130 Years

Consider the mid-1800s plight of the three Mahan children of Camarillo: They would hop on their horses, plod through cactus and chaparral, dart around the occasional rattlesnake and ford the Santa Clara at its narrowest point just to get to school in Ventura. That is, unless it rained and the swollen river blocked passage altogether.

Scientists have found the remains of 92-million-year-old ants encased in amber from New Jersey. The finding suggests that ants first arose 120 million to 130 million years ago--far earlier than suspected. The seven ant fossils are not the oldest ever found.

Under a bright blue sky, Charlene Legohn sat on an even brighter blue blanket Saturday at Oxnard's Community Park and watched her husband bang the congos and her daughter make a piece of barbecued chicken disappear. "Mommy," said 4-year-old Nailah, sauce smudged all over her tiny, ebony face, "give me a napkin." "Napkin?" said her mother. "You need a bath." But baths and such would have to wait.

Angel Martinez, who last week was given one of the harshest sentences allowed under the "three strikes" law, appeared calm and collected behind the heavy glass that separates visitors from inmates at the Orange County Jail. Martinez, convicted most recently of burglary, was given 130 years in prison--a sentence he said is too high a price to pay for the crimes he freely admits committing.

A man convicted of residential burglary was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 130 years in prison under the "three strikes" law. Angel Martinez, 34, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Richard Weatherspoon to 25 years to life on each of five burglary counts and ordered to serve the terms consecutively. Because the Orange County district attorney's office deemed Martinez a career criminal, the judge was allowed to add five years. Martinez was arrested Aug.

A man convicted of residential burglary was sentenced Friday to a minimum of 130 years in prison, apparently the stiffest term imposed in Orange County under the "three strikes" law. Angel Martinez, 34, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon to 25 years to life on five burglary counts and ordered to serve them consecutively. Because the Orange County district attorney's office deemed Martinez a "career criminal," the judge was allowed to add another five years.

After climbing a two-mile trail as steep as stairs and carrying his dog up two log ladders, Steve Tice knelt on the gneiss dome of Crane Mountain seeking a lump of bronze. "It should be right around here," the bearded young geologist murmured anxiously, recalling failed searches for similar benchmarks on other peaks. Tice had ascended the icy summit in the southern Adirondacks, about 65 miles north of Albany, as part of a research project to determine how old the mountain range is, and if it is, in fact, still rising.

On a sultry summer morning at Arlington National Cemetery, Erwin Henry Shupp was buried on a grassy knoll as a bugler played taps and soldiers fired a rifle volley at the sky. At 9 a.m., just after the bell tolled in a faraway cemetery clock tower, seven white horses pulled a gun carriage carrying a flag-covered casket with Shupp's cremated remains along a cemetery road, under the oak and magnolia trees, to his waiting grave.

When the Statue of Freedom touched down on the Capitol Plaza shortly after dawn Sunday, a worker climbed a ladder, unhitched a web of protective straps and kissed the bronze goddess on the cheek. A crowd of hundreds cheered as a helicopter crew plucked the statue from the U.S. Capitol dome where it has stood guard for 130 years. Bringing the seven-ton, 19-foot 6-inch statue down from its perch 268 feet above the ground took months of planning.

The original--five fragile sheets of paper--is on display only through today in Washington, D.C. But 130 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, the feelings it still stirs were vivid and durable in Pacoima on Sunday, as more than 250 people celebrated the anniversary of the document that ended slavery in the American South, and paved the way to outlawing slavery altogether.