Anniversary

WASHINGTON - Minutes after Greg Hicks learned that the perimeter of the U.S. mission in Benghazi had been breached by men with guns, he punched a cellphone number to reach Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, his immediate boss, who was at the scene. "Greg, we're under attack," Stevens told Hicks, the deputy chief of the mission, Hicks testified to Congress on Wednesday. Then the connection was lost. Hicks never spoke to his boss again. Stevens died soon afterward, as the Benghazi mission went up in flames around him. Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were universal in their praise of the gripping, soft-spoken, minute-by-minute account they heard Wednesday from Hicks, the first public testimony from a government official who was in Libya during the assault that killed four Americans in September.

It's Sept. 11: our generation's date that will live in infamy. The attacks on New York and Washington 11 years ago are certainly on the minds of some readers, who wondered why there was no mention of the anniversary on The Times' front page . The Nation page carries a six-column photo and story about observances planned for the day. And the Op-Ed page has a piece by a former Times reporter about explaining 9/11 to her children....

Jeanne Cooper Emmy winner starred in 'The Young and the Restless' Jeanne Cooper, 84, the enduring soap opera star who played grande dame Katherine Chancellor for nearly four decades on CBS' "The Young and the Restless," died Wednesday in her sleep, according to the network. Cooper's son, actor Corbin Bernsen, said last month in Twitter messages that she had been suffering from an undisclosed illness. A Los Angeles resident, Cooper joined the daytime serial six months after its March 1973 debut, staking claim to the title of longest-tenured cast member.

Funnyman Steve Carell explores his sensitive side with Keira Knightley in the comedy-drama"Seeking a Friend for the End of the World," which opened this weekend. Did you think when you were setting out on your career that you'd become a romantic leading man? That was the furthest thing from my mind, and it continues to be. I am incredulous that it has come out that way. I don't think I am a typical leading man, certainly not a typical romantic leading man. So that all comes as a complete surprise, and even more to my wife [Nancy Walls]

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.

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.

Not a day goes by that Mindy Finkelstein doesn't pause to remember the terrifying morning 10 years ago when a self-professed white supremacist went on a calculated rampage against Jews and ethnic minorities, killing a man and wounding others. "Every day, it crosses my mind," said Finkelstein, 26, who was shot in the right calf and thigh while working as a day-camp counselor at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills. But speaking on Monday, 10 years after the incident, Finkelstein said she wanted this anniversary to be different.

Aldous Huxley's eyebrows are so caked with mud in the black-and-white photograph they look as though they might snap off. But the novelist hardly appears concerned with the future state of his eyebrows. More pressing, perhaps, is whether actor Jim Backus, encased in a coffin-like steam box nearby, might melt away more than a few extra martinis. Officially, Huxley was participating in one of the first "men's weeks" at the Golden Door Spa in San Marcos -- 50 years ago this year -- to give a lecture on the "mind-body as one word."

Former enemies and allies somberly marked the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II on Tuesday, underlining the need to remember the bloodiest conflict of the 20th century so as not to repeat it. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose country sided with Nazi Germany during the initial invasion of Poland in 1939 before later opposing Germany, said the war and its causes needed to be studied from all perspectives. "We should examine everything which ended up bringing about the tragedy of Sept.

Critics across the nation called it the "Dam of Doubt" and "Roosevelt's White Elephant." But here on the Columbia River it was the "Dam of Hope" where an unskilled laborer helping to build it could earn 50 cents an hour to feed his family during the Depression years of the 1930s.

I was hoping to come across "Hoarders" as I channel-surfed on Sunday morning through the endless loop of 9/11 anniversary programs. I'd had enough of being forced to remember; of the ambient anxiety that accompanied, for me, last week's relentless attention to one of the darkest moments in our nation's history. I wanted a mindless reprieve, permission to trash that pile of newspapers with 9/11 articles — fatherless children, wounded soldiers, unhealed communities — that I couldn't bring myself to read.

Hijacked jetliners: In the Sept. 11 Section A, Steve Lopez's essay on the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, said three jetliners commandeered by hijackers went down in New York, Washington and rural Pennsylvania. Four jetliners were hijacked that day.

Not that you needed reminding, but Sunday is the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Around the world, memorials will be held, prayers said, tears shed. President Obama has called on the nation to "reaffirm the strength of our nation with acts of service and charity. " Mozart's Requiem will be performed in countless venues. But anniversaries of historic events — particularly less-than-happy ones — can be tricky things, not least of all because dates don't often lodge themselves in the brain the way events themselves do. People of a certain age might know that Pearl Harbor Day is Dec. 7 or that President Kennedy was killed on Nov. 22, 1963.

Everyone with a television camera or a notepad seemed to be converging on Florida this week to ask Terry Jones: Will you burn the Koran? Better questions might have been: Does God embrace bigots? Is there at least an ounce of shame in distracting the world from its real business? And when does Yosemite Sam get his mustache back? That last one because woolly-whiskered Jones' TV appearances this week unreeled like some madcap cartoon. The harrumphing, huckstering faux man of God growled threats at Islam, then purred about his hope for compromise, then growled again.

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...

Wednesday night at the Hollywood Palladium, in the first of three concerts there, the Pixies kicked off a U.S. tour commemorating the 20th anniversary of their 1989 college-rock classic "Doolittle." So what did the band open with? A string of obscure B-sides that even bassist Kim Deal admitted she had trouble remembering. Proudly noisy and unapologetically arty, the Pixies kept mainstream success at arm's length during their original run, which ended acrimoniously in 1993 after a stint opening arena shows for U2. Yet thanks in part to postmortem praise from the likes of Kurt Cobain (who famously called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" his attempt to replicate the Pixies' sound)

Re KCET's anniversary ("Channel 28 Is Given a History Lesson at Its 25th Anniversary," July 28): As a three-time loser in the marital wars, all I can say is that it must be great to have a wife like Jayne Meadows. IVAN LADIZINSKY Marina del Rey Ladizinsky is referring to Meadows' emotional protest against the exclusion of her husband, Steve Allen, from a Museum of Broadcasting film on American television.

While celebrations around the world Sunday were noting the 100th anniversary of the birth of film pioneer Charlie Chaplin, folks in Missouri were marking a similar anniversary involving a native son. Thomas Hart Benton, the prolific and provocative painter whose work brought him fame but not wide acceptance by the art world's elite, received a spirited celebration in his home state. He remained a Missouri resident until his death in 1975.

Iran's capital erupted in chaos and violence today as anti-government protestors and security forces clashed on the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U.S. Embassy by radical students. Today's demonstration did not appear to be as large as the huge marches that erupted following the disputed June 12 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the protest, the largest in six weeks, struck at one of the ideological pillars of the Islamic Republic by showing that a sizable chunk of Iranians disagree with hard-liners' anti-American agenda.

One group started walking on Oct. 18 from Cal State Long Beach. The other set out a week earlier from Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. Although the Southern Californians were 1,700 miles from this small Missouri town made famous as the site of Sir Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946, the two groups had the same goal: to fight hunger in the U.S. and around the world. This is the 40th anniversary of Crop Hunger Walk, a national interfaith program sponsored by Church World Service and viewed by many as the granddaddy of charity walks.