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Local history
50 years ago: 1974
Terri McCoy was chosen as Altoona Salvation Army Sunbeam Guide of the Year in ceremonies at the SA Citadel. Mrs. Ivan Glass was director of the Sunbeam youth group.
25 years ago: 1999
The Keystone Chapter of the Antique Truck Club of America, Terry Alexander and Blair Hileman members, met at King's Family Restaurant in Altoona to make plans for a truck show at Lakemont Park in July.
10 years ago: 2014
Gov. Tom Corbett's office said that Curry Supply Co. of
Martinsburg established a new facility at DeGol Industrial Park that could bring 50 new jobs to Blair County in Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Thursday, May 16, the 137th day of 2024. There are 229 days left in the year.
Today's highlight in history:
On May 16, 1943, the nearly month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.
On this date:
-- In 1770, Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
-- In 1866, Congress authorized minting of the first five-cent piece, also known as the "Shield nickel."
-- In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented. "Wings" won "best production," while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.
-- In 1939, the federal government began its first food stamp program in Rochester, New York.
-- In 1957, federal agent Eliot Ness, who organized "The Untouchables" team that took on gangster Al Capone, died in Coudersport, Pennsylvania, at age 54.
-- In 1960, the first working laser was demonstrated at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, by physicist Theodore Maiman.
-- In 1966, China launched the Cultural Revolution, a radical as well as deadly reform movement aimed at purging the country of "counter-revolutionaries."
-- In 1975, Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
-- In 1990, death claimed entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in Los Angeles at age 64 and "Muppets" creator Jim Henson in New York at age 53.
-- In 1997, President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for the notorious Tuskegee experiment, in which government scientists deliberately allowed Black men to weaken and die of treatable syphilis.
-- In 2007, anti-war Democrats in the Senate failed in an attempt to cut off funds for the Iraq war.
-- In 2016, President Barack Obama called on the nation to support law enforcement officers as he bestowed the Medal of Valor on 13 who risked their lives.
-- In 2022, the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 1 million.
-- The Associated Press