Local History

50 years ago: Richard Eichten, Roger Nielsen, Donald Wilfahrt and Bill Mickelson were elected as advisory directors to the board of New Ulm Industries Inc.

10 years ago: Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc. moved from North Minnesota Street to 710 N. Broadway.

5 years ago: New Ulm Mayor Bob Beussman cut the ceremonial ribbon at the rededication of the New Ulm Skate Park after its renovation to its blacktop and ramp surfaces.

One year ago: Emily Annexstad, of St. Peter was named the 2017-18 Princess Kay of the Milky Way at the Minnesota State Fair.

And elsewhere…

Today is Saturday, Aug. 25, the 237th day of 2018. There are 128 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight:

On August 25, 1944, during World War II, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation.

On this date:

In 1718, hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some settling in present-day New Orleans.

In 1875, Capt. Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, getting from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 22 hours.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act establishing the National Park Service within the Department of the Interior.

In 1921, the United States signed a peace treaty with Germany.

In 1981, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.

In 1985, Samantha Smith, 13, the schoolgirl whose letter to Yuri V. Andropov resulted in her famous peace tour of the Soviet Union, died with her father in an airliner crash in Auburn, Maine.

In 1993, Amy Biehl, a 26-year-old Fulbright scholar from Newport Beach, Calif., was slain by a mob near Cape Town, South Africa. (The four men convicted in Biehl’s death claimed the attack was part of the war on apartheid; they were granted amnesty after confessing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.)

In 2004, an Army investigation found that 27 people attached to an intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad either approved or participated in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

Ten years ago: Democrats opened their national convention in Denver, where they prepared to nominate Barack Obama for president.

Five years ago: Syria agreed to a U.N. investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack outside Damascus — a deal a senior White House official dismissed as “too late to be credible,” saying the United States had “very little doubt” President Bashar Assad’s forces used such weapons.

One year ago: Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, with 130 mph sustained winds; the storm would deliver five days of rain totaling close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour ever recorded in the continental U.S.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Sean Connery is 88. TV personality Regis Philbin is 87. Actor Tom Skerritt is 85. JAuthor Frederick Forsyth is 80. Rock singer-actor Gene Simmons is 69. Rock singer Elvis Costello is 64. Movie director Tim Burton is 60. Country singer Cyrus (AKA Billy Ray Cyrus) is 57. Actor Blair Underwood is 54. Television chef Rachael Ray is 50. Actor Cameron Mathison is 49. Model Claudia Schiffer is 48. Actor Eric Millegan is 44. Actor Alexander Skarsgard is 42. Actress Rachel Bilson is 37. Actress Blake Lively is 31. Actor Josh Flitter is 24.

Thought for Today: “Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or the money to do it right.” — Kurt Herbert Adler, Austrian-born conductor (1905-1988).