Commuters are taking private luxury buses to their jobs on the Peninsula, and people are fighting mad about it. It's a preview of the Google Bus fights of a later century. But without Wi-Fi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Three days after the great ship sank, news is still scarce. The rescue ship Carpathia has gone silent. But word is filtering in over the wires about who survived — and who didn't. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mayor Art Agnos wants to tear down the Embarcadero Freeway, badly damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake. Chinatown shuts down as its business leaders head downtown to fight for repair of the road they say is their lifeline of customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mike Sager worked with and dated Janet Cooke at the Washington Post and later wrote a book about her. The veteran author and magazine writer talks about his friend, "the fabulist who changed journalism." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Real news: The inaugural flight of the space shuttle Challenger. Fake news: The Washington Post returns Janet Cooke's Pulitzer Prize after editors discover she made up her story about an 8-year-old heroin addict. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The people of Chicago are amazed! They're coming by the trainload to gaze at produce from California. The oranges are the star of the show. It's a precursor to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, which in turn would lead to a giant fair in Golden Gate Park in 1894. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You'll be glad to know Albert Einstein was right. Astronomers at the Lick Observatory in San Jose confirmed it by examining photos of a 1922 eclipse. How did that confirm Einstein? We asked an astronomer at the Lick Observatory. Plus: The curse of the mummy’s tomb! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Untold thousands died when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., including Pliny the Elder. The death toll wasn't as high in 1906, but it was high. Vesuvius remains an active volcano. How am I going to be an optimist about this? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Big Steel accuses President Harry Truman of being in bed with the labor unions after he nationalizes the industry to ward off a strike by steelworkers. There are huge strikes in industries across the country as labor battles the wage and price controls Truman had put in place at the beginning of the Korean War. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
85 Vietnamese orphans arrive at Travis Air Force Base in the latest flight of Operation Babylift — the massive, controversial evacuation of children from South Vietnam in the dying days of the Vietnam War. President Gerald Ford is there for a photo op. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The U.S. Navy would send warships to the area after a pair of American businessmen are killed by a bandit gang. The accused killer claims he was under orders from the prime minister—who would later become king. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
San Francisco bus fares are the lowest in the nation and Muni, facing a deficit, wants to do something about that. Plus: A plaque for the hydrant that saved the Mission District in the 1906 earthquake and fire? Spoiler alert: Yes. You can go look at it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You've got to be pretty bold to tangle with the pope. Teddy Roosevelt was pretty bold. On a post-presidential world tour, TR wired to ask for an audience with Pius X, but when the Vatican asked him to submit to certain conditions, the old Roughrider got rough. Featuring guest star Jason Feifer, host of the history podcast Pessimists Archive, as Roosevelt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Viet Minh forces were laying siege to Dien Bien Phu, which the French had fortified in hopes they could bait the rebels into a battle the French thought they could win. They were wrong about that. Plus: A San Francisco boxing champ wins, and the Army makes a significant hire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The beatific, peace-loving Heaven's Gate cult, whose members had committed mass suicide, left behind a cache of weapons and ammunition, police find. Plus: On Opening Day for the Giants, Matier and Ross note fans' sticker shock at the concession prices at Candlestick Park. Would you believe $4 for a beer! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Secretary of State Alexander Haig takes heat for his behavior in the hours after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan, and authorities delve into the bizarre motive of shooter John Hinckley, who wanted to impress teenage actor Jodie Foster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Ronald Reagan and three others are shot as he walks out of a Washington hotel following a speech to the AFL-CIO. The shooter is John Hinckley, who wanted to impress actress Jodie Foster. No one is aware the president has been hit until after he arrives at the hospital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You know the name Mulholland from the famous street in the Hollywood Hills. Did you know William Mulholland, who designed the aqueduct system that allowed Los Angeles to grow into a big city, was responsible for the second-worst disaster for loss of life in California history? "Don't blame anyone else," he told a jury. "You just fasten it on me." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Rose Bird was used to firsts. She was the first female public defender in Santa Clara County and the first female cabinet secretary in California, and now she was the first female state Supreme Court chief justice in California—and probably the first to get a kiss in public from the governor. But the good times wouldn't last for her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It was dangerous to call George Nelson "Baby Face" to his face, but Baby Face was dead by 1935, when Fatso Negri walked into a San Francisco courtroom to testify against nine locals accused of helping the notorious gangster when he was on the lam out west. Still, Fatso looked plenty nervous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A litigious former magistrate is suing to get these purveyors of anti-Jewish feeling out of the curriculum. Their names? William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. Plus: The House Un-American Activities Committee had a book out too. It says there are 825,000 domestic traitors and spies in the U.S., and it didn't pull that number out of thin air at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It's a sparkling start to the 1875 season of base ball—which was two words back then. The crack San Francisco Club looks poised to wrest the championship from the Oakland players, having beaten them twice already. Center fielder Murkey is the San Francisco star. In one game, he made two fly-catches! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
U.S. counterintelligence agents capture American Nazi propagandist "Axis Sally," who'd been hiding out in Berlin since the end of World War II. Back in San Francisco, bobby soxers with notes from their parents skip school to line up for hours to see Frank Sinatra, whom the Chronicle calls an "astonishingly inoffensive and almost colorless young man." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Why was King George I of Greece shot and killed as he walked the streets? Greek authorities have a suspect. His motive was a mystery, they say. And that motive would remain a mystery right up until he "fell" out of a police-station window six weeks later. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The first comprehensive study of the effect of divorce on children is being conducted as the divorce rate is roughly doubling in a decade. Many of the conclusions seem obvious today, but were anything but 45 years ago. Plus: Rotten advice from columnist Count Marco. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nikola Tesla says, "It is altogether too absurd for discussion," and he's somehow not talking about Elon Musk. "It" was whether a person's soul can be weighed, which was a debate in 1907. Plus: Upton Sinclair's house burns down as he's researching a book on the steel industry. Suspicious? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
They didn't have anything to do with each other except they both were in the news. Flynt for wearing an American flag diaper in court, among other protest moves that got him locked up for contempt, Feinstein for talking, at the start of her second San Francisco mayoral term, about her political future. She says that having worked in both the executive and legislative branches, she sees her future in the executive. Narrator voice ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Southern Democratic governors, led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, vow to oppose the reelection of President Harry Truman, or anyone else who supports Truman's civil rights program. It's the first stirrings of what would become the short-lived Dixiecrat Party, with Thurmond as its nominee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jerry Brown, the charismatic 38-year-old governor of California, announces that he's running for the Democratic nomination for president. It's a bit late to do that — the primaries are already in full swing. But not to worry, Brown says. He's only running in California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sound familiar? President Calvin Coolidge wanted Congress to put aside all its other business and get to work on his proposal to slash income taxes. What was it that Silent Cal wanted Congress to stop doing to work on that tax cut? Investigating corruption in the executive branch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
