Not Your Century

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.

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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 Green Feather Movement, an important moment in college campus activism.

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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: With a massive traffic jam.

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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.

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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.

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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 established. 

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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 strike will last into March and have a profound impact on American higher education.  

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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 columnist got his information.

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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. embassy in Tehran and take more than 60 hostages. 

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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 his head out the window to check on the commotion.

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