The Mona Lisa was famous among art lovers when Vincenzo Peruggia walked out of the Louvre with it under his arm. Since that moment, it's been the most famous painting in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invade the capital of Czechoslovakia, bringing a violent end to the eight months of liberalization and reform under Alexander Dubček. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The board of directors of the New York baseball Giants makes official something the Chronicle had reported three months earlier: The most successful team in National League history was moving to San Francisco for the 1958 season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The neighborhood south of downtown Los Angeles has been wracked by six days of violence in the wake of a traffic stop of a black man by a white cop. Was the fighting a riot? Or was it a community rising up against its oppressors? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We know it as an iconic "three days of peace and music." Early media reports made it sound like a natural disaster had hit Max Yasgur's farm, and barely mentioned what happened onstage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
G. Clifford Prout Jr., president of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, has toured the San Francisco zoo and discovered a shocking amount of animal nudity there. His group is fighting for the nation's morals! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Germans would come to know it as Barbed Wire Sunday. With a railroad line that bypassed the city complete, East Germany shut down border crossings in Berlin and put up fencing. It was the beginning of what would become the wall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Charlie Wilson busts out of Winson Green prison in a caper nearly as sensational as the crime that put him there: The Great Train Robbery of 1963 outside London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The first federal prisoners arrive by train, then barge, under heavy guard, with prison officials lying about them to throw off any pals with escape plans on their mind. Al Capone and Pretty Boy Floyd will be there soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dear Subscribers: Thanks to a file mixup, you got a preview of tomorrow's episode about Alcatraz instead of the correct one about Nixon's resignation. We're republishing the episode with the correct audio. Sorry about the error! The president lost the support of Republicans in Congress following the release of the "Smoking Gun Tape," which revealed him plotting to obstruct the Watergate investigation. Saying "I have never been a quitter," he quits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megapho...
The president lost the support of Republicans in Congress following the release of the "Smoking Gun Tape," which revealed him plotting to obstruct the Watergate investigation. Saying "I have never been a quitter," he quits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Lyndon Johnson applauds Congress for authorizing him to take all necessary steps to defend Southeast Asia against Communist aggression. It's based on a lie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The headlines couldn't have been more stark. The most terrible destructive force ever harnessed by humanity had been unleashed on a Japanese city, with tens of thousands dead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ronald Reagan liked to point out that he was the first president who'd been a union chief, and he'd even led a strike. But when air-traffic controllers went out, he fired them. It was a devastating loss for organized labor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The story is that Andrew Smith Hallidie, who manufactured "wire rope," saw horses struggling to pull a streetcar uphill. So he had an idea, and this run up Clay Street was its first test. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It wouldn't be the last. People had been donning gas masks in the smoky air for joke photos for a decade, but this was the first official recognition of Los Angeles' signature air pollution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Bill Clinton's central campaign promise in 1992 was to "end welfare as we have come to know it." With Election Day looming, he backs ending cash welfare. A Bay Area congressman calls it a "cave" to the GOP. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The former Teamsters president was trying to regain control of the union after serving time in prison. He had what was supposed to be a peace conference with a couple of dangerous enemies. He hasn't been seen since. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
World War II was still being fought in the Pacific, but this wasn't an enemy attack. An American B-25 pilot got disoriented in the fog and slammed into the 79th floor, killing 14. One woman fell from the 80th floor — and lived. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ed Gein barely rated a mention in the obituary column when he died in prison, but the psychotic Wisconsin killer launched a Hollywood genre. Norman Bates, Leatherface and Buffalo Bill were all based on him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chaos rules the streets of the Financial District as Mayor Willie Brown's attempt to crack down on the monthly freeform bicycle ride backfires in a big way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A grumpy but funny Nikita Khrushchev mixes it up in a model American kitchen in Moscow with a charming — at least on the Nixon scale — Vice President Richard Nixon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Richard Schoenfeld and his two accomplices would eventually be convicted of a kidnapping that shocked the nation: 26 children and their schoolbus driver buried alive. Driver Ed Ray led the kids to safety. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Two labor leaders are framed for the worst terrorist act in San Francisco history. They spend 23 years in prison for the parade bombing that kills 10 and wounds 40. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Bill Clinton knows you're not going to like the new policy he's announcing on gays in the military. Whoever "you" are. Even the policy's creator didn't think much of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Douglas Corrigan takes off for L.A. from Brooklyn, and 28 hours later he lands ... in Dublin! He says he misread his compass and couldn't tell because of the heavy clouds. And if you believe that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn he could sell you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The disaster at a munitions depot near Martinez kills 320, most of them African American sailors, and highlights racial inequality in the Navy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hundreds of thousands of people crowd the Florida coast to brave traffic jams, parties and the sight of a sweaty Ed McMahon as Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sit on top of a rocket that hurls them toward the moon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A shocking, brazen killing on the front steps of the designer's South Beach mansion. Suspicion quickly falls on one of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted — prostitute Andrew Cunanan, already suspected of 4 killings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
After D.B. Cooper, the thing to do was take over a plane and demand half a million bucks and a parachute. It rarely worked, but it sure got tried a lot during the golden age of hijacking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
