Wayback Machine
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1993
Jan. 7: Some time today, in a hospital bed, an apartment house or perhaps on the cold pavement of an alley, the number of San Franciscans who have died of AIDS will pass 10,000. Even to a city long accustomed to the quiet violence of this scourge, 10,000 is a number that shocks. “This much loss, this much grief ... I don’t think any of us would have guessed in our worst dreams it would be this bad,” said Dr. Paul Volberding, director of the University of California at San Francisco AIDS Program at San Francisco General Hospital. In numbers normally reserved for natural disasters or warfare, AIDS has cut down a generation of San Franciscans in the prime of their lives. The 1906 earthquake that leveled San Francisco took more than 2,500 lives, a level reached by AIDS in early 1987. During all the wars of this century, 1,350 San Francisco residents died.
— Sabin Russell
1968
Jan. 8: The Mailers union remained on strike against the San Francisco Newspaper Printing Company which produces the Chronicle and the Examiner. Chronicle executives continued to print a small tabloid to keep intact the paper’s record of never having missed publication in more than 100 years.
Jan. 15: The news that has come across our telegraph desk over the weekend is fraught with disaster and the dire foreboding of more dreadful events to come. For example Toplessness appears to be creeping into Denver, the majestic cow and mining capital of Colorado. This is truly a critical situation. Toplessness belongs in San Francisco. It must not be allowed to spread like hoof-and-mouth disease, across the nation. Therefore it would be most fitting indeed for Mayor Alioto to offer all possible emergency aid to Denver in an effort to stamp out this outrage before it becomes rooted in the Rocky Mountain plateau.
1943
Jan. 13: John McLaren, the great gardener of San Francisco, is dead. The 96-year-old Scotsman who wrested imperishable beauty out of San Francisco’s sprawling sand dunes, died last night at Park Lodge, the brownstone structure guarding Golden Gate Park. Death came at 8:20 by the Lodge clock. It seemed until today, that John McLaren, “Uncle John” to millions would go on and on; that he drew his sturdiness from the soil that he loved so well and the seeds he planted so carefully. It was almost a century ago that a sage Scotsman drew his son aside and chided him for idleness. “Me boy,” he said “if you have nothing to do, go plant a tree and it will grow while you sleep.” In the course of his lifetime McLaren planted more than 2,000,000 trees, almost half in and around San Francisco.
But trees and flowers were not all that were the inspiration of “Uncle John.” The bandstand and grove were planned by him, Strawberry Hill, a desolate rock formation, he transformed into an island in the midst of a beautiful lake. Huntington Falls, the racetrack, the ball grounds, the windmills were his work. But to the end of his life he fought the “stookies” that dotted the park — the “stookies” being statues. A new “stookie” in Golden Gate Park inevitably inspired “Uncle John” to a new frenzy of planting and it is perhaps significant that the only one not entirely concealed by greens is the statue to Bobbie Burns, whose poetry “Uncle John” recited tirelessly. He was pleased that Southside Park was renamed McLaren Park but horrified that a “stookie” of himself was placed in Golden Gate Park.
1918
Jan. 8: “To show him up and make an example for the sake of other girls,” is the motive assigned by Miss Mary Elizabeth Drury of 386 Ellis Street for the suit which she says she will bring against G.B. Muma, automobile agent, whom she horsewhipped in front of the Palace Hotel Saturday afternoon. Miss Drury asserts that the whipping did not proceed from impulse but was a matter of careful premeditation. The whip she says was bought on Friday. According to Miss Drury, Muma’s conduct toward her from the time he engaged her seemed questionable.
He told her that she was the “soothing” type and that he would like to come to her apartment some evening and be “fussed” over. She responded, she states, by telling him that their social and business relations were hardly compatible. But Muma insisted upon calling on her. He held up nine fingers when she left that evening to indicate the hour of his call but she felt he was just “jollying” her. When Muma came at 9:25 Miss Drury declares she was quite unprepared for him, having washed her hair. He forced his way into the room, she asserts. When she rejected his attentions, she says, he called her endearing names and asked her, she says, to take a trip with him to Los Angeles. Muma is still absent from the city.