Local history

50 years ago: April 17, 1976

The Junior Women’s Club of Altoona, Kim Detwiler playing the Easter Bunny, held its annual Easter party for the students of the Children’s Center for Special Learning at Tuckahoe Park.

25 years ago: April 17, 2001

Running for the U.S. Rep. seat in the 7th District, Republican Bill Shuster, Democrat Scott Conklin and Green Party Alana Hartzok debated in a first of three at Wilson College in Franklin County.

10 years ago: April 17, 2016

Legislators in Harrisburg talked about expanding the 211 emergency telephone call for social services, which many Pennsylvanians didn’t even know about. It was approved by the FCC in 2000 and was separate from the 911 emergency call.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is Friday, April 17, the 107th day of 2026. There are 258 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight in history:

On April 17, 1961, some 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in a failed bid to topple Fidel Castro. Cuban forces crushed the incursion within three days.

On this date:

– In 1964, Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock completed the first solo around-the-world flight by a woman, landing her single-engine Cessna plane in Columbus, Ohio, after a 29-day journey.

– In 1969, a jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. (Sirhan’s death sentence would be commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He remains in prison today.)

– In 1970, Apollo 13 astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert splashed down safely in the Pacific, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft and forced the crew to abort plans for a third moon landing.

– In 1975, Cambodia’s five-year civil war ended as the capital Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which instituted brutal, radical policies that claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives (nearly one in four Cambodians) until the regime was overthrown in 1979.

– In 1993, a federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of motorist Rodney King in a 1991 beating. Two others were acquitted.

– In 2013, a massive explosion of ammonium nitrate at a Texas fertilizer plant killed 15 people and injured hundreds of others. The blast and fire at the West Fertilizer Co. plant left part of the small town of West in ruins.

– In 2014, astronomers announced NASA’s orbiting Kepler telescope had discovered the most Earth-like planet yet detected — a distant, rocky world similar in size to our own orbiting a red dwarf star in the “Goldilocks” zone where it’s not too hot and not too cold for life.

— The Associated Press