Local history

50 years ago: 1974

Altoona City Councilman and director of Public Safety Travis Young said that 100 letters were going out to city homeowners whose homes needed painting or siding repair, in accordance with the basic housing and property maintenance code.

25 years ago: 1999

Pyramid Healthcare, Jon Wolf CEO, purchased two group youth homes in Blandburg, one for boys and one for girls, that had formerly been founded by Right Turn of PA and had been run recently by a group called Passageways.

10 years ago: 2014

Altoona Area Public Library Information/community education librarian Dana Farabaugh was working in the new second floor creation lab that had a Makerbot 3D printer and a green screen that let patrons record a video or record on a synthesizer. It could be used for STEM education for students at Altoona Area and Bishop Guilfoyle high schools.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is the 262nd day of 2024. There are 104 days left in the year.

Today in history:

In 2020, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering champion of women’s rights who became the court’s second female justice, died at her home in Washington at age 87, of complications from pancreatic cancer.

Also on this date:

— In 1793, President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol.

— In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which created a force of federal commissioners charged with returning escaped slaves to their owners.

— In 1851, the first edition of The New York Times was published.

— In 1947, the National Security Act, which created a National Military Establishment and the position of Secretary of Defense, went into effect.

— In 1961, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was killed in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

— In 1970, rock star Jimi Hendrix died in London at age 27.

— In 1975, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was captured by the FBI in San Francisco, 19 months after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

— In 2014, voters in Scotland rejected independence, opting to remain part of the United Kingdom in a historic referendum.

— The Associated Press