze.

June 12, 1989: Freeborn County Dairy Princess Jacque Erickson and Milk Maid Amy Anderson were busy promoting the dairy industry at Dairy Days in Alden.

June 13, 1989: Lee DeVries and Scott Hanna, both graduates from Albert Lea High School, joined the Albert Lea Fire Department.

June 12, 1979: Truck operators in the area shut down as leaders of the independent truckers’ strike in Minnesota presented their demands to Gov. Al Quie. Drivers representing 265 trucks attended a meeting in New Richland and heard a directive to shut down. All diesel pumps at Freeborn County truck stops were voluntarily closed by the owners.

June 12, 1969: 274,680-Egg-Omelet was one of the headlines in The Albert Lea Tribune.  A truck carrying 763 cases of eggs slammed into an overpass on Interstate 90 south of Oakland. The driver was not injured in the wreck but his truck was demolished.

June 12, 1959: Six hundred Wilson & Co. employees were not on the job after a contractual disagreement between labor and management. According to plant manager C.E. Cairns, some employees refused to work scheduled hours forcing a shut down in production. Union officers countered that the labor contract states workers were not required to work over eight hours a day or over 40 hours a week.

 

U.S. history

1776: The Continental Congress formed a committee to draft a Declaration of Independence calling for freedom from Britain.

1942: The United States and the Soviet Union signed a lend-lease agreement to aid the Soviet war effort in World War II.

1947: The government announced the end of sugar rationing for households and “institutional users” (e.g., restaurants and hotels) as of midnight.

1962: Three prisoners at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay staged an escape, leaving the island on a makeshift raft; they were never found or heard from again.

1970: The United States presence in Libya came to an end as the last detachment left Wheelus Air Base. (The anniversary of this event is celebrated as a holiday in Libya.)

1986: The John Hughes comedy “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” starring Matthew Broderick, was released by Paramount Pictures.

1993: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that people who commit “hate crimes” motivated by bigotry may be sentenced to extra punishment.

2018: U.S. and North Korean officials met at a hotel in Singapore to negotiate on the eve of the first summit between a U.S. president and a North Korean leader.