Local

Dec. 9, 1989: First District Rep. Tim Penny visited the Freeborn County Museum during its open house to present a special American coin to commemorate the 200th year of Congress.

Dec. 11, 1969: Albert Lea Cooperative Creamery Associated voted 113-1 to merge with the Red Oak Grove Cooperative Creamery Association.

Dec. 12, 1939: Thousands of people flocked to downtown Albert Lea to participate in the Corn Days celebration and to do their Christmas shopping.

Dec. 10, 1939: Radio listeners in the south side of Albert Lea, especially east of Broadway and south of Charles Street, were annoyed with bad interference when they turned on their radios. Interstate Power Co. spent an entire week trying to locate the issue before asking the community to help look for the problem.

 

National

Dec. 14, 2012: A gunman with a semi-automatic rifle killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, then committed suicide as police arrived; the 20-year-old had also fatally shot his mother at their home before carrying out the attack on the school.

2008: Former Nasdaq chairman Bernie Madoff was arrested, accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that destroyed thousands of people’s life savings and wrecked charities. (Madoff is serving a 150-year federal prison sentence.)

2008: The remains of missing Florida toddler Caylee Anthony were found six months after she disappeared. (Her mother, Casey Anthony, was acquitted of murder in her daughter’s death.)

2003: Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, Iraq, near his hometown of Tikrit.

2001: The Pentagon publicly released a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader said the deaths and destruction achieved by the September 11 attacks exceeded his “most optimistic” expectations.

Dec. 11, 2001: In the first criminal indictment stemming from 9/11, federal prosecutors charged Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, with conspiring to murder thousands in the suicide hijackings. (Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2005 and was sentenced to life in prison.)

2000: Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency a day after the U.S. Supreme Court shut down further recounts of disputed ballots in Florida; Democrat Al Gore conceded, delivering a call for national unity.

1985: 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.

1977: An Air Indiana Flight 216, a DC-3 carrying the University of Evansville basketball team on a flight to Nashville, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing all 29 people on board.

1972: Apollo 17’s lunar module landed on the moon with astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt aboard; they became the last two men to date to step onto the lunar surface.

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, ruled that Congress was within its authority to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against racial discrimination by private businesses (in this case, a motel that refused to cater to blacks).

1799: The first president of the United States, George Washington, died at his Mount Vernon, Virginia, home at age 67.