Local history

50 years ago: The Altoona Area Public Library theater was showing three movies that Saturday: “Dracula,” “Abbott and Costello Meet the Monsters” and “Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.”

25 years ago: Crystal Marie, 14, a student at Keith Junior High School, was to sing at the Pennsylvania Farm Show for the third year in a row. She had already been singing professionally for half her life.

10 years ago: Sunoco Logistics, building a 300-mile liquid natural gas pipeline across Pennsylvania called the Mariner East 2 Pipeline, was to hold a public meeting at the Blair Township municipal building.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is Friday, Jan. 9, the ninth day of 2026. There are 356 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

– On Jan. 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at the Macworld conference in San Francisco.

On this date:

– In 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union, the same day the Star of the West, a merchant vessel bringing reinforcements and supplies to Federal troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, retreated because of artillery fire.

– In 1916, the World War I Battle of Gallipoli ended with an Ottoman Empire victory as Allied forces withdrew.

– In 1945, during World War II, American forces began landing on the shores of Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines as the Battle of Luzon got underway, resulting in an Allied victory over Imperial Japanese forces.

– In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority following the death of Yasser Arafat the previous November.

– In 2018, downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down Southern California hillsides that had been stripped of vegetation by a wildfire; more than 20 people died and hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed.

– In 2022, 17 people, including eight children, died after a fire sparked by a malfunctioning space heater filled a high-rise apartment building with smoke in the New York City borough of the Bronx; it was the city’s deadliest blaze in three decades.

— The Associated Press