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Local history
50 years ago: 1973
Officials from PennDOT and Altoona, as well as New Enterprise Stone & Lime inspected the new Eighth Street Bridge from Seventh Avenue over the railroad tracks to Lexington Avenue and gave approval for it to open in two days, June 21.
25 years ago: 1998
Altoona Housing Authority officials, solicitor William Haberstroh, met with Altoona City Council concerning the city taking over ownership of the 120-unit Pleasant Village Apartments on Pleasant Valley Boulevard and 27th Street, as called for in a 50-year-old agreement when the bond issue was paid off.
10 years ago: 2013
The Russo Building at 31st Street and South Branch Avenue, declared a public nuisance by the Altoona Code Department, was demolished by Dilapidated Demolition.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Monday, June 19, the 170th day of 2023. There are 195 days left in the year. This is Juneteenth.
Today's highlight in history:
On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster.
On this date:
-- In 1775, George Washington was commissioned by the Continental Congress as commander in chief of the Continental Army.
-- In 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free -- an event celebrated to this day as "Juneteenth."
-- In 1910, the first-ever Father's Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. (The idea for the observance is credited to Sonora Louise Smart Dodd.)
-- In 1911, Pennsylvania became the first state to establish a motion picture censorship board.
-- In 1917, during World War I, King George V ordered the British royal family to dispense with German titles and surnames; the family took the name "Windsor."
-- In 1934, the Federal Communications Commission was created; it replaced the Federal Radio Commission.
-- In 1944, during World War II, the two-day Battle of the Philippine Sea began, resulting in a decisive victory for the Americans over the Japanese.
-- In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York.
-- In 1975, former Chicago organized crime boss Sam Giancana was shot to death in the basement of his home in Oak Park, Illinois; the killing has never been solved.
-- In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creation science as well.
-- In 2018, Koko, a western lowland gorilla who was taught sign language at an early age as a scientific test subject and learned more than 1,000 words, died at the Gorilla Foundation's preserve in California's Santa Cruz mountains at the age of 46.
-- The Associated Press