Not Your Century
By San Francisco Chronicle
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.
Latest episode
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1959: The Dalai Lama Escapes
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 Himalayas to India, where he remains in exile. -
1922: Fatty Arbuckle's Third Trial
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 has derailed his life and career. -
1918: The Flu Pandemic
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 weakness. Sound familiar? -
1964: The Palace Hotel Protest Leader
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 time when "the whole country was on fire for civil righ… -
1981: Walter Cronkite Signs Off
"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. -
1946: Churchill's Iron Curtain Speech
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 Curtain" across Europe. -
1991: The Rodney King Beating
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 would see it. -
1991: Murder in Porn's First Family
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." They were close. Then Jim killed Artie. Why? -
1965: Malcolm X Suspect Arrested
In the wake of the Fusion and Netflix series "Who Shot 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 murder despite multiple alibi witnesses. -
1945: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
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.
