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Local history
50 years ago
1972
The Altoona Parking Authority purchased the former PRR/Penn Central Railroad Station site for $52,000 to build a new parking facility. The old station was being razed. Amtrak was protesting Penn Central's removal of its ticket office from the station to a mobile trailer without informing them.
25 years ago
1997
Joseph E. Macharola, principal of Bishop Guilfoyle High School, was hired as assistant principal at Altoona Area High School to serve with the school's other assistant principal, John Wilson.
10 years ago
2012
The Sheetz Store in Huntingdon was the only one of the 431-store chain not to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week due to a Huntingdon Borough zoning law.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Friday, Nov. 18, the 322nd day of 2022. There are 43 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On Nov. 18, 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan of California and four others were killed on an airstrip in Jonestown, Guyana, by members of the Peoples Temple; the killings were followed by a night of mass murder and suicide resulting in the deaths of more than 900 cult members.
On this date:
-- In 1883, the United States and Canada adopted a system of Standard Time zones.
-- In 1936, Germany and Italy recognized the Spanish government of Francisco Franco.
-- In 1963, the Bell System introduced the first commercial touch-tone telephone system in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
-- In 1966, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays outside of Lent.
-- In 1976, Spain's parliament approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship.
-- In 1985, the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes," created by Bill Watterson, was first published. (The strip ran for 10 years.)
-- In 1991, Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon freed Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland, the American dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut.
-- In 1999, 12 people were killed when a bonfire under construction at Texas A-and-M University collapsed.
-- In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-to-3 that the state constitution guaranteed gay couples the right to marry.
-- The Associated Press