Not Your Century

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 Francisco and the 49ers. 

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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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."

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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. 

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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. 

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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!

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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?

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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. 

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