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A husband and wife have a shoot-out in Oakland. The husband, Edward Koehn, ends up in the morgue and his wife, Eleanor Koehn, "a winsome bride of 22," is in the city jail charged with murder. "Just why husbands and wives in happy families should both own revolvers is not explained." — Feb. 13 Jane Lathrop Stanford dies under mysterious circumstances, claiming with her last breath that she was poisoned with cyanide. A medical report later indicates no poison was found and that the woman who helped found Stanford University died of pneumonia and acute indigestion. — March 2 A headless, armless, legless torso is found at midnight on the corner of Vallejo and Powell streets. The mutilated trunk is still warm when Officer W. Minnehan comes upon it. Thousands visit the morgue to ogle the grisly sight. In the afternoon, the man's missing parts are found in a sack in the low tide mud by two boys hunting crabs in Fisherman's Cove. The corpse is identified as Harry Una, a peddler. — April 6 Mount Shasta becomes active. Great jagged cracks appear in rocks and streams of oily mud flow. — April 14 The Grand Jury begins an investigation into allegations that San Francisco Gas and Light has rigged meters to run fast, overcharging customers 10 to 500 percent. — April 16 Edward J. Smith, San Francisco's tax collector, flees the city amid allegations that he misappropriated $265,000. He is later captured in St. Louis. — April 27 Ambrose Bierce writes that a bank president who embezzled $1.5 million "is not altogether bad," and notes that in his last address to a bankers association he had called for the "highest standard of honor in financial dealings." Concludes columnist Bierce: "Let him among you who has never stolen a million-and-a-half dollars cast the first stone." — May 3 A man wounds nine passersby firing duck shot from his Eddy Street hotel window, then kills himself during a shootout with police. "Friendless and lonely, his heart broken and his reason shattered by long brooding over a hopeless love for a girl he knew but too well he could never call his own, Thomas Richard Lobb yesterday morning tried to wreak reprisal upon a world that he had learned to hate by shooting down man after man who had harmed him in nothing save by seeming happier than he could ever be again." — June 22 A pod of whales reportedly is sporting in the Bay, interrupting boat traffic. — July 1 In a Sunday piece, actress Ethel Barrymore interviews Examiner theater critic Ashton Stevens. Hoping to "avoid informing the gasping public for the four thousandth time that I simply Love my Art; was practically born on the stage; that all my relatives really are my relatives; that my favorite Role is the part I am at present playing," Barrymore questions Stevens as to why he has called actors "parrots," how he can judge in an hour what took a year to produce and whether dramatic criticism has any value at all to anyone. "It's of great value to me," responded the critic. — Oct. 1 Having sailed from San Francisco, 13 whalers carrying 500 men are trapped in the Arctic ice pack. Seven of the ships, carrying fewer provisions, are in grave danger and "their crews must escape from the threat of starvation and disease by dog teams, a method of retreat with which all these craft are fortunately provided." — Nov. 2 University of Chicago professor Charles Zueblin tells San Francisco in a series of lectures "to wake up!" and investigate public money in the city's development. He also suggests a subway be built under Market Street. — Nov. 5 In a groundbreaking appointment, Claribel David, a graduate of Hasting's Law College and the University of California, is the first woman ever appointed to the City Attorney's office, "a recognition of the legal qualifications of the fair sex to enter the lists with mankind in the practice of the legal profession." — Dec. 17 |
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