Anniversaries

The quarrel between black power advocates that ended in gunfire in a UCLA classroom had lasted only a few moments that sunny day. But the controversy over who was responsible for the murder of two young men taking part in a discussion over leadership of a fledgling black studies program at the campus has simmered for nearly four decades. On Thursday, aging leaders of the 1960s Black Panther Party returned to the site of the Jan.

On a cloudless Saturday evening 50 years ago this week, a Navy bomber carrying eight reservists thundered on a routine training flight out of Los Alamitos Naval Air Station. A minute later, less than 10 miles away, a four-engine Air Force transport plane took off from Long Beach Municipal Airport on its way to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. It carried 35 passengers from various military branches and a crew of six.

The dining room of the Sunbury Plantation great house, its varnished mahogany table glittering with china, crystal, candles and silver, looks to be awaiting a banquet to celebrate a man of letters who has sailed in from the English mainland. In the cellar of the stately 300-year-old home, hand-tooled leather saddles, wrought iron carriages, horseshoes and buggy whips speak to yesteryears of wealthy white planters being squired about the island.

They're hoping wet weather doesn't turn "MASH" into mush today in Calabasas. But rain or shine, a tribute to the 25th anniversary of the popular television series' finale will be staged at the show's Malibu Creek State Park filming location, organizers promise. The former "MASH" set is about two miles into the park, next to a dirt road that turns muddy when it rains. Several stars from the series, Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit and William Christopher, have indicated they plan to attend.

An ordinarily staid book fair in France has become the subject of international controversy because of a boycott by several Muslim nations and organizations over a decision by organizers to honor Israeli writers and history. Iran on Saturday became the second Middle Eastern country to officially opt out of the annual Salon du Livre, the largest of the Paris book fairs. The festival draws thousands of writers and hundreds of publishers from around the world.

Seventy-five years ago today, at 5:54 p.m., the Long Beach earthquake struck -- and Southern California is still feeling the aftershocks. Leo Vander Lans was riding in the family car down what is now Long Beach Boulevard when the ground began to shake. "I recall looking out the right-hand side of the car and this building, this brick building, collapsed," said Vander Lans, 82, a semi-retired attorney still living in Long Beach. "The bricks were falling, including on the car."

Five years into a costly war in Iraq that has lost the support of the majority of Americans, President Bush insisted Wednesday that "this is a fight America can and must win." The president, speaking on the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, contended as he has before that the Iraq conflict remained central to a broader "global war on terror." Bush also said that the "surge" of U.S.

One in a series of stories marking the Dodgers' 50th anniversary in L.A. -- About midway through his blundering reign as president of the Dodgers, Peter O'Malley assigned his publicity chief, Tommy Hawkins, to a Mission: Impossible. Hawkins, bright, personable and a former Notre Dame basketball star, was to discover why the O'Malley clan was hated so venomously in Brooklyn.

Last week, Mark O'Meara was picking up his father to take him out to dinner when someone mistook O'Meara for another pro golfer, Mark McCumber. All O'Meara could do was laugh. "The last time somebody thought I was Mark McCumber was in Augusta, a few days before the 1998 Masters, at the Longhorn steak house on Washington Road," O'Meara said. "You know, I may have to eat there again."

They had quite a run together, the kindly old manager and his kid boss -- that's boss with a small "b." Joe Torre and Brian Cashman ran the New York Yankees together for a decade, smiling in World Series championship parades, shrugging off bellicose challenges issued in statements under the name of Boss George Steinbrenner. Cashman was 31 when Steinbrenner tapped him as the Yankees' general manager in 1998.