Anniversaries

When moviemakers wanted to film "Peyton Place" in this small seaside town, the bestselling novel the movie was to be based on was so scandalous that the local library didn't even keep it on its shelves. The book had sparked outrage with its titillating look behind closed doors in a proper New England town. People read it in secret, and it was banned from many schools But that didn't keep Camden from welcoming 20th Century Fox to turn its streets, homes and people into "Peyton Place."

A large U.S. military map of Husaybah, a remote city on the Iraqi border with Syria, was spread across a table in the garage of a home outside the Marine Corps base here. The young men looking at the map know a great deal about Husaybah: They fought some of the bloodiest battles of the U.S.' long war in Iraq there. Remembrance of those days, unscripted and passionate, was at the heart of a reunion this past weekend of 75-plus Marines who served in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment.

With a rich history and a promising future, the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts will celebrate its 80th birthday Sunday with a dedication ceremony of its new $175-million home on campus. The school's most famous alum, "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, whose Lucasfilm Foundation provided $75 million for the new digs, plus $100 million for the school's endowment, will be on hand.

Twenty years ago, they came to Dr. Man Chul Cho suffering from symptoms of hwa-byung, the "anger sickness" of Korean folklore: They couldn't sleep, felt anxious and depressed, had muscle aches and stomach pains. They had survived the riots, but couldn't forget. Some were considered fierce defenders -- they'd battled looters in public shootouts. Others had been all but invisible, pleading vainly for help from police while their shops burned. They were so angry, bewildered and frightened that they were willing to buck custom and culture and trust a stranger for therapy.

On the morning of Nov. 21, 1980, the sound of sirens stirred Rafael Patino from bed. "Usually when you hear sirens, they come and then they go," he said. "But these were coming and staying." When he looked out the window of his 16th-floor room, he realized that the Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel was on fire. "I woke up my wife and we got dressed to leave," said Patino, an Irvine sales executive. "But when we walked out of the room, we couldn't see anything. The hall was pitch black with smoke.

"GI Joe . . . GI Joe . . . Fighting man from head to toe." --From a 1960s Advertising Jingle * Maybe it was the uniform. Maybe it was the tiny M-1 carbine he carried. Or the battle scar across his polyvinyl cheek. "When we were kids, we really got off on that stuff," recalled Vincent Santelmo, 33, who received his first GI Joe at age 3 and now boasts of being the nation's foremost authority on the miniature man of war. "It was the cool toy to own." But it was more than a toy.

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.

There was a lot to cheer about Saturday in Canoga Park. The Los Angeles Police Department celebrated the opening of its 21st police station and launched the commemoration of the department's 140th anniversary. Although the station is in Canoga Park, near the intersection of Schoenborn Street and Canoga Avenue, a panel of city leaders chose to name it the Topanga station in recognition of the Gabrielino-Tongva Indian tribe, which once inhabited the San Fernando Valley.

If it had happened elsewhere, it might have been dismissed as a teenage prank. A couple of 15-year-olds last year hung a Tibetan banner on the wall of their classroom next to portraits of Mao Tse-tung and Deng Xiaoping. They drew Xs over the faces of the former Chinese leaders and scrawled "Long Live the Dalai Lama" on the wall. But in China, the incident was taken dead seriously.

Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell is in Texas now. Army Chaplain Henry A. Haynes is in South Carolina. Eight years ago today, they were inside the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m., when American Airlines Flight 77 hit its mark. The world tends to give its fullest attention to anniversaries that end in zero or five -- not eight. There will be bagpipes and drums in New York. The president will lay a wreath at the Pentagon. Most of the nation will take a collective pause and move on. But for those like Birdwell and Haynes, directly touched by the terrorist attacks on Sept.

KCAL news anchor Pat Harvey can still recall her edgy excitement generated decades ago by not only the imminent launch of an ambitious and historic broadcast but also by widespread predictions of failure. It was March 5, 1990, as the now veteran broadcaster positioned herself behind the anchor desk, the focus of a sparkling new set on a Paramount Studios sound stage. After months of planning, a rash of hirings and upgrades that cost more than $30 million, she was on the front lines of an unprecedented experiment -- a nightly three-hour newscast.

Billy Al Bengston knows that when it comes to art, presentation is crucial. So the 75-year-old artist and his agent, Samuel Freeman, decided to mark a milestone in Bengston's career in an unusual way. This year is the 50th anniversary of Bengston's second solo show at the famed Ferus Gallery, the outsider gallery that nurtured the raucous and eccentric crowd of talented young Southern California artists in the '50s and '60s, including John Altoon,...

They had colorful nicknames like "The Mongoose" and "The Snake," initially raced mostly for glory in light of skimpy prize money and became legends as professional drag racing's popularity expanded nationwide. As the National Hot Rod Assn. holds the 50th anniversary of the Winternationals this week, here's a look at some of drag racing's most notable drivers over the decades in the premier top-fuel and funny car classes, some of whom will appear to help celebrate this year's Winternationals in Pomona: 1960s "Big Daddy" Don Garlits In the Winternationals' first 10 years, and for decades after that, Garlits was the driver even casual fans knew as being synonymous with drag racing.

When it comes to extracting free labor from famous cinematic figures, it would be hard to top Francesco Vezzoli. The Italian video artist's output over the last 12 years reflects his ability to get highly paid cinematic talent to work without pay. Vezzoli's enlistees so far have included Helen Mirren, Sharon Stone, Courtney Love, Benicio del Toro, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Sonia Braga, Marianne Faithfull, Natalie Portman, Roman Polanski, Michelle...

They each stood by, bundled in scarves and coats. Slight murmurs wafted through the air. But as the 80-foot barricade came tumbling down, cheers erupted. Berlin it wasn't. But very early Monday morning, Los Angeles paid tribute to the historic collapse of the wall that kept a city divided for 28 years. About 700 people gathered on Wilshire Boulevard near Ogden Drive to take part in the Wende Museum's "A Wall Across Wilshire," a symbolic re-creation of the wall that once separated East and West Berlin.

Valentin Geissler has no memory of the wall. He was just 10 months old when it fell, and most of its traces have by now disappeared. But it still hovers over the city like a ghostly presence. "Sometimes I can see in the city where the wall was. . . . I don't remember specifically when I was told [about it]. I guess I kind of grew up with this knowledge." But the wall didn't play a big role in his childhood, not the way it had loomed over the lives of his parents. The restrictions, privations and other hardships of life in the former East Berlin are an alien concept.

The acquittals of four LAPD officers in the Rodney G. King beating case 10 years ago today left the city stunned. Crowds gathered angrily on street corners across the city, while thousands more turned to their televisions to watch events unfold. The flash point was a single gritty intersection in South-Central Los Angeles, but it was a scene eerily repeated in many parts of Los Angeles in the hours that followed. Here is a chronology of events between the verdicts and the end of curfew five days later.

Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were well on their way to a date with history, becoming the first men to set foot on another body in space. Events to mark the anniversary and commemorate the ever-thinning ranks of space-race veterans will include interviews with surviving Apollo astronauts and a Kennedy Center salute to the Apollo era. One highlight was the release Thursday of 15 newly digitized scenes of Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon.

Katrin Geissler remembers being 4 years old and on her way to ballet school when she first tried to peek through the wall. "You would just try to get a glimpse. . . . It was very strange, because as a child you had the wildest imaginings about what was on the other side. . . . "For me, the wall was just a reality. I knew about it even before I went to school. When I was little, my grandmother would take me to town and she would explain to me that this was the wall that divided the two cities.

The world turned upside down when Katrin Geissler was born, and it turned upside down again when she gave birth to her son, Valentin. They made their appearances in 1961 and 1989 -- bookends of the Berlin Wall. Twenty-eight years apart, mother and son both grew up in Berlin, but they might as well have lived on different planets. Barely a month after Katrin was born on July 2, 1961, the communist-run eastern half of Berlin began erecting a barrier, block by concrete block, until, like a scar, it zigzagged through the city, separating west from east, capitalism from communism, freedom from totalitarianism, family from family.