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James Rolph Jr. is sworn in as governor of California. For the first time in 19 years, the mayor is not "Sunny Jim." — Jan. 7
"While police riot squads battled with an indignant crowd of neighbors, a widowed mother and her crippled 5-year-old daughter were evicted yesterday from their flat at 529 Market street, Oakland." — Jan. 16
International gay-rights pioneer Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld of Germany, in San Francisco on a U.S. lecture tour, flays American "sex taboos" as hypocritical. "The truth is not indecent," he says. "You speak in whispers of sex and in an unscientific way." — Feb. 25
In the depths of the Great Depression, more than 4,000 Bay Area veterans apply for relief loans in the first two days of an emergency government program. — March 1
"Blazing with a red glow that was seen from all parts of the city, the great cross on Mount Davidson was destroyed by fire." It's the second wooden cross to burn down there, and a citizens' group speeds up plans to build a permanent, concrete cross. — May 13
After 36 years as Goat Island, Yerba Buena Island's original name is restored by the U.S. Geographic Board. — June 4
Fritz, the Palace Hotel barber — one-time hairdresser to European royalty — predicts the return of the "luxuriant herbiage which decked the beaux of the Gay '90s," the handlebar moustache. — July 6
Oakland police declare a crackdown on speeders, saying "Heretofore, drivers have arbitrarily tacked five or six miles an hour to their speed with impunity, confident they would not be arrested until their speed approached 30 miles an hour." — Aug. 16
Dr. A.W. Mayer, head of the Stanford anatomy department announces that 2,000-year-old Indian skeletons found near Mayfield, Santa Clara County, show these "prehistoric inhabitants suffered from the same dental troubles that are prevalent today ......... and they actually suffered from acute nutritive wants." — Sept. 8
Future San Francisco mayor Roger D. Lapham and his wife "will present their daughter, Miss Edna Lapham, at a dance at the San Francisco Golf Club on Saturday evening, December 5. The debutante-elect received much of her education abroad and returned this summer with her mother and sister, who went to Europe in the spring." — Oct. 5
"Like a huge, white-capped breaker roaring in from the ocean the University of California football team swept over Stanford yesterday as almost 90,000 spectators sat in sheer amazement. The huge breaker, a seething ominous mass, was known to possess the power of a demon. It was a favorite to break seven long, weary years of famine." U.C. wins 6-0. — Nov. 22