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Local history
50 years ago: 1973
After a 16-week experimental Altoona Mirror Sunday edition the previous fall, the Mirror was to begin publishing a Sunday edition in September, Mirror president J.E. Holtzinger announced. He also mentioned that the Mirror would be 100 years old in 1974.
25 years ago: 1998
At a meeting of the Blair County Prison Board, Blair County Judge Norman D. Callan presiding, the five-year ban on smoking at the prison was continued, despite the fact that 80% of inmates smoked.
10 years ago: 2013
The Altoona Housing Authority held a summer festival at Fairview Hills for the residents, featuring a visit from the Altoona Area High School Mountain Lion mascot and cheerleading and softball teams, called Team Altoona.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Monday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2023. There are 132 days left in the year.
Today's highlight in history:
On Aug. 21, 1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people; scores of Black people were killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebellion, and Turner was later executed.
On this date:
-- In 1858, the first of seven debates took place between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.
-- In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was recovered two years later in Italy.
-- In 1944, the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China opened talks at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington that helped pave the way for establishment of the United Nations.
-- In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order making Hawaii the 50th state.
-- In 1991, the hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of an uprising led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.
-- In 1992, an 11-day siege began at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as government agents tried to arrest Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns; on the first day of the siege, Weaver's son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed.
-- In 1993, in a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it was about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission.
-- In 2000, rescue efforts to reach the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived.
-- In 2010, Iranian and Russian engineers began loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power plant, which Moscow promised to safeguard to prevent material at the site from being used in weapons production.
-- The Associated Press