Not Your Century

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 responders remember where they were. See the Chronicle's 30th anniversary look back at the 1989 earthquake.

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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 aftermath — but it was massive. 

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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 Self Defense. 

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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 black self-sufficiency had a huge influence on the Civil Rights Movement. 

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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 and causes an international incident.

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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 Canal. First through? A pair of Americans in a rowboat. 

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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 leading forces in a rebellion against the CIA-backed government. 

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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 her estate to further "the beauty of the city which I have always loved."

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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 from Massachusetts and the vice president battle over how to handle the Cold War.

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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 cheers the verdict.

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