Trending
Local history
50 years ago: Oct. 12, 1976
At the Blair County Courthouse, lawyers were arguing that some of the 36 defendants in a recent drug sweep should not be included because marijuana was not a dangerous drug. A professor from Columbia testified for the lawyers, and professors from Harvard and UCLA testified against.
25 years ago: Oct. 12, 2001
Car accident fatalities were down 61% in Pennsylvania from 2000 to 1999 after tougher teen driving laws were enacted, including 50 hours of supervised driving before the driving test, curfew on night driving and tougher sanctions on traffic violations.
10 years ago: Oct. 12, 2016
The city of Altoona was being sued for $50,000 by a contractor who remodeled the 12th Ward Civic Association building in 2007-08. City officials said there was no contract and no bill, and the association also abandoned the building as a tenant in 2012.
-- Compiled by Tim Doyle
World history
Today is Monday, Oct. 12, the 285th day of 2026. There are 80 days left in the year.
Today's highlight in history:
On Oct. 12, 2002, bombs blamed on al-Qaida-linked militants destroyed two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, many of them foreign tourists.
On this date:
– In 1492, Christopher Columbus's first expedition made landfall on what is now San Salvador Island in the Bahamas.
– In 1870, General Robert E. Lee, former overall commander of the Confederate States Army in the Civil War, died in Lexington, Virginia, at age 63.
– In 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev protested remarks at the United Nations by pounding his shoe on his desk in the General Assembly Hall.
– In 1968, Mexican track and field athlete Enriqueta Basilio became the first woman to light the Olympic flame at the opening ceremonies of the Mexico City Summer Games.
– In 1973, President Richard Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford of Michigan to succeed Spiro T. Agnew as vice president.
– In 1984, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people.
– In 1997, musician and activist John Denver died when the experimental light plane he was piloting crashed into Monterey Bay off the California coast.
– In 2000, the destroyer USS Cole was attacked by boat-borne al-Qaida suicide bombers during a refueling stop in Yemen's port city of Aden, killing 17 on board.
– In 2019, Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge became the first person to run a marathon in less than two hours, crossing the finish line of the INEOS 1:59 Challenge in Vienna, Austria, with a time of 1:59:40.
-- The Associated Press