On this date in ...

1919: James Kosta, 21, the man who shot and killed Alma Hunt the previous August and then tried to kill himself, was taken to the Mattewan State Asylum for the Insane after being diagnosed with “hysterical insanity.” Two doctors who treated him in both the penitentiary and the hospital testified in court that he had to be forcibly fed, had no actual feelings, his actions were “morbid and unnatural,” and that he had not spoken a word since Jan. 1. They also stated that in his present condition he could not live more than two years. 1969: Somebody’s joyride took the joy out of summer vacation plans for University at Albany graduate student Cheryl Belsky when she realized it would cost her more than $700 in stolen possessions, including an airline ticket to Spain and 25 college textbooks, many of them irreplaceable. The car, which was owned by her father Jack Belsky of Queens, had been stolen in Albany and recovered later in a different part of the city, but its costly contents were missing. A Ualbany spokesman pointed out that loss of numerous textbooks is a “real heartbreak” for a student, since volumes may have gone out of print.

1994: Two 11th-grade girls, charged with mishandling a pepper gas canister in a Niskayuna High School hallway, were suspended from school for five days. Last week’s spraying forced an evacuation of the school, and 65 students and teachers were treated for inhaling the noxious fumes. One school staffer, 30-year-old chemistry teacher Sherra Mcguire of Cobleskill, was still in Schenectady’s Ellis Hospital. The two girls, their names withheld by police because they were granted youthful offender status, were charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor.

Want to read more about the Capital Region’s past? Have any memories or thoughts about how our history relates to today’s events? See http:// blog. timesunion.com/history/