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Local history
50 years ago: 1975
The Friends of the Altoona Library group, Mrs. Robert Parks chairwoman, were sponsoring a bus trip to Washington, D.C. to see actress Katherine Hepburn in a play called "A Matter of Gravity," followed by lunch at the Smithsonian Institute. The bus was to leave from the Family Host Cafeteria parking lot.
25 years ago: 2000
The Altoona City Water Authority was cracking down on about 5,000 city homes that had roof drains illegally connected to the sanitary sewer system due to pressure to do so from the state Department of Environmental Protection who, in turn, was receiving pressure from the federal government
10 years ago: 2015
Interim Republican Altoona Mayor Matt Pacifico debated attorney Jason Imler, a Democrat, for the job of full-time Altoona mayor at the Devorris Downtown Building, the only debate scheduled.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Tuesday, Oct. 21, the 294th day of 2025. There are 71 days left in the year.
Today's highlight in history:
On Oct. 21, 2014, Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide for shooting and killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. The conviction was later upgraded to murder; Pistorius was released on parole in January 2024.
On this date:
– In 1797, the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, also known as "Old Ironsides," was christened in Boston's harbor.
– In 1805, a British fleet commanded by Vice Adm. Horatio Nelson defeated a French-Spanish fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar; Nelson, however, was killed.
– In 1940, Ernest Hemingway's novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was first published.
– In 1944, U.S. troops captured the German city of Aachen -- the first German city to fall to American forces in World War II.
– In 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum opened in New York.
– In 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and some 20 houses in Aberfan, Wales.
– In 2013, a seventh grader at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, Nevada, shot and killed a teacher and wounded two classmates before taking his own life.
– In 2021, Actor Alec Baldwin was pointing a gun on the set of the Western movie "Rust" in New Mexico when it went off, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Charges of involuntary manslaughter against Baldwin were dropped in July 2024.
– In 2024, jury selection began in the trial of a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Daniel Penny, for placing a man who was acting erratically on a New York City subway train in May 2023 in a deadly chokehold. In December 2024, Penny was cleared of all charges, including criminally negligent homicide.
-- The Associated Press