Local history

50 years ago: 1974

Because of the truckers strike, in which the Pennsylvania National Guard had to be called, lines as long as 200 cars formed at Altoona Service Stations for gasoline, with police sometimes being called to restore order.

25 years ago: 1999

Ralph J. Albarano Construction was building a $5.8 million, three-story parking garage at the Blair County Ballpark in Lakemont using huge blocks of precast concrete. It was to hold 1,000 vehicles.

10 years ago: 2014

Blair County Commissioners, Terry Tomassetti chairman, were considering spending $100,000 to hire a company called Evaluator Services and Technology Inc. of Greensburg to replace paper records with a computer system to get ready for a tax reassessment.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is Monday, Feb. 5, the 36th day of 2024. There are 330 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight in history:

On Feb. 5, 2020, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump, bringing to a close the third presidential trial in American history, though a majority of senators expressed unease with Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine that resulted in the two articles of impeachment. Just one Republican, Mitt Romney of Utah, broke with the GOP and voted to convict.

On this date:

— In 1811, George, the Prince of Wales, was named Prince Regent due to the mental illness of his father, Britain’s King George III.

— In 1917, the U.S. Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, an act severely curtailing Asian immigration.

— In 1918, during World War I, the Cunard liner SS Tuscania, which was transporting about 2,000 American troops to Europe, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Irish Sea with the loss of more than 200 people.

— In 1922, the first edition of Reader’s Digest was published.

— In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices; the proposal, which failed in Congress, drew accusations that Roosevelt was attempting to “pack” the nation’s highest court.

— In 1971, Apollo 14 astronauts Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell stepped onto the surface of the moon in the first of two lunar excursions.

— The Associated Press