Local history

50 years ago: 1975

Eighteen Blair County Law Enforcement officers completed a “Criminology on Wheels” program at Mount Aloysius Junior College in Cresson and Altoona City Hall with the Rev. James Coveney program director. State troopers and police officers from Altoona, Penn Central, Blair County prison and various boroughs attended.

25 years ago: 2000

The Logan Township Supervisors passed a buffer ordinance designed to separate properties used for different purposes but owners of the proposed Logan Towne Centre shopping complex said it could cost them as much as $1 million. The buffer could be a fence/wall, plants or landscaping.

10 years ago: 2015

Altoona City Council raised the rent on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency on Chestnut Avenue in the former Naval Reserve building from $1 to $96,600 a year.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is Thursday, Feb. 13, the 44th day of 2025. There are 321 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight in history:

On Feb. 13, 1945, Allied forces in World War II began a three-day bombing raid on Dresden, Germany, killing as many as 25,000 people and triggering a firestorm that swept through the city center.

On this date:

— In 1935, a jury in Flemington, New Jersey, found Bruno Richard Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder in the kidnap-slaying of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. (Hauptmann was executed by electric chair the following year.)

— In 1965, during the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized Operation Rolling Thunder, an extended bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese.

— In 1980, the 13th Winter Olympics opened in Lake Placid, New York.

— In 1996, the rock musical “Rent,” by Jonathan Larson, premiered off-Broadway less than three weeks after Larson’s death.

— In 2002, John Walker Lindh pleaded not guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, to conspiring to kill Americans and supporting the Taliban and terrorist organizations. (Lindh later pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.)

— In 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, the influential conservative member of the U.S. Supreme Court, was found dead at a private residence in the Big Bend area of West Texas; he was 79.

— In 2017, President Donald Trump’s embattled national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned following reports he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russia.

— In 2021, former President Donald Trump was acquitted by the Senate at his second impeachment trial — the first to involve a former president — in which he was accused of inciting the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in voting to convict, less than the two-thirds threshold required.

— The Associated Press