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Local history
50 years ago: Explorer Scouts Sue Stiffler and Traci Gibbony of Post 123, sponsored by Altoona Hospital, took part in a High Adventure Ecology Workshop at Camp Bucuco near Butler. Twenty-three Scouts from nine states took part. Instructors were professors from Slippery Rock State College.
25 years ago: Norfolk Southern Railroad, which planned to close the
Hollidaysburg Car Shops in October, gave transfer assignments to the supervisors and managers there, spokesman Rudy
Husband announced.
10 years ago: The Blair County Commissioners agreed to raise the hotel/motel bed tax from 3% to 5% at a future date and to split it among Explore Altoona, the Blair County Convention Center, Peoples Natural Gas Field and Blair County.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Monday, Aug. 24, the 236th day of 2026. There are 129 days left in the year.
Today's highlight in history:
On Aug. 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida; the storm resulted in 65 deaths and caused more than $26 billion in damage across Florida, Louisiana and the Bahamas.
On this date:
– In 1814, during the War of 1812, British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to the still-under-construction Capitol and the White House, as well as other public buildings.
– In 1912, Congress passed a measure creating the Alaska Territory.
– In 1932, Amelia Earhart embarked on a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, making her the first woman to fly solo, non-stop, from coast to coast.
– In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty came into force.
– In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party in the United States.
– In 1981, Mark David Chapman was sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon; he has repeatedly been denied parole.
– In 1989, Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Pete Rose from the game for betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds.
– In 1991, in response to a coup attempt by hard-line Communist leaders attempting to reassert control over the Soviet Union, Ukrainian parliamentarians voted to approve a Declaration of Independence for the state of Ukraine.
– In 2006, the International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto was no longer a full-fledged planet, demoting it to the status of a "dwarf planet."
– In 2012, a Norwegian court found Anders Behring Breivik guilty of terrorism and premeditated murder for twin attacks on July 22, 2011, that killed 77 people; he received a 21-year prison sentence that can be extended as long as he is considered dangerous to society.
– In 2018, the family of Arizona Sen. John McCain announced that he had discontinued medical treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer; McCain died the following day.
– In 2019, police in Aurora, Colorado, responding to a report of a suspicious person, used a chokehold to subdue Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man; he went into cardiac arrest en route to the hospital and was later taken off life support and died.