Local history

50 years ago: 12 new citizens from Germany, Korea, Great Britain, Philippines, Ecuador, Taiwan, Italy and India were sworn in as American citizens at the Blair County Courthouse by Judges Robert Haberstroh and Robert Campbell.

25 years ago: Blair County Veteran Affairs Director Glenn Aungst Jr. oversaw the distribution of 19,644 flags on veterans graves in 100 cemeteries, using 20 volunteer groups for Memorial Day at a cost of $11,000. Calvary Cemetery had the most military veterans interred.

10 years ago: The Railroaders Memorial Museum Board hired Charlie’s Tree Service of Altoona to cut down trees around the Horseshoe Curve to give visitors a better view of the trains that traveled it, a 10-week job.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is Tuesday, May 26, the 146th day of 2026. There are 219 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On May 26, 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II.

Also on this date:

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually.

In 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan.

In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was established by Congress.

In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors.

In 1967, the Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released.

In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in Moscow. (The U.S. withdrew from the treaty under President George W. Bush in 2002.)

In 2009, California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid.

– The Associated Press