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
April 9: A San Francisco coroner’s office employee drove a van over an apparently lifeless body yesterday at the scene of a traffic accident. The death of the victim — whose identity remained undisclosed last night, — was not caused by the van driving over the body, said Coroner Boyd Stephens. The incident began when a motorcyclist on Van Ness Avenue reportedly made a right turn onto Market Street and was struck by a truck. Witness Irene Lopez-Heredia said the van driver ... “backed up rather abruptly, went forward and ran over the body with such force the van was lifted up, like over a speed bump. He then ordered two men in brown coveralls to get the gurney out and they dragged the body out from under the van, loaded the body and drove it away.” During the incident, scores of onlookers became enraged and began screaming at police and the van driver. No arrests were made.
— Stephen Schwartz
1968
April 10: There was a curious silence along the city’s waterfront yesterday. There were no longshoremen bustling about, no huge cranes noisily lifting cargo onto the decks of ships. And nearly a fifth of the city’s streetcars and buses remained in their barns, hundreds of warehouses were closed, as were offices, both government and private. Thousands of workers were off the job — Municipal Railway operators, and postmen, government clerks, librarians, bridge toll collectors and others. There was a funeral in Atlanta for Dr. Martin Luther King and this is how they chose to honor his memory. Some came to the Longshoremen’s Hall at Mason and Beach Streets. There, neck straining as she spoke up into the microphone above her on a crepe-draped rostrum, Mrs. Harry Bridges — Niki — said what was on their minds. “We should feel guilty because the cries were heard in the land… ” Niki began sobbing, but she finished. “…we did not heed that call. That is why he died.” Dr. King had been an honorary member of the ILWU and had been murdered while leading support in behalf of men seeking union recognition. “He was always on the side of the oppressed, the little people,” said Vice President Bill Bailey of Longshore Local 10.”
— Dick Meister
1943
April 4: Four freedom-hungry desperadoes cracked out of Alcatraz in a thick fog early yesterday. They all gambled their lives and two of them lost, riddled as they swam; the other two were recaptured, one in the water, the other cowering in a cave on the island. Recaptured were Harold Brest, handsome, coldblooded bank robber, hauled naked out of the frigid waters, and Fred Hunter, stoop-shouldered member of Alvin (Old Creepy) Karpis gang of murderers. Wounded by rifle slugs from the Rock’s gun towers and drowned were James Boardman, bank robber, and Floyd Hamilton, erstwhile henchman of the notorious Barrow-Parker-Hamilton outlaw gang that flourished in the Southwest. The quartet made its abortive bid for liberty after slugging, gagging and binding Captain of the Guards Henry Weinhold and Officer Smith.
And then, clad only in their underwear, armed with improvised daggers, the convicts leaped out of a window at the rear of the model building on the northwest tip of the island. But they left behind two of the four cans designed to keep them afloat in the tiderips and stuffed with Army uniforms with which they hoped to make good their escape. Seconds later the guards on the high gun tower trained powerful rifles aiming at the bobbing heads. Fusillade after fusillade spattered the waters with deadly slugs, peppering the surface with tiny geysers. The first rain of bullets winged Hamilton who sank beneath the surface. Brest now naked was floating on his back holding up the wounded Boardman when the prison launch pulled alongside. Boardman, riddled through the head, tinctured the green waters with his blood. As Brest reached up for a guard’s grip he loosened his hold on Boardman who slipped like a lead weight beneath the surface. Hunter, who injured his back in the leap from the window, was discovered later in an island search, hiding in a dank cave eroded from the cliff walls.
1918
April 9: Holding that an assault upon a wooden leg was not a criminal offense, Police Judge Brady yesterday dismissed charges brought against Special Officer Joseph Hughes by George McEachern, former pugilist, of 12 East Sanchez Street. McEachern was viewing the Liberty parade Saturday from a fence top at Eighth and Market Streets when Hughes ordered him down. He declined to come off his perch and Hughes grabbed one of his legs to pull him down. The leg pulled loose and the much-frightened special cop dropped the loose end and ran. The dismemberment was witnessed by George Sullivan, who, when he saw McEachern lying in two pieces on the ground, rang up an ambulance. When the doctor from the Central Emergency Hospital discovered that it was a wooden leg that caused all the excitement he sent McEachern to a carpenter shop.