Local history

50 years ago: June 19, 1976

Altoona Mayor William C. Stouffer and Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Wissinger cut the ribbon for the opening of a new Western Auto Family Store in the Wissinger Shopping Village at 31st Street and Walnut Avenue.

25 years ago: June 19, 2001

Burgmeier Hauling and Recycling became the largest trash hauler in Blair County by buying out Waste Systems International of Wilmington, Del. (WSI), which had filed for bankruptcy.

10 years ago: June 19, 2016

A full house of residents attended an Antis Township commissioners meeting in Bellwood to protest the use of biosolids to fertilize area farms, fearing both contamination and lower property values.

— Compiled by Tim Doyle

World history

Today is Friday, June 19, the 170th day of 2026. There are 195 days left in the year. This is Juneteenth.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 19, 1865, Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over and that all remaining enslaved people in Texas were free — an event celebrated as the Juneteenth national holiday in the U.S.

On this date:

– In 1910, the first-ever Father’s Day in the United States was celebrated in Spokane, Washington. (President Richard Nixon would make Father’s Day a federally recognized annual observation through a proclamation in 1972.)

– In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets

to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York; they were the first American civilians to be executed for espionage.

– In 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova completed her historic flight as the first woman in space, landing safely at the conclusion of the Vostok 6 mission.

– In 1964, the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster.

– In 1975, former Chicago organized crime boss Sam Giancana was shot to death in the basement of his home in Oak Park, Illinois; the killing has never been solved.

– In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Edwards v. Aguillard, struck down a Louisiana law requiring any public school teaching the theory of evolution to teach creation science as well.

— The Associated Press