President Carter to Address Energy Crisis; Nolan Ryan Misses No-Hitter

July 14, 1979: The Carter administration's energy crisis... gasoline shortages ... Los Angeles County deputies are ordered back to work after a two-day sickout ... and Gov. Brown trims the budget by vetoing raises for state employees.

In his final season with the Angels, Nolan Ryan flirted more than once with a fifth no-hitter. Against the Yankees, he lasted until the ninth when Reggie Jackson singled. This would have been a controversial no-hitter since Jim Spencer's liner to center in the eighth was ruled an error on center fielder Rick Miller. The Yankees were furious and even Angel general manager Buzzie Bavasi told official scorer Dick Miller of the Herard-Examiner, "There's no doubt about what it was." Baseball doesn't use newspaper reporters as official scorers anymore and that's probably a good thing for all concerned. --Keith Thursby

Santa Susana Meltdown

Reactor opens, July 16, 1957, in the Daily Mirror.

Times reporter Louis Sahagun takes a look at the July 14, 1959, meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Lab: On the morning of July 14, 1959, Sodium Reactor Experiment trainee John Pace received the bad news from a group of supervisors who had, he recalled, "terribly worried expressions on their faces." A reactor at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains had experienced a power surge the night before and spewed radioactive gases into the atmosphere. "They were terrified that some of the gas had blown over their own San Fernando Valley homes," recalled Pace, who was 20 at the time. "My job was to keep radiation out of the control room." Read more >>>

L.A. Prepares for Olympic-Size Traffic Nightmare

July 1, 1984: Will subways work in Los Angeles? "But others say Metro Rail will not be heavily used by poor people because it will not take them where they want to go--to jobs scattered throughout the Los Angeles area," The Times' William Trombley wrote. "The traffic patterns of low-income blacks and Hispanics are diffused," said George W. Hilton, professor of economics at UCLA. "They are highly auto-dependent and are likely to remain so in the foreseeable future." Hilton also said: "We aren't going to run out of fossil fuels. There's no economic point in finding more than a 20-year supply at one one time. As prices rise, other sources will be found." Mr. Modular was working on these pages. They look like bento boxes. Well, of course, the subways work in Los Angeles, but nobody knew it in 1984. Tunneling beneath the city was not without problems, as anyone who recalls the partial collapse of Hollywood Boulevard during construction of the Red Line will remember. And people with long memories will recall that traffic congestion during the 1984 Olympics was much less than expected.

The 1984 Olympics united Southern California residents over a familiar topic--traffic. Bob Pool's story focused on concerns in the San Fernando Valley with the Games starting in less than a month. "We're going to have problems if 70% of the people going to the Olympics don't take the bus. If 50% of them go by car, we're going to have total gridlock," David C. Royer, senior Los Angeles city transportation engineer for the Valley, West Los Angeles and LAX, told a group of Encino homeowners. The worries weren't limited to the Valley, of course. Events were scheduled across the Southland so if you lived somewhere in Southern California, you were planning for the worst-case scenario.  Royer said residents should ask their employers for flexible working hours during the Olympics and people with tickets should start reserving seats on RTD buses. --Keith Thursby

Ocean Park Development

July 1, 1899: Ocean Park is under development. The same general area as seen from Google Earth. Pier Avenue is on the left side of the image.

Matt Weinstock, June 23, 1959

"Hazel, I Said No! You Can't Have a New Dress!" Numbers Game A lady named Julia has been confronted with a major dilemma -- to move or not to move. Normal accretion being what it is, her apartment has become inadequate for her needs. She gets a crowded feeling every time she enters it. However, she also knows about the ordeal of moving and the headaches of getting adjusted somewhere else. The other day she made her decision. She's staying. What decided her was the awful thought of all the tabulating machines whirring to a stop, maybe tying up the economy a little, while new sets of holes were punched in her cards for magazine subscriptions, utility bills and bank statements and new serial numbers were assigned her for credit cards and whatnot. Frightening, but that's life today. :: A NEWSMAN talking to a first-time visitor to L.A. said, "It's this kind of a town. You can go  downtown at 8 a.m. and the sun will be shining and the birds will be singing, then suddenly around 3 o'clock somebody will say or do something and you'd swear everybody had gone crazy. You never know what's going to happen around here."  :: REUNION Last night I met my family. The tube went out on our TV. --Richard Maples :: LITERARY NOTES -- The mystery of the B-24 found recently in the African desert reminded writer Sparks Stringer of an "unbelievable" radio drama he wrote in 1937. In it he had a World War I  plane landing in the same place with footprints leading away from it, then suddenly disappearing ... Devotees of J.D. Salinger ("Catcher in the Rye") are fascinated and puzzled by his rambling, stream-of-consciousness tale which ran through 69 pages in the June 6 New Yorker, dealing with his brother Seymour, who committed suicide ... Through a line here, CBS Radio located Joseph Hudock, whose "Suspense" script, "Spoils for Victor," was repeated a few weeks ago, and he has received his "spoils," a check. Hudock is a chemistry teacher at St. Monica Boys High School in Santa Monica. :: A PLAYFUL young man exploded a firecracker under the chair of an unappreciative colleague in a downtown office yesterday, thereby creating all sorts of consternation. Never mind the obvious question, where did he get the illegal firecracker? The upsetting thing was that when the victim examined the blasted bits of the firecracker he discovered it was fashioned from an American syndicate's colored comic section marked "Copyright 1957." Furthermore, its point of origin was Red China via Hong Kong. He doesn't know whether to charge his joker friend with trading with the enemy or leave things as they are -- inscrutable. :: KID STUFF -- While his parents were inspecting the new models in a showroom in San Fernando, their son, 9, rushed up and asked, ""isn't this where they sell Chevrolets?" The salesman said it certainly was. The boy exhibited the gum balls he'd gotten from the vending machine --with "Ford" imprinted on them ... His teacher asked Hank Naylor, 9, to define the word "sandbar" and replied, knowingly, "That's a bar at the beach." :: AT RANDOM -- Know how papers and refuse are gathered from the parking lots at Hollywood Park? They're blown into piles with a wind machine. Beats stabbing them with nail-pointed sticks ... Someone asked columnist Sydney J. Harris if capital punishment is a deterrent to crime and he replied, "Statistics prove conclusively that not a single person who has suffered capital punishment has been indicted a second time" ... The DMV crackdown on misbehaving motorists will get even tougher July 1 ...  An unseen TV announcer said, "Some programs are mechanically produced to prevent them at a more convenient time" ... Someone, Herb Schneble reports, has written in two-ft. letters on Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, "Tourist Go Home."

Dog Attacks Actress -- Koufax Sets Record

June 23, 1959: "Hello, Young Lady."

Elaine Stewart said she was watching TV at the home of tenant Floyd Appel when his dog bit her on the lip. In 1963, she was awarded $4,500 in damages. At left, Irene Dunne is one of the few celebrities at Ethel Barrymore's funeral. Richard Nixon lives from paycheck to paycheck, according to "Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait" by Earl Mazo.

Democrats draft a plan to avoid a walkout by Southern delegates at the 1960 presidential convention, to be held in Los Angeles.  Four white men are sentenced to life in prison for raping a black coed.  Scientists say paint and solvents contribute to smog.   Fallout from a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would not make the human race extinct, a Defense Department scientist says. But half of the homes in the U.S. would be badly damaged.

Maybe there's a reason Detroit didn't take imported cars seriously. Chavez Ravine update.   Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood on water skis! Chuck Courtney?

Sandy Koufax tied a team record and set an obscure major league record with 16 strikeouts in a 6-2 victory over the Phillies at the Coliseum. Koufax had a shot at the major league and National League records but failed to strike anyone out in the ninth. He settled for the most strikeouts in a night game and a share of the Dodger record, which according to The Times' Frank Finch was set in 1909. Only 10,290 fans attended the game. -- Keith Thursby

Crude Oil Floods Figueroa Street!

June 23, 1899: Crude oil floods Figueroa Street. A city inspector discovered that workers dismantling a storage tank on a triangular lot at 1st and 2nd streets (recall that several downtown streets have been realigned since 1899) directed about 200 barrels of oil and sand into a storm drain that emptied at Figueroa and 18th streets.

'Three Little Pigs' Has Racial Meaning, Official Says!

"Did You Hear What I Said, June?"

Southern California's aerospace industry!

When I saw this headline, I thought it was a joke. It's not. Iraq drops a polite note to the American Embassy saying no thanks to U.S. aid because it conflicts with Iraq's neutrality. Lots of comics made fun of beatniks, including "Nancy." Now it's "Judge Parker's" turn. View this page "Shake Hands With the Devil."

Above, the Post was a slick, large-format magazine of news and short fiction found in many homes. The editors certainly had a knack for picking the issues that concerned middle America. Think Norman Rockwell. Or "Hazel." State's poet laureate uses drugs! Joe Hyams talks to Capucine. Ramon Novarro in remake of "The Pagan." The Times covers a convention of women's clubs.

Smog-proof your hair! View this page The Coliseum's "Chinese Wall." View this page

Random Shot: Your Car

Ex-Con Held in Kidnapping, Maury Wills Joins Dodgers

"Just the Usual -- Just Shopping."

Roscoe Cook ties world record. Fashion note: Even in 1959, some men still wore boaters. And not just at Shakey's.

Darla Hood has grown up! Please note: Traffic, mass transportation and the environment are not a new problem. They are a very old one. Moral Rearmament ...  next, Up With People!

The Dodgers made a roster move to shore up their infield and speed up their offense. Maury Wills would replace Bob Lillis at shortstop, becoming a key factor in the Dodgers' 1959 season. Willis hit .260 in 83 games with 27 steals. It's incredible to consider the Dodgers let him go to the Detroit Tigers, who conditionally drafted him but returned him after they gave the shortstop job to Rocky Bridges. Now I'm sure Bridges was a fine ballplayer in his day, but my only memory of him was as an Angels coach. He did not look like someone you'd keep instead of Maury Wills. The Times described Wills as a "speed-burning Negro shortstop"  and noted his long service in the Pacific Coast League, so Los Angeles fans would be familiar with him. In a June 6 story, Frank Finch's lead referred to Wills as a "26-year-old Dodger rookie who supports his five children as a shortstop." Bizarre. And not everyone was sure this was the right move. Sports Editor Paul Zimmerman noted in a June 5 column: "How good is Wills? Well, he's been in the organization since 1951. The Dodgers sent him to Detroit on a 'look' basis and the Tigers gave him back." Wills had an extraordinary impact on the Dodgers. His best season by far was 1962 when he stole 104 bases and was named the league's most valuable player.He started and finished his career with the Dodgers, playing for Pittsburgh and Montreal in between. Since one of the Daily Mirror's special features is the ability to time travel, later this month we'll check in with Wills a decade after his debut. --Keith Thursby