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Local history
50 years ago: Aug. 10 was "Altoona Day" at Three Rivers Stadium as 1,100 city residents traveled to Pittsburgh led by Mayor Bill Stouffer to watch the Pirates lose 5-1 to the Dodgers. The Altoona Has Hustle logo was shown on the Pirate scoreboard and the Alto Cadets Drum and Bugle Corps performed.
25 years ago: Darryl Yeager, retired appliance repair teacher at the Greater Altoona Career and Technology Center, made from 3,000 to 5,000 wooden toys a year in his Bellwood workshop and sold them worldwide through his company Yeager's Easy to Love Wooden Toys. He was also a former Antis Township Supervisor.
10 years ago: Altoona City Council approved a "discipleship house" to be run by the Nehemiah Project to help men transition from prison, drug rehab programs and other crisis settings, Jim Balzano president and pastor of the group's founding church, the Pleasant Valley Assembly of God.
World history
Today is Tuesday, Aug. 11, the 223rd day of 2026. There are 142 days left in the year.
Today's highlight in history:
On Aug. 11, 1934, the first federal prisoners arrived at Alcatraz Island, a former military prison, in San Francisco Bay; the island would be home to more than 1,500 prisoners over the next three decades, including gangsters Al Capone and James "Whitey" Bulger, before closing in 1963.
On this date:
– In 1949, President Harry S. Truman nominated Gen. Omar N. Bradley to become the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
– In 1952, Hussein bin Talal was proclaimed King of Jordan, beginning a reign lasting nearly 47 years.
– In 1956, abstract painter Jackson Pollock died in an automobile accident on Long Island, New York, at age 44.
– In 1965, rioting that claimed 34 lives and lasted six days broke out in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.
– In 1972, the last U.S. ground combat troops left South Vietnam to return to the United States.
– The Associated Press