Podcasts by Not Your Century
On hiatus as of March 2020 because of the coronavirus crisis. Get unlimited access to the Chronicle. | A daily celebration of the news — and the news media — of years gone by. King Kaufman takes you on a quick tour of the Bay Area and the world as it used to be, which often colors the world of your century.
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1925: The Scopes Monkey Trial from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The nation is captivated as Clarence Darrow battles William Jennings Bryan over evolution in a — but very real — trial. "Do you think about things you DO think about?" Learn more about your ad choi...
Listen1893: A Medical Moses from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, who ran the first African American-owned hospital in the U.S., was sure he'd performed the first successful open-heart surgery. It was actually the second, but he was stil...
Listen1987: Oliver North Testifies from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Reagan administration was trading arms for hostages in the Middle East and supporting right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. North's idea was to put the two together, and that was Iran-Contra. Learn m...
ListenBest of NYC: You'll Get No Theme and You'll Like It! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
More of our favorite episodes for your longer-form holiday listening, with stories about banana-smoking hippies, Evel Knievel, Randy Shilts and Herb Caen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit me...
ListenBest of NYC: True Crime! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From the SFPD bunko scandal to the possibly imaginary criminal element of North Beach's topless joints, revisit our favorite law-and-order tales. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...
Listen1937: Amelia Earhart Disappears from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The press called her Lady Lindy. She looked a little like Charles Lindbergh, but she was also a record-seeting flyer in her own right — an aviatrix, they called her. Now, an around-the-world flight...
Listen1946: The A-Bomb at Bikini Atoll from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For the first time, the world knows about a nuclear weapon being detonated before it happens. Some of the most brilliant scientists and engineers in the world ... have no idea what they're doing. L...
Listen1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassinated from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gavrilo Princip was pouting in a cafe after missing his chance to assassinate the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Then the archduke's driver took a wrong turn down a narrow street — right in...
Listen1997: Climate Change and Humor from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Five years after the heady optimism of Rio, the Earth Summit+5 international conference on climate change is a failure. But a confab on humor in Norway is serious business. Learn more about your ...
Listen1945: United Nations Charter Signed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As World War II nears its end, Harry Truman announces the dawn of the U.N. in San Francisco. "If we had had this Charter a few years ago," he says, "millions now dead would be alive." Learn more ab...
Listen1876: The Battle of Little Big Horn from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
They used to call it "Custer's Last Stand," thanks to nearly a century of myth-making. But the real story is it was a great victory, but a last stand, for the Lakota Sioux Learn more about your ad ...
Listen1977: The President Insists on Paying Taxes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
President Jimmy Carter owes nothing on his federal income taxes because of deductions and investments in the family business. So he sends a request to the IRS: Please let me pay $6,000. Learn more ...
Listen1967: Muhammad Ali Appeals from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
He was undefeated in the ring, but the heavyweight champ was on a losing streak in court. Appealing his conviction for refusing induction into the armed forces, he said there was another possible o...
Listen1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Executed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and Pope Pius XII are among those begging for mercy on their behalf, but the New York couple, convicted of selling secrets to the Soviets, are the first Americans put...
ListenRepublish: 1906: San Francisco Rebuilds from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Subscribers got the wrong episode yesterday. The correct episode is now in place, but we’re republishing it here as a “bonus” so you don’t have to re-download it yourself. Two months after the eart...
Listen1906: San Francisco Rebuilds from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Two months after the earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco, donations are pouring in from around the country to reopen schools. Dentists are sending tools. The city is digging itself ou...
Listen1992: A Win for Prop 13 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Proposition 13, the property tax rollback that forced massive government cuts and launched the taxpayer revolt of the '80s, is upheld by the Supreme Court, confirming it as California's political t...
Listen1976: Selling off the Oakland A's from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
All owner Charlie Finley wants to do is get something for his star players who are about to become this new thing, free agents. But commissioner Bowie Kuhn says that kind of deal — now common — is ...
Listen1996: Herb Caen Day in San Francisco from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Robin Williams, Willie Mays, Bill Walsh and Amy Tan are among the throngs celebrating the city's "voice and conscience" — in the words of his Pulitzer Prize — in a downtown celebration. "God, I lov...
Listen1923: Why Not a Businessman President? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Does this sound familiar? A rich guy who owns a famous company that's popular with consumers talks about running for president. Grab a cup of coffee and listen to the story of ... Henry Ford. Learn...
Listen1971: Alcatraz Captured from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A 19-month occupation by American Indian activists ends when U.S. marshals take back Alcatraz Island. The protest action has a huge influence on U.S. policy toward native tribes. Learn more about ...
Listen1946: Death of a Champion from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jack Johnson was the Jackie Robinson of boxing. He broke the color barrier as the first black man to fight for the heavyweight title, and the first to win it. He died while traveling to see the sec...
Listen1992: Say Goodbye to the Giants from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The local 9 lose again at the ballot box in their attempt to get a new publicly funded stadium. They're 0-for-4. They're never going to get a new ballpark, are they? Learn more about your ad choice...
Listen1944: D-Day by the Bay from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As Allied troops storm the beaches of Normandy, a Chronicle reporter patrols the city. He finds a subdued reaction, with scattered rejoicing in the immigrant-heavy produce market and at the French ...
Listen1972: Angela Davis Acquitted from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"Wild Scene in the Courtroom." The former UCLA professor had been charged with supplying the guns in a 1970 courtroom takeover that left a judge and three others dead. Learn more about your ad cho...
Listen1986: Crisis at the Mexican Border from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Reagan administration says it's going to get tough and crack down. "The drug trafficking and related violence along the border is a horror story," says one official. Sound familiar? Learn more ...
Listen1913: The Last Horsecar in San Francisco from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mayor Sunny Jim Rolph grabs the reins and drives old Car 45 on its last Market Street run. Horse-drawn streetcars are going the way of, well, horse-drawn streetcars. Learn more about your ad choice...
Listen1964: The Rolling Stones Invade America from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
First the Beatles and now these guys. The Chronicle wants to know: When will this British Invasion end? At least they're just bringing music from England, not the battles between gangs of Mods and ...
Listen1911: The First Indy 500 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It wasn't just the first Indianapolis 500, it was the first 500-mile race, period. The winner was the only solo driver. Ray Haroun didn't need someone to help watch out for other cars. He used his ...
Listen1987: The GMO Food War Begins from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Activists resort to vandalism to block the University of California from field testing Ice-Minus, the first experiment with genetically modified crops outside a lab. Learn more about your ad choic...
Listen1975: Evel Knievel Is Through! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Most Important Man in the World — at least according to the 11-year-old future host of Not Your Century and his bike-jumping friends — says he's retiring after his latest crash, at Wembley Stad...
Listen1943: Inside a Japanese Internment Camp from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Milton Silverman tours the camp at Tulelake. Though the camps enjoy overwhelming popular support at the time, his report is surprisingly frank. Learn more about...
Listen1967: Sex is Everywhere from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the sexual revolution in full swing, a study says it's having an effect on the mental health of young women. In San Francisco, the obscenity trial over Lenore Kandel's erotic poetry collection...
Listen1956: The Destruction of the Fillmore from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Board of Supervisors approves a plan that will devastate the African-American community of the Fillmore, "the Harlem of the West." It's urban renewal, which James Baldwin says "means moving the...
Listen1910: The King Is Dead from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
He wasn't king long, but Edward VII had a whole era named after him. His mother, Queen Victoria, blamed him for the death of his father and never forgave him. But other people liked him. Especially...
Listen1999: Dan Quayle in San Franciscoe from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The former VP, running for president, returns to the scene of his "Murphy Brown" comment, for which he was roasted—but not like he was roasted for spelling potato "potatoe." Learn more about your a...
Listen1954: Brown vs. Board of Education from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Supreme Court delivers a death sentence for the doctrine of separate but equal, the basis for legal segregation. It's an epochal decision, but not the top headline in the newspaper. Learn mor...
Listen1967: Undercover With the Hippies from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A Chronicle reporter spends a month in Haight-Ashbury, living with the flower children, getting high with them and trying to understand their culture of peace, love and psychedelic bananas you hear...
Listen1960: San Francisco Protests HUAC from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee is holding hearings at S.F. City Hall, and protesters — chanting, singing and comparing the committee to Nazis — are brutalized by police. ...
Listen1932: Who Killed the Lindbergh Baby? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The search for the missing Charles Lindbergh Jr. had gripped the nation. Now that the 2-year-old has been found dead, the great aviator has recruited some sketchy characters to help find the killer...
Listen1982: Randy Shilts and the Dawn of AIDS from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The headline about what would become the AIDS epidemic was buried on Page 6. It was the first story on the disease by the man who would become its voice: Randy Shilts. A special longform edition of...
ListenBonus: Randy Shilts Biographer Andrew E. Stoner from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Host King Kaufman interviews Andrew E. Stoner, the author of “The Journalist of Castro Street: The Life of Randy Shilts,” which is out this month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...
Listen1869: The Golden Spike from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The transcontinental railroad is completed by the driving of the final spike. It's hooked up to telegraph wires, so Leland Stanford's hammer blow sends a nationwide signal for the celebrations to b...
Listen1959: Great White Shark Attack from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
San Francisco teenager Albert Kogler is killed by a "maneater" while swimming in the bay. Shirley O'Neil braves the shark's attack to pull him from the water, then becomes an international sensatio...
Listen1965: A Surrender to the Fleshpots of North Beach from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
San Francisco Mayor John F. Shelley has given in. Not to the temptations of the flesh, but to the idea that topless entertainment is here to stay in North Beach. Learn more about your ad choices. ...
Listen1942: Japan Routs the U.S. at Corregidor from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The last allied stronghold in Southeast Asia falls. General Douglas MacArthur had hoped to hold out for reinfocements, but they never came. Still, the battle had slowed Japan's drive to conquer the...
Listen1970: The Kent State Shooting from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
President Nixon reverses course and escalates the Vietnam War by invading formerly neutral Cambodia, and America's college campuses erupt in protest. In Ohio, National Guardsmen open fire on unarme...
Listen1945: Adolf Hitler's Suicide from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A day after Americans learned that the Nazi leader had died, they learned that Germany's official announcement that Hitler had died in battle was a lie. He had killed himself as the Red Army captur...
Listen1973: Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice at the White House from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Investigators have evidence that high-ranking officials of the White House and President Nixon's reelection committee conspired to cover up the Watergate break-in. They haven't figured out Nixon's ...
Listen1913: The SFPD Bunko Scandal from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Fat envelopes of cash are being handed over the bars of North Beach. To the cops. And they're going down. The real scandal? A century later, not enough people use the word "bunko" anymore. Learn mo...
Listen1986: The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The USSR has finally admitted that something happened, but Western observers are worried it's worse than officials are letting on. The Soviets rarely ask the West for help, announce a problem on Ta...
Listen1958: U.S. Space Program Failing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Soviet Union is sending Sputnik satellites into orbit, but for the United States, it's failure after failure. The latest Vanguard rocket has plunged into the sea from 140 miles up. Learn more a...
Listen1963: Fidel Castro Visits Nikita Khrushchev from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In something of a surprise, the Cuban premier heads to the Soviet Union for the first time amid rumors of tensions with the Soviet leader in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Meanwhile, Khrushc...
Listen1894: The First March on Washington from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Butte, Montana, faction of Coxey's Army has stolen a freight train and is headed east, part of a nationwide convergence to demand a jobs and infrastructure program. So who was Coxey? And how'd ...
Listen1957: Failed the Bus Driver Test? Try Cable Cars from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you blow the San Francisco Municipal Railway's bus driver test, don't worry. They'll send you over for cable car training. The Public Utilities Commission thinks that's odd, but Muni defends its...
Listen1935: Pan Am Clipper Crosses the Pacific from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the first of four test flights, Pan American's "flying boat" completes a round-trip to Hawaii with a water landing in front of 10,000 spectators at Alameda. It's the first step toward passenger ...
Listen1993: Hacker Busted, Joe Montana's Farewell from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Prosecutors are throwing the book at Kevin Lee Poulsen, a notorious hacker who rigged radio station contests to finance his life on the lam for other crimes. Plus: Joe Cool bids adieu to San Franci...
Listen1962: The Prehistoric Google Bus from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1912: Scant News from the Titanic from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1990: Chinatown Is Closed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 t...
ListenBonus: Mike Sager on Janet Cooke from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 journa...
Listen1981: Space Shuttle Soars, Janet Cooke Crashes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1891: A Lot of Ruckus Over Oranges from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, whi...
Listen1906: Mount Vesuvius Erupts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 t...
Listen1952: Nationwide Labor Strife from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 t...
Listen1975: Operation Babylift from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Viet...
Listen1924: Ambushed in Albania—2 San Franciscans Killed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1961: Raising Muni Fares and Honoring Hydrant 12 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 earthqu...
Listen1910: Teddy Roosevelt vs. the Pope from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1954: Last Stand at Dien Bien Phu from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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. ...
Listen1997: Cult Left an Arsenal Behind from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1981: "I Am in Control Here, at the White House" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1981: "Honey, I Forgot to Duck" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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. ...
Listen1928: Hundreds Dead, Mulholland Takes the Blame from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 r...
Listen1977: The First Female Chief Justice from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Cou...
Listen1935: Fatso Rats Out Baby Face Nelson's Pals from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 help...
Listen1949: Anti-Semites in the New York Schools? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Activit...
Listen1875: The Best Game of Base Ball Ever from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 the...
Listen1946: Axis Sally Captured, Frank Sinatra Conquers from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 t...
Listen1913: Who Killed King George? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1974: The Children of the Divorce Wave from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 anyth...
Listen1907: Weigh a Soul? Nikola Tesla Says No from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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: Upt...
Listen1984: Larry Flynt and Dianne Feinstein from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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,...
Listen1948: A Democratic Party Civil War from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 f...
Listen1976: Gov. Moonbeam Throws His Hat in the Ring from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 f...
Listen1924: The President's Plan to Slash Taxes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 s...
Listen1916: The U.S. Invades Mexico from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In response to a raid on a small New Mexico town by Pancho Villa, President Woodrow Wilson taps Gen. John "Blackjack" Pershing to lead a force across the border to chase the revolutionary leader do...
Listen1964: Civil Rights at the Palace Hotel from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After the biggest mass arrests to date in San Francisco history, demonstrators who had shut down the Palace Hotel were victorious: The city's hotels had agreed to fair hiring practices. As the triu...
Listen1956: Gum Machines: Devil's Spawn from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Eldon C. Middleton of King Street, Redwood City, has a clear idea of what lies "at the very foundations of wickedness which are threatening to engulf us all." Gumball machines. And he's letting the...
Listen1913: A Monkey Cage for the Veep from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Vice President Thomas Marshall doesn't think much of his new office. History doesn't think much of his tenure as V.P. — neither did the president Marshall served, Woodrow Wilson. But Marshall did l...
Listen1896: Do You Poop Out at Parties? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
An ad says the cure for "womb trouble" and all sorts of other female maladies is Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Blood Purifier and Sensitive Wash, a version of which you can still buy at yo...
Listen1922: The Whiskey Heist Heroine from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
At the height of Prohibition, 100 cases of rare whiskey are stolen from a Menlo Park mansion in a daring robbery. The bandits, who tippled as they stole, didn't hurt anyone, thanks to the quick thi...
ListenBonus Episode: Marshall Kilduff from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The reporter who exposed the abuses of Jim Jones and the People's Temple in 1977 talks about covering the murder of former temple members Al and Jeannie Mills for the San Francisco Chronicle in 198...
Listen1980: A Murder in Berkeley from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Al and Jeannie Mills are found dead in their home. They had been members of Jim Jones' People's Temple before leaving and becoming fierce critics. Fifteen months after the Jonestown Massacre, had s...
Listen1919/1969: The More Things Change from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A hundred years ago, an education official says wealth inequity is the greatest threat to equal education. Fifty years ago, violent right-wing groups are making surprising appearances in the Bay Ar...
Listen1933: "Alfalfa Bill" Murray Empties the Jails from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Imagine the surprise for the prosecutor when he looked out at the law class he was teaching and saw the face of the man he'd just put away for murder. Why was Oklahoma's controversial governor free...
Listen1942: The Battle of Los Angeles from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Weeks after Pearl Harbor—and one night after a minor attack on a Santa Barbara oil field by a Japanese submarine—Los Angeles is thrown into a panic by reports of an air raid on the city. There's no...
ListenComing Soon: Not Your Century from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not Your Century launches February 25 from the San Francisco Chronicle, celebrating the news—and the news media—of years gone by. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Listen1959: The Dalai Lama Escapes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The 23-year-old religious and spiritual leader of Tibet gets an invitation from the occupying Chinese to come to a dance performance. Without bodyguards. Sensing a trap, he flees on foot over the H...
Listen1922: Fatty Arbuckle's Third Trial from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
He's a giant of silent comedies, in more ways than one. Hollywood's first million-dollar star is a baby-faced man-mountain with the grace of a dancer. But a sensational rape and manslaughter case h...
Listen1918: The Flu Pandemic from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A century before the COVID-19 coronavirus, the United States, like all combatants in the Great War, wants to keep the exploding flu crisis quiet to protect morale and prevent the enemy from seeing ...
Listen1964: The Palace Hotel Protest Leader from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As an 18-year-old, Tracy Sims was the leader of civil rights protests that forced San Francisco hotels to end hiring discrimination. Now Tamam Tracy Moncur, the retired schoolteacher remembers a ti...
Listen1981: Walter Cronkite Signs Off from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"That's the way it is," says the Most Trusted Man in America — for the last time, as he retires from anchoring the CBS Evening News. It's like a presidential changeover. | Get unlimited Chronicle a...
Listen1946: Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a college gym in small-town Missouri, former Prime Minister Winston Churchill tries to shake Americans out of their postwar bliss by saying their old ally "Uncle Joe" Stalin has dropped an "Iron...
Listen1991: The Rodney King Beating from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When a commotion outside his apartment woke George Holliday up at 1 a.m., the plumber grabbed his new camcorder and went out to his balcony. He saw a police beating, and within a few days, everyone...
Listen1991: Murder in Porn's First Family from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Mitchell Brothers, Jim and "Party Artie," revolutionized the adult entertainment business, first with their O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, then with movies like "Behind the Green Door." Th...
Listen1965: Malcolm X Suspect Arrested from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the wake of the Fusion and Netflix series "Who Killed Malcolm X?" the New York D.A. has reopened the case of Muhammad Abdul Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, who served 20 years for the murd...
Listen1945: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
AP Photographer Joe Rosenthal had one chance to get what would become one of the most iconic pictures in history. He didn't miss. After the war, he spent 35 years at the San Francisco Chronicle. | ...
Listen1972: Nixon Arrives in China from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The lifelong anti-Communist shocks the world by initiating the first high-level contact with the People's Republic in more than 20 years. Even after he's driven from office, it would remain a signa...
Listen1963: A Great City Forced to Drink Swill from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Total SF host Peter Hartlaub joins King Kaufman to talk about the most infamous headline in San Francisco history and the man behind it, Scott Newhall, the mad genius of the Chronicle's mid-century...
Listen1937: Golden Gate Bridge Disaster from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Chief engineer Joseph Strauss' massive safety net had saved 12 construction workers who'd fallen during construction. They called themselves the Halfway to Hell Club. Then a broken bolt turned the ...
Listen1929: St. Valentine's Day Massacre from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the most famous hit in American mob history, seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side Gang are gunned down, cementing control of Chicago for Al Capone's South Side Gang. | Related: 1934: Alcatra...
Listen1999: Impeachment Acquittal from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Despite a GOP majority in the Senate, President Bill Clinton is easily acquitted on both articles of impeachment stemming from his lies about an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Lear...
Listen1967: The Pill and the Puritan Ethic from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sparks fly at a San Francisco panel on changing sexual mores as anthropologist Margaret Mead suggests a new kind of marriage and promotes access to birth control for 16-year-old girls. Learn more a...
Listen1986: Steve Jobs Buys Pixar from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The big Bay Area business news of the day is Wells Fargo buying Crocker Bank. Nobody knew the computer graphics division of Lucasfilms would become a $7 billion company. Related: The Golden Spike. ...
Listen1956: Integration Fail at Alabama from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Seven years before Gov. George Wallace's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, Autherine Lucy integrates the University of Alabama. But she's expelled after two days — "for her own protection." Learn more...
Listen1997: Vallejo Courthouse Bombing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
They were the gang that couldn't bomb straight. Their plan to blow up court records was dumb, they didn't know anything about dynamite, and they talked too much. | Get unlimited Chronicle access. L...
Listen1977: "Roots" Is a Sensation from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
An 8-part miniseries about slavery told from the point of view of the slaves? ABC acted like it was afraid its adaptation of Alex Haley's novel was going to flop. It became the biggest hit in TV hi...
Listen1971: Charles Manson Convicted from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After a circus of a trial, the leader of a murderous "family" and three female followers are guilty on all charges in the Tate-Labianca Murders, which claimed the lives of Sharon Tate and six other...
Listen1972: Japan Holdout Soldier Found from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi of the Imperial Japanese Army is captured on Guam, the first thing he asks is whether FDR has died yet. Well, yes, 27 years earlier, just before the end of World War II. Lea...
Listen1901: Queen Victoria Dies from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Britain mourns its longest-reigning monarch, who dies after nearly 64 years on the throne. Her screw-up, playboy son Bertie is about to be crowned King Edward VII — and all he'll do is save the mon...
Listen1954: The Moskovitz Kidnapping from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's one of the most dramatic capers in San Francisco history, and San Francisco has no idea it's going on. The media agrees to clam up so the bad guys won't know the cops are on the case. Related:...
Listen1865: The First Chronicle from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Teenage founders Charles and Michael de Young have big ambitions for the daily theater program and newspaper they've founded with $20 borrowed from their landlord. In the first edition, they're alr...
Listen1919: Boston Molasses Flood from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nothing so sweet — and so ridiculous-sounding — has ever been so deadly. A storage tank bursts, sending a 15-foot wave of the sticky stuff through the streets of the North End at 35 mph, killing 21...
Listen1929: Death of Wyatt Earp from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When he died, the old Wild West lawman wasn't yet the legend of "Tombstone" or "Gunfight at the OK Corral." He was a guy who'd fixed a famous boxing match in San Francisco. The mythmaking kicked in...
Listen1901: The Spindletop Oil Gusher from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's a strike that will transform Texas and pave the way for the industrial and transportation revolutions of the 20th century. Four million gallons a day shoot 200 feet into the air for nine days,...
Listen1978: Harvey Milk Sworn In from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With his arm around his boyfriend's shoulders, the first gay elected official in California leads a parade of supporters to City Hall to start his historic, and tragically short, term on the Board ...
Listen1994: Nancy Kerrigan Attacked from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
America's top female figure skater is whacked on the knee at the Olympic Trials in Detroit. Rival Tonya Harding is implicated. The story consumes the sports and tabloid worlds — and supercharges fi...
ListenBest of NYC: Climate Change and Coit Tower from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Serious business at two conferences: One on climate change, the other on humor. Plus: Old firefighters shed a tear for Lily Hitchcock Coit at the dedication of Coit Tower. First published June 27 a...
ListenBest of NYC: Dark and Bright Times from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Near the end of a shocking (but not surprising) FBI spying operation on the gay community, Air Force Technical Sgt. Leonard Matlovich becomes the face of the gay rights movement in America. First p...
ListenBest of NYC: The Future Is Here from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Twenty years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle published a special section on what life would be like in the Bay Area ... in 20 years. So now that the future is here, how'd they do? Mark Lundgren, w...
ListenBest of NYC: NFL and an Escape from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some businessmen sit on running boards of cars in a Canton, Ohio, car dealership and talk about a crazy idea: A national football league. Plus: One of the Great Train Robbers escapes from prison. F...
ListenBest of NYC: S.F. History Trivia, Part 2 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
More fun at the Betabrand Podcast Studio as audience members learn about San Francisco history and occasionally get trivia questions correct. Recorded Aug. 22, first published Aug. 30. Learn more ...
ListenBest of NYC: S.F. History Trivia, Part 1 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Live from the Betabrand Podcast Studio, audience members vie for valuable* prizes and learn some of the wild details of San Francisco history. Recorded Aug. 22, first published Aug. 27. *Not that v...
ListenBest of NYC: Patty and Squeaky from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A couple of female-centered true crime stories from the 1970s. Patty Hearst was a kidnap victim, and then was she a bank robber, or a brainwash victim? And: Manson Family member Squeaky Fromme took...
ListenBest of NYC: Martians and the Mona Lisa from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast sends America into a panic! Didn't it? And the reason the Mona Lisa is so famous is that a guy tucked it under his arm and walked out of the Louvre...
ListenBest of NYC: Free Speech Battles from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is acquitted on obscenity charges in San Francisco for publishing Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." A few years later in Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement gets its start in a stranded...
Listen1941: San Francisco Blackouts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A week after Pearl Harbor, a jittery San Francisco struggles to prepare for what seems like an inevitable Japanese air raid. The Presidio commander suggests such an attack might be a good idea — to...
Listen1989: Queen of Mean Sentenced from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After a trial in which a household maid quoted her as saying "We don't pay taxes — only the little people pay taxes," Leona Helmsley, the real estate mogul who was a tabloid favorite, is sentenced ...
Listen1978: The Lufthansa Heist from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
JFK airport was easy pickings for robbers, but this job stood out. The robbers — who would be immortalized in "Goodfellas" — were incredibly efficient. Their only mistake: They thought they were st...
Listen1963: Frankie Safe! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Frank Sinatra's 19-year-old son is kidnapped before a gig in Lake Tahoe. Is it a publicity stunt? No. It's real. Ol' Blue Eyes offers $1 million ransom. The kidnappers' counteroffer: $240,000. Wait...
Listen1968: The Mother of All Demos from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
He introduced the mouse. He introduced videoconferencing. He introduced copy and paste! Douglas Engelbart sat in front of an audience of computer professionals at Civic Auditorium and blew their mi...
Listen1969: The '60s End at Altamont from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It started as a West Coast answer to Woodstock: A free concert in Golden Gate Park with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane. It ended in violence and death at Altamont ...
Listen1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Montgomery's black community, led by 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., launches a one-day protest against the arrest of Rosa Parks. The boycott lasts more than a year, and sets the tone for civil...
Listen1993: Polly Klaas Found from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The search for the kidnapped 12-year-old from Petaluma had captivated the nation, but now, after 65 days, came the worst possible news: A confession, and a grisly discovery. Learn more about your a...
Listen1967: First Human Heart Transplant from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Everyone thought Stanford's Norman Shumway would be first to transplant a human heart, but a tragic drunk-driving crash gave South African Dr. Christiaan Barnard, who had worked with Shumway, his c...
Listen1997: Warriors Star Chokes Coach from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Golden State Warriors thought they'd hit rock bottom when they lost 13 of their first 14 games. Then star player Latrell Sprewell choked coach P.J. Carlesimo, leaving a three-inch scratch on hi...
ListenBest of NYC: First! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A collection of episodes about firsts and beginnings to celebrate the start of the holiday season: The first cable car run in San Francisco, the first federal prisoners to arrive at Alcatraz, and t...
Listen1992: Revenge of the Nerds from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Booming Santa Clara County is home to the largest concentration of computer engineers in the world, and they're almost all men. Mental health experts say they're paying a price for the boom. Lost e...
Listen1983: Hillside Strangler Guilty from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Hillside Strangler terrorized Los Angeles for months in 1977 and '78. It turns out there were two stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono, whose trial was the longest in U.S. hi...
Listen1963: JFK Assassinated from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Like every city, town, village and hamlet in America, San Francisco grinds to a halt as news spreads that President John F. Kennedy has been shot and killed in Dallas. Learn more about your ad cho...
Listen1985: A Spy For Israel Arrested from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a rare case of espionage involving an ally, Jonathan Pollard, a Navy intelligence analyst, is busted for selling U.S. secrets to Israel. He says he did it to right a wrong. Prosecutors say he di...
Listen1945: Nuremberg Trials Begin from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not long ago, they'd been powerful men in a country that had conquered much of Europe. Now these 21 former Nazi leaders listen meekly as they're charged with crimes against humanity. Learn more ab...
Listen1973: Sweeping Powers for Nixon from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With the Watergate scandal in full swing, the Democratically controlled Senate votes to give Republican President Richard Nixon broad authority to respond to the energy crisis stemming from the OPE...
Listen1978: The Jonestown Massacre from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, and four others are killed and his legal aide, Jackie Speier, is among those injured in a shooting at an airstrip in Guyana, a prelude to more than 900 members of the fo...
ListenBay Area 2020, Part 2 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the second of two parts, we look at the predictions and scenarios in the San Francisco Chronicle's 1999 "guide" to life in the Bay Area in 2020, including one very big thing that, you won't be s...
ListenBay Area 2020, Part 1 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In 1999, the San Francisco Chronicle published a special section, a guide to life in the Bay Area in the unimaginably distant year of 2020. How'd the predictions do? First of two parts. Learn more ...
Listen1953: Robin Hood Is a Commie! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Steal from the rich and give to the poor? That sounds like communism! And an Indiana official says the Prince of Thieves should be banned from textbooks. He isn't, but the controversy spawns the Gr...
Listen1936: Bay Bridge Opens from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Emperor Norton ordered a bridge to be built between San Francisco and Oakland via Yerba Buena Island in 1872. Now, more than a half-century later, that bridge opens in the most appropriate way: Wit...
Listen1918 World War I Ends from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The world erupts in celebration as Germany signs the Armistice, ending the fighting in the War to End All Wars. Hundreds of thousands pour into the streets all over the Bay Area, delirious with joy...
Listen1923: The Beer Hall Putsch from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and 600 of his followers take over a beer hall where Bavaria's military leader is speaking. The leader gives way, but the coup fizzles, and Hitler decides on a new strategy...
Listen1917: The Bolshevik Revolution from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace and overthrow the Provisional Government in the second Russian Revolution of the year. A bloody civil war remained to be fought before the Soviet Union was es...
Listen1968: Strike at San Francisco State from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front call a student strike to protest the lack of representation for people of color in the curriculum, faculty and administration. The stri...
Listen1967: Ronald Reagan's "Gay Ring" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Washington columnist Drew Pearson accuses California's conservative governor of doing nothing about a gay sex scandal in his administration. Reagan denies it. But you'll never guess where the colum...
Listen1979: Iranians Storm U.S. Embassy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's the start of the Iran Hostage Crisis, a 444-day episode that would convulse American politics and culture: Students loyal to revolutionary Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini storm the U.S. emba...
Listen1950: Assassins Target Truman from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A pair of well-dressed men walk up to Blair House — the temporary presidential residence — and open fire. They're Puerto Rican nationalists, trying to assassinate President Harry Truman, who pokes ...
Listen1926: Death Shackles Houdini from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The King of Magicians dies on Halloween. Of course he does. Joe Posnanski, author of the new biography "The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini," talks about what made Houdini great — which also mi...
Listen1938: The Martians Are Coming! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" causes nationwide panic about a Martian invasion. At least, that's the legend. Really, hardly anyone heard the show, and the fe...
Listen1929: Black Tuesday from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Here comes the Great Depression. The stock market crash wasn't a one-day event, but the one day known as Black Tuesday shattered records, and it was a wild day on the Wall Street of the West, Montg...
Listen1995: Mayor Jordan Takes a Shower from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A week and a half before Election Day, Frank Jordan, running for re-election, thinks it'll be fun to go along with a morning radio show stunt. One result is a photo of him and two DJs naked in his ...
Listen1929: Secretary Fall Is Convicted from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Albert B. Fall, secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding, is found guilty of taking a bribe in the Teapot Dome scandal. He's the first Cabinet member ever convicted of a felony. ...
Listen1906: San Francisco City Hall Scandal from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The grand jury is in session. The boodlers who may end up in the dock? — that's how the Chronicle put it. Mayor Eugene "Handsome Gene" Schmitz and Abe Ruef, the Boss Tweed of San Francisco, the hea...
Listen1995: Selena's Killer Convicted from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Yolanda Saldivar said she meant to kill herself, not Selena Quintanilla, when they met in a motel room to hash out charges that Saldivar was embezzling money from "the queen of Tejano music." A jur...
Listen1975: "I Am a Homosexual" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With those words, on the cover of Time magazine, Air Force Technical Sgt. Leonard Matlovich becomes the face of the gay rights movement in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...
Listen1989: A Miracle in the Rubble from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After four of the saddest days in Bay Area history, at last there's a reason for hope and joy: Longshoreman Buck Helm has been found alive in the rubble of the Cypress Structure. Learn more about y...
Listen1989: Loma Prieta Earthquake, Part 2 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
San Francisco Chronicle reporters talk about where they were when the earth shook on Oct. 17, 1989, and what they did once it stopped. Memories from Kevin Fagan, Nanette Asimov, John Wildermuth, Br...
Listen1989: Loma Prieta Earthquake, Part 1 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A magnitude 6.9 earthquake kills more than 60 people, injures hundreds, damages the Bay Bridge and other roadways and buildings, and interrupts the Giants vs. A's World Series. Citizens and first r...
Listen1995: The Million Man March from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
They came to Washington in fleets of buses, caravans of cars, and scores of redeye flights. The march may or may not have attracted a million men — the crowd size was hotly disputed in the aftermat...
Listen1966: Black Panthers Founded from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, a pair of Oakland political activists, form an organization to protect the African American community from police violence. They call it the Black Panther Party for ...
Listen1919: Marcus Garvey Shot from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A man bursts into the offices of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and shoots its founder, who survives. Garvey is best remembered for his "back to Africa" sentiments, but his views on bl...
Listen1906: San Francisco Segregates Japanese Kids from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A San Francisco Board of Education order forces all students of Japanese heritage to attend one school. It's a win for anti-Japanese immigration forces, but it angers President Theodore Roosevelt a...
Listen1913: Panama Canal Opens from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
President Woodrow Wilson presses a telegraph key in Washington and 4,000 miles to the south, eight tons of dynamite blow away the last barrier between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans at the Panama ...
Listen1967: Che Guevara Killed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Argentine doctor turned Cuban revolutionary icon had a grandmother born in San Francisco and "the blood of the Irish rebels in him." He's executed on the battlefield in Bolivia, where he was le...
Listen1933: Coit Tower Dedicated from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The old hearts of retired San Francisco volunteer firemen fluttered under their red shirts as they listened to speeches about Lillie Hitchcock Coit, their mascot and admirer, who left a third of he...
Listen1960: JFK, Nixon Go Toe-to-Toe from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Their first televised debate — the first presidential debate in U.S. history — had been pretty tame. But now, in a TV studio in Washington with no audience, the gloves are off as the young senator ...
Listen1957: "Howl" Is Not Obscene from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Allen Ginsberg isn't on trial for writing the poem but another poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is — for selling it at his City Lights Books. The hippest crowd that ever gathered at the Hall of Justice...
Listen1995: O.J. Simpson Acquitted from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It wasn't the first 20th century trial to be dubbed the Trial of the Century. But it might be the one that keeps the title. The gloves didn't fit, and the Juice was acquitted. Learn more about your...
Listen1950: "Peanuts" Debuts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"Good ol' Charlie Brown," a little boy sitting on a curb says as a soon-to-be-familiar character with a round head strolls pass. "How I hate him!" The angst-filled, psychologically fraught newspape...
Listen1964: Free Speech Movement Born from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A former grad student sits in a car at UC-Berkeley but he's not going anywhere. He's under arrest, the car is surrounded by fellow protesters, and Mario Savio is standing on the roof giving a speec...
Listen1982: Extra Deadly Tylenol from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Seven people die in the Chicago suburbs after taking Extra Strength Tylenol laced with cyanide. The murders are never solved. The case, which terrorized America, changed the way medicine and food a...
Listen1983: Drug and Alcohol Crowd at the White House! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
That's what Interior Secretary James Watt called the audience for the Beach Boys when he banned them from a July Fourth concert at the National Mall. But whoops: The Reagans dug the nostalgia act. ...
Listen1923: General Theory of Relativity Confirmed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 astr...
Listen1995: Talking With the Unabomber from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
"I'm just very fortunate that I'm not dead," UC Berkeley professor Tom Tyler said after receiving a letter from the Unabomber. It was his manifesto, not a mail bomb. And Tyler wrote back. Learn mo...
Listen1905: "I Am Poisoned!" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Jane Lathrop Stanford, co-founder of the university, survives a poisoning attempt at her palatial home in San Francisco. Devastated, she sails to Hawaii, vowing never to return to her house. She do...
Listen1967: Ballet Superstars Busted from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A complaint in the Haight leads to the cops breaking up a hippie pot party. Among those under arrest: Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn. Rudy pouts and tells reporters, "You're all children!" ...
Listen1989: The FBI's Gay Spying Program from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Chronicle's Randy Shilts reports that the FBI conducted exhaustive and apparently illegal surveillance of the gay-rights movement from the '50s to the '70s, despite never finding evidence of an...
Listen1952: Charlie Chaplin Exiled from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Once one of America's most beloved movie stars, the great comedian was now being hounded by the FBI for his leftist politics and by the media for a series of personal scandals. Sailing for London, ...
Listen1975: Patty Hearst Arrested from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A tip leads police to knock on a door in the Outer Mission. When Patty Hearst answers, it ends a 19-month odyssey that saw her go from kidnapped newspaper heiress to dangerous fugitive, wanted for ...
Listen1920: The NFL Is Born from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It all starts in a car dealership showroom in Canton, Ohio. Reprentatives of teams from the Midwest and Northeast sit on running boards as they hammer out the details of a league that, a half centu...
Listen1963: Birmingham Church Bombing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Even by the standards of "Bombingham," the explosion that ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church was shocking. It was the 21st racist bombing in eight years, but the first fatal one, killing...
Listen1993: Oslo Accords Signed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Not long before Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin accepted the handshake offer of Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat during a White House ceremony, it had been illegal fo...
Listen1940: Lascaux Cave Paintings Discovered from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some teenage boys out for a walk in the woods stumble upon a living museum of prehistoric times, "a cavalcade of animals larger than life," the stunning colors of the drawings preserved by the cave...
Listen1998: The Starr Report from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The case for impeachment against Bill Clinton is also a salacious page turner outlining the president's White House affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. The independent counsel says the titillating ...
Listen1963: Integration War in Alabama from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
President John F. Kennedy federalizes the National Guard in response to Gov. George Wallace using guardsmen to block black students from enrolling in schools after he'd pledged "Segregation forever...
Listen1986: The First National Oprah Show! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
She hadn't worked out as a TV reporter in Baltimore, but when Oprah Winfrey turned a low-rated local talk show in Chicago into a hit, she was on her way to building an empire. Going national was th...
Listen1978: The Top Female Cop in the World from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
SFPD Officer Dorothy Jorgensen has some wild stories from the mean streets of the Tenderloin after she's named Officer of the Year by an international women's police organization for her work as a ...
Listen1975: Squeaky Fromme, Would-be Assassin from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Charles Manson follower has a clear shot at President Gerald Ford as he walks through a park in Sacramento, but her gun doesn't fire. It's the first of two Northern California attempts on the p...
Listen1977: The Golden Dragon Massacre from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Three gang members walk into a crowded Chinatown restaurant in the wee hours with long guns. The worst mass shooting in San Francisco history to date kills 5 and wounds 11 — none of them the intend...
Listen1976: Crisis on the Viking 2 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The spacecraft has lost radio contact with earth and it's plunging through 1,000 miles of the martian atmosphere. This is not how the mission was planned. Will NASA's Hail Mary work? Learn more abo...
ListenBest of NYC: Labor from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A collection of episodes with stories about work, workers and organized labor for your Labor Day listening. From the original March on Washington to Jimmy Hoffa's last lunch meeting. Learn more ab...
ListenLive! San Francisco History Trivia, Part 2 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It’s the rest of the story as King Kaufman regales a live audience at the Betabrand Podcast Theatre in San Francisco with tales of a murderous editor and an animal activist on a moral crusade. Lea...
ListenThe “Vertigo” Mansion — Live! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
That strange rooming house that Kim Novak slips into and disappears from in the movie? It had a strange story in real life. “Cool Gray City of Love” author and Portals of the Past columnist Gary Ka...
ListenReliving the Dotcom ’90s — Live! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Return to those VC-fueled days of yesteryear with Owen Thomas, who pestered his way onto the staff at Suck.com and then became a chronicler of Silicon Valley at Valleywag, Red Herring and, now, the...
ListenLive! San Francisco History Trivia, Part 1 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Join King Kaufman and a living, breathing audience at the Betabrand Podcast Theatre in San Francisco for strange tales of murderous editors and naked mayors. First of four live episodes. Learn more...
Listen1920: The 19th Amendment from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The women's suffrage amendment is quietly certified, a week after the deciding vote was cast in Tennessee by a young legislator who listened to his mom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit meg...
Listen1879: San Francisco's Political Gunfight from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
S.F. Chronicle founder and editor Charles de Young's political beef with Baptist minister and mayoral candidate Isaac Smith Kalloch culminates in a shooting. But that's not where it ends. Learn mor...
Listen1991: Gorbachev Survives Coup Flu from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Soviet president was held prisoner in his vacation home by hardliners who announced he was sick and threatened to remove him — maybe kill him — if he didn't back off his glasnost and perestroik...
Listen1911: Mona Lisa Stolen from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1968: Prague Spring Crushed from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Dub?ek. Learn more about yo...
Listen1957: The Giants Are Coming from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Sa...
Listen1965: A Tense Peace in Watts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 r...
Listen1969: Woodstock, Day 1 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1962: Crusading Against Animal Nudity from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 t...
Listen1961: The Berlin Wall from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1964: Great Train Robber Escapes from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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. ...
Listen1934: Alcatraz Opens for Business from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 Fl...
ListenCorrected—1974: Richard Nixon Resigns from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 correc...
Listen1974: Richard Nixon Resigns from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1964: Gulf of Tonkin Resolution from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 choic...
Listen1945: Hiroshima from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 y...
Listen1981: Reagan Fires 11,000 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1873: The First Cable Car from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 mo...
Listen1955: L.A.'s First Smog Alert from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1996: Clinton Triangulates from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1975: Jimmy Hoffa Disappears from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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'...
Listen1945: Empire State Building Plane Crash from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 fr...
Listen1984: The Original Psycho Checks Out from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 base...
Listen1997: Critical Mass Goes Critical from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1959: The Kitchen Debate from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1976: Chowchilla Suspect Surrenders from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1916: Preparedness Day Bombing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 choice...
Listen1993: Don't Ask Don't Tell from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 ...
Listen1938: Wrong Way Corrigan Lands in Ireland from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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, ...
Listen1944: Port Chicago Explosion from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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/...
Listen1969: Apollo 11 Launches from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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...
Listen1997: Gianni Versace Murdered from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 k...
Listen1972: Ho-Hum, 2 More Hijackings from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
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 mor...
ListenComing Soon: Not Your Century from 2019-01-28T20:21
Not Your Century launches February 25 from the San Francisco Chronicle, celebrating the news—and the news media—of years gone by. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
ListenComing Soon: Not Your Century from 2019-01-28T20:21
Not Your Century launches February 25 from the San Francisco Chronicle, celebrating the news—and the news media—of years gone by. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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