Anniversaries

Students flocking to Cal State Northridge today for the first day of fall semester classes will find a school entering the year aggressively--and searching, like them, for a fresh start. As the university that opened in 1958 prepares to celebrate its 40th anniversary, faculty and staff hope to launch a new era for CSUN. No longer does the San Fernando Valley's only public university want to be recognized as the school that was devastated by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

There is no dislodging her now. A year after her death, Diana, Princess of Wales, tall, gorgeous, winsome and adored, remains nailed to her pedestal like Jesus to his cross. U.S.

Hundreds of people laid bouquets at Kensington Palace, Princess Diana's former home, two days before the first anniversary of the princess' death. Newspapers added to the anticipation surrounding Monday's commemoration by publishing vast story and picture spreads about Diana and her family. Despite a poll indicating that only 6% of Britons plan to observe the anniversary, people came to Kensington Palace steadily, and bunches of flowers were once more balanced on the palace railings.

One bus rider recounted the story of a fellow passenger who slowly and quietly stripped to his underwear before being removed from the bus. Another, a 70-year-old self-described "slave to a car," described her conversion into a contented (if occasional) passenger after her first bus trip to the parking-poor Getty Museum.

They stood for their eighth-grade graduation photo displaying ribbons of blue and gold, the school colors. Each had a talisman rose, the school flower, pinned on their lapels. It was 1933, and Lillian Soto, Grace Sepulveda, Joseph Lopez and Fred Hunn made up the entire first graduating class of the Mission Parish School, founded in 1928 by Msgr. St. John O'Sullivan. Seventy years later, 400 students in preschool through eighth grade attend the private school.

On Aug. 31, 1997, the world shed its first tears for a fairy-tale princess. One year later, many are still crying, still grieving, still trying to make sense of the untimely death of Princess Diana. Perhaps in no place is the uninterrupted mourning of the people's princess more pronounced than on the people's message board--the Internet. Conduct an Internet search for the tragic royal figure, and hundreds of sites, ranging from the divine to the distasteful, pop up.

In a simple linen dress and brown sandals, she seems girlishly fragile for a moment. But she speaks with an articulate intensity you'd be hard pressed to challenge. She is all fervency: that deep voice, those startling green eyes. "If we're going to take our country back," she starts to say, and you know that for Lois Gibbs, "we" is the little people, and "they" are big business and big government. This is a war.

Kaz Suyeishi will never forget the quiet peace of that cloudless August morning in 1945. The 18-year-old was in the front garden of her Hiroshima home, chatting with a friend, when a gleam of silver in the sky caught her attention. "It looked like an angel," she said. "It was the most beautiful airplane. It looked like heaven and peace." The plane was the Enola Gay, dropping the world's first atomic bomb over the Japanese city. That morning, the B-29 released the weapon known as "Little Boy."

South Korea celebrated the 50th anniversary of its birth as a republic on Saturday by releasing 2,174 prisoners, including more than 100 political prisoners. Those freed were among 7,007 prisoners granted amnesty by President Kim Dae Jung on Friday to mark the day that is also the 53rd anniversary of the peninsula's liberation from Japanese rule. Prison officers said the 2,174 prisoners were released on parole at 10 a.m. Saturday.