As we spend the year commemorating the centennial of Central Library, it's also necessary to acknowledge a less celebratory, but still important milestone—the 40th anniversary of the 1986 Central Library Fire. The blaze, which ignited shortly before 11 a.m. on April 29, took over seven hours to extinguish and claimed roughly 400,000 books due to fire, smoke, or water damage. The tragic event...
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Librarians Billie Connor, Helene Mochedlover, and Katie Leidich sit across the street from Central Library during the Fire. Leo Jarzomb/Los Angeles Herald Examiner Collection
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Angels Flight: Welcome Back, Olivet and Sinai
Welcome back, Olivet and Sinai.
Interview With an Author: Tal M. Klein
Tal M. Klein was born in Israel, grew up in New York, and currently lives in Detroit with his wife and two daughters.
A Quiet Evening With a Quick Death — The Demise of Bugsy Siegel
Photo Friends, Friday, July 21, 2017
On June 20, 1947, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the East Coast mobster who had relocated to and prospered in Los Angeles and was now intent on building up Las Vegas, sat in his girlfriend’s living room in Beverly Hills.
Interview With an Author: Theodora Goss
Theodora Goss is a World Fantasy Award–winning author of short stories, poetry and essays.
Go Forth and Celebrate the Fourth!
Photo Friends, Friday, June 30, 2017
The Fourth of July is a time when Americans remember their history, look toward the future, and celebrate the present.
Julie d'Aubigny: La Maupin and Early French Opera
LGBT Pride Month gives us an opportunity to discover a fascinating character from the early days of French opera.
A Young Immigrant's Story
I am a refugee, an immigrant, an American. I came to the United States as a young girl and grew up in Los Angeles. My maternal grandparents were born in Cuba and were descendants of immigrants from Spain, who moved to Cuba to make a better life for themselves.
Juneteenth
“The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went.”—Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
LGBT Classic Films You Should Not Miss
I have been a fan of classic movies ever since I began checking out VHS tapes from my local library (Santa Maria Public Library) in my tween years at the dawn of the 1990’s. Cable was a luxury my working-class family did not always have.
LGBTQIA History From the Back of the Photo
Prior to the late 1970s, LGBTQIA coverage in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (previously the Herald Express) was extremely limited. Any photos in our image archive from the newspaper focus exclusively on men being arrested for "masquerading" as women.