1972 Year

Where were you in 1972--the last time interest rates were this low? In that turbulent year, the Federal Reserve continued to push rates down to bolster the economy: The rate on three-month Treasury bills fell from a high of 7.81% in 1969 to a 4.07% annual average in 1972--virtually the same decline that we've had between 1989 and today. The Fed's rate tonic worked then: The economy's growth rate rebounded from a negative 0.3% in 1970 to 2.8% in 1971 and 5.0% in 1972.

Esther Rosen leans against the concrete wall outside the elevator on the top level of Dodger Stadium. It is a Thursday evening at 5:20 p.m. The doors open and out steps her older sister, Sylvia Fisk. "There you are!" shouts Esther. "Here I am," says Sylvia. Sylvia steps into the sunlight, gently places her sister's right hand into the crook of her left arm, and carefully escorts her back onto the elevator. Together they ride down to the loge level, then walk slowly arm in arm down the empty concourse.

He had just watched in amazement from his upper-level seat as Terry Bradshaw's pass bounced seven yards backward off somebody's shoulders and directly at the feet of running back Franco Harris. He had just watched Harris grab the ball and run 42 yards for a miracle touchdown, giving the Pittsburgh Steelers a last-second victory over the Oakland Raiders in a 1972 playoff game, transforming years of desperation into an eventual dynasty. He had also just had a couple of glasses of wine.

Phillip Garrido, who was convicted in a 1976 kidnapping and rape, was arrested four years earlier for allegedly drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl near his hometown, police in Antioch, Calif., revealed Thursday for the first time. Garrido was arrested last week on suspicion of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 when she was snatched from her street in South Lake Tahoe in 1991 and was allegedly kept in a hidden backyard warren of sheds and tents for 18 years.

In the moments before his death in 1972, nightclub owner Ara Arax walked into a hail of gunfire, asking his killers, "Why, why are you doing this?" On Wednesday, police said they believe they found an answer to that decades-old question in one of this city's most sensational and longest unsolved crimes. Police are offering little information, other than saying a tip in November led to evidence that ties two suspects to the killing, and that investigators believe robbery was the motive.

Phillip Garrido, who was convicted in a 1976 kidnapping and rape, was arrested four years earlier for allegedly drugging and raping a 14-year-old girl near his hometown, police in Antioch, Calif., revealed Thursday for the first time. Garrido was arrested last week on suspicion of kidnapping and raping Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 when she was snatched from her street in South Lake Tahoe in 1991 and was allegedly kept in a hidden backyard warren of sheds and tents for 18 years.

Esther Rosen leans against the concrete wall outside the elevator on the top level of Dodger Stadium. It is a Thursday evening at 5:20 p.m. The doors open and out steps her older sister, Sylvia Fisk. "There you are!" shouts Esther. "Here I am," says Sylvia. Sylvia steps into the sunlight, gently places her sister's right hand into the crook of her left arm, and carefully escorts her back onto the elevator. Together they ride down to the loge level, then walk slowly arm in arm down the empty concourse.

Vonetta McGee, an actress whose big-screen heyday during the blaxploitation era of the 1970s included leading roles in "Blacula" and "Shaft in Africa," has died. She was 65. McGee died Friday at a hospital in Berkeley after experiencing cardiac arrest and being on life support for two days, said family spokeswoman Kelley Nayo. Although McGee had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 17, Nayo said, her death was not related to the disease. McGee was described as "one of the busiest and most beautiful black actresses" by Times movie reviewer Kevin Thomas in 1972, the year she appeared opposite Fred Williamson in the black action movie "Hammer," and had starring roles in the crime-drama "Melinda" and the horror film "Blacula."

The Indian tiger, facing extinction in the 1970s, is breeding fast, and the population has more than doubled to just over 4,000, according to the latest official count. At the turn of the century, there were about 40,000 tigers here; by 1972, the year of the first official count, the population had plunged--largely as the result of hunting--to 1,827. However, by 1984, India had 4,005 tigers, the United News of India reported Sunday.

Mary Thom, an early staffer at Ms. magazine who rose to executive editor and later wrote an insider's history of the groundbreaking, mass-market chronicle of the women's movement, died Friday in a motorcycle crash in Yonkers, N.Y. She was 68. Her death was announced by the Women's Media Center, a nonprofit New York-based organization founded in 2005 by Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan and Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem. Thom was editor-in-chief for the center, which publishes features on women's issues in addition to offering media training and advocacy.

In the moments before his death in 1972, nightclub owner Ara Arax walked into a hail of gunfire, asking his killers, "Why, why are you doing this?" On Wednesday, police said they believe they found an answer to that decades-old question in one of this city's most sensational and longest unsolved crimes. Police are offering little information, other than saying a tip in November led to evidence that ties two suspects to the killing, and that investigators believe robbery was the motive.

He had just watched in amazement from his upper-level seat as Terry Bradshaw's pass bounced seven yards backward off somebody's shoulders and directly at the feet of running back Franco Harris. He had just watched Harris grab the ball and run 42 yards for a miracle touchdown, giving the Pittsburgh Steelers a last-second victory over the Oakland Raiders in a 1972 playoff game, transforming years of desperation into an eventual dynasty. He had also just had a couple of glasses of wine.

Where were you in 1972--the last time interest rates were this low? In that turbulent year, the Federal Reserve continued to push rates down to bolster the economy: The rate on three-month Treasury bills fell from a high of 7.81% in 1969 to a 4.07% annual average in 1972--virtually the same decline that we've had between 1989 and today. The Fed's rate tonic worked then: The economy's growth rate rebounded from a negative 0.3% in 1970 to 2.8% in 1971 and 5.0% in 1972.

Monte Hellman, the most idiosyncratic of the talented filmmakers mentored by producer Roger Corman in the '60s and '70s, is drawing raves for his latest film, "Road to Nowhere," an intense, romantic movie-within-a movie. Hellman and his longtime colleague, writer and Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos, have taken classic noir elements -- a stunning, seductive young beauty (Shannyn Sossamon), her rich and powerful middle-aged lover (Cliff De Young), a missing fortune and a suicide -- and blurred the line between fiction and reality.

Kenneth S. Norris, 74, pioneering marine mammal researcher and founder of the UC Natural Reserve System. Born in Los Angeles, Norris earned bachelor's and master's degrees in zoology at UCLA and a doctorate in zoology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla. He was founding curator of the now defunct Marineland of the Pacific on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.