The three-person federal Public Land Commission is charged with determining the validity of Spanish and Mexican land grants in California. The 1851 legislation creating the…
Comments closedCategory: People and Places
Stories about the lives and landscapes of California
Chowchilla becomes a city on February 7, 1923. Fifteen miles northwest of Madera in the Central Valley, Chowchilla embraces city hood almost 11 years after Pennsylvania-born…
Comments closed
Dr. Norman E. Shumway performs the first heart transplant on an adult patient in the United States at Stanford University Hospital on January 6, 1968.…
Comments closed
In part to silence potential criticism by U.S. senators over his use of government funds, Howard Hughes flies his gigantic H-4 Hercules cargo plane off…
Comments closed![The first page of the Los Angeles Police Department report on the preliminary investigation of the Rodney King arrest. Source [FBI - https://vault.fbi.gov/rodney-king/rodney-king-part-24-of-24/view]](https://celebratecalifornia.library.ca.gov/uploads/2020/03/Banner-Rodney-King.jpg)
Rodney Glen King spends the evening of March 2, 1991, watching a basketball game and drinking 40-ounce bottles of Olde English 800 at a friend’s…
Comments closed
Nineteen-year-old Merle Ronald Haggard is given a maximum 15-year sentence in San Quentin for attempted robbery and a jail break. Prisoner #A-45200 finds himself in…
Comments closed
It’s February 19, 1915. Top-hatted Mayor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph is at the head of 150,000 San Franciscans as they march from the Civic Center…
Comments closed
At 11:58 p.m. on March 12, 1928, the worst dam failure in state history unleashes a wall of water between 80 and 140 feet high…
Comments closed
To better coordinate state public works efforts, Gov. James Gillett signs legislation on March 11, 1907 creating the Department of Engineering, whose Division of Highways…
Comments closed
The Eighth Annual Academy Awards is held at Los Angeles’ Biltmore Hotel on March 5, 1936. The Master of Ceremonies is director Frank Capra who…
Comments closed