ea, USA, was created.
5/2/1969. The Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, declared a state of ‘extreme emergency’ at the university campus at Berkeley after violent struggles there between students and police.
2/1/1967. Ronald Reagan sworn in as Governor of California.
29/8/1966. The Beatles gave their last live concert performance in Candlestick Park, San Francisco.
14/7/1965, US politician Adlai Ewing Stevenson, born 5/2/1900 in Los Angeles, California, died suddenly.
20/1/1965, American disc jockey Alan Freed died in California. He created the phrase ‘Rock’n’Roll’.
29/8/1958, Michael Jackson, pop star, was born in Gary, Indiana.
17/7/1955. Walt Disney’s Disneyland was opened in Anaheim, California.
30/7/1947, Arnold Schwarzenneger, star of the Terminator films and Governor of California 2003-11, was born.
28/3/1943, The Russian-American composer, Sergei Rachmaninov, died in Beverley Hills, California.
31/5/1930, Clint Eastwood, American actor and film director, was born in San Francisco.
5/8/1926. Houdini, the famous escapologist and magician, survived for 1 ½ hours in a bronze coffin in a hotel swimming pool in Los Angeles.
1/6/1926, Marilyn Monroe, American film actress, was born in Los Angeles, California, as Norma Jean Baker.
18/8/1917, Caspar Weinberger, US Republican politician and Secretary of Defence for Ronald Reagan, was born in San Francisco.
9/1/1913. Birth of Richard Nixon at Yorba Linda, California. Nixon was the 37th President of the US.
8/6/1912. In Los Angeles, Carl Lemmie founded Universal Studios.
10/3/1910. D W Griffith made the first Hollywood film. He discovered an obscure location near Los Angeles called Hollywood where the light was very good, for shooting the film Old California; the film industry then took off rapidly here.
27/2/1902, John Steinbeck, American author and Nobel Prize Winner who wrote The Grapes of Wrath, was born in Salinas, California.
11/11/1885, George Patton, US military commander in World War Two, was born in San Gabriel, California.
1/8/1873. The first street cable cars in the world were installed in San Francisco, on Clay Street Hill; the steep terrain made horse buses impractical. They were the invention of engineer Andrew Smith Hallidie, 37.
3/4/1860. The first pony express arrived in Sacramento, California, 11 days after leaving St Joseph, Missouri. The run across 1,966 miles of empty prairie between St Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California; it included dangers from hostile Indians and flash floods in the mountains. The Pony Express ended on 24/10/1861 when the first trans-continental telegraph line was completed.
9/9/1850. California became the 31st State of the USA.
24/1/1848. Gold was discovered at Sutlers Mill in California, by James Marshall. This started the Gold Rush. In 1841 a prospector, Francisco Lopez, found gold traces in the roots of a freshly dug onion. Farmers, clerks, even church ministers, headed west, although some suspected that the US government fostered the Gold Rush to encourage population growth in the former Mexican territory. A major gold find was made by prospector J A Shutter, and by 1849 over 80,000 people had flooded into the area; in 1840 California had just 14,000 inhabitants. US Congress agreed to the issue of a US$20 ‘double eagle’. Many gambling houses sprang up in the area, along with bars and brothels. San Francisco grew from a small village to a town of 25,000 within a few months. Food prices rocketed; apples were $5 each, eggs $10 a dozen, and a small whisky sold for a pinch of gold dust.
7/7/1846. A US squadron under Commodore John D Sloat sailed into Monterrey Bay and formally claimed California for the USA, during the Mexican-US War. Pro Mexican revolts in California on 6/12/1846 were put down by US troops. On 13/1/1847 pro-Mexico fighters finally surrendered to the US in California, ending 25 years of Mexican rule,
4/11/1841, The first emigrant train for California reached Stanislaus River, having left Independence, Missouri on 1/5/1841.
3/11/1836. Rebels in California proclaimed their independence from Mexico.
8/1835,