Local history

July 1, 1969: Five cars of a freight train derailed from a Rock Island branch line south of Albert Lea. No injuries resulted from the mishap and officials found no cause for the accident.

July 1, 1979: The Freeborn County Pheasant Habitat group released 150 adult pheasants in an effort to enhance the county pheasant population. The group also planted trees and worked with area farmers to improve and upgrade the available habitat for the fowl.

July 4, 1979: In 1879 the original Col. Albert Miller Lea returned to his namesake and gave an address to the Old Settler’s Association. One hundred years later another man with the same name followed in his footsteps. Albert Lea, a New Zealander on vacation with his family, was given the high honor of presiding over Fourth of July festivities. Gov. Al Quie designated him an honorary colonel in the Minnesota National Guard, and he was made an honorary police chief, fire chief and citizen of the city as well.

July 3, 1989: Grandpa’s Jumpfest took place at Albert Lea Municipal Airport. Lettie Petersen, 65 at the time, was pictured in the Albert Lea Tribune with her skydiving instructor Rick Nowak. Petersen, who had never been in a plane prior to her jump, wore a sign that read “Jumpfest ’89 Grandma’s Do It Too.”

 

U.S. history

1863: The pivotal, three-day Civil War Battle of Gettysburg resulting in a Union victory began in Pennsylvania.

1867: Canada became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain as the British North America Act took effect.

1934: Hollywood began enforcing its Production Code subjecting motion pictures to censorship review.

1946: The United States exploded a 20-kiloton atomic bomb near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

=1963: The U.S. Post Office inaugurated its five-digit zip codes.

1973: The Drug Enforcement Administration was established.

1991: President George H.W. Bush nominated federal appeals court judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, beginning an ultimately successful confirmation process marked by allegations of sexual harassment.

1997: Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule after 156 years as a British colony.

2002: The world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court, came into existence.

2014: David Greenglass, the star witness in the trial of his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, and her husband, Julius, died in New York City at age 92. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 for conspiring to pass secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Greenglass served 10 years in prison for espionage followed by years of living under an assumed name.

2018: Canada began imposing tariffs on $12.6 billion in U.S. goods as retaliation for the Trump administration’s new taxes on steel and aluminum imported to the United States.