The Way it Was

100 years ago

Coroner estimates San Francisco dead at 1,000

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Coroner W.M. Walsh estimated that the total dead will not be less than 1,000. His reports are complete, and his estimate is made up from all the data he has been able to collect. Coroner Walsh said:

Bodies that the deputy coroners have found and buried number 300. No thorough search has been made of the district south of Market or the Chinese quarter.

Many lives must have been lost in these sections. South of Market street are the cheap lodging houses, many of these collapsed from the earthquake. There is little chance that half of the inmates of the collapsed buildings had opportunity to escape. This is also true of Chinatown. After the earthquake, soldiers and police, so I have been told, buried bodies found along the water front. I have have received no official report of these. The total number of dead will undoubtedly reach, if it does not exceed 1,000.

50 years ago

Missile program even with Russia

WASHINGTON -- President Eisenhower said today he believes the United States is somewhere around the position of the Soviet Union in the government of guided missiles.

Eisenhower made the statement at a news conference in replying to questions dealing with the assertion by Kremlin Leader Nikita Khrushchev that Russia soon will have a hydrogen bomb missile capable of striking any part of the world.