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Climatologists are predicting a scorcher of a summer across California. The weather would follow a season of meager rainfall and higher-than-normal temperatures beginning last fall that was among the driest on record in the state’s southern reaches. It all spells trouble for a state still recovering from its most destructive year of fire on record.…

In the early days of Gold Rush California, murder and mayhem were the order of the day. And for a time, perhaps no class of rogues spread so much terror as the Australian ex-convicts of San Francisco. Thousands of Aussies crossed the Pacific to try their luck in the goldfields. Many gained honest employment, worked…

In 1979, a Los Angeles man decided to get a personalized license plate that would express his love of sailing — and ended up with 2,500 parking tickets. Here’s what happened: Robert Barbour requested plates that would read either “SAILING” or “BOATING.” But the DMV form contained a line for a third choice. Barbour didn’t have…

While filming “Mrs. Doubtfire” in the early 1990s, Robin Williams would walk around San Francisco in full makeup and costume. On one occasion, according to his telling, he walked into a sex shop and tried to buy a double-headed dildo. “Just because,” he explained in an online Q&A. “Why not? And the guy was about to sell it to…

1 San Diego has the most predictable weather in the continental U.S. That’s according to an analysis by the statisticians at FiveThirtyEight. They measured weather variability across three categories — temperature, precipitation, and severe weather — in 120 American cities, one for each of the country’s National Weather Service forecast offices. Cities in the Midwest…

Every Hass avocado in the world traces to a single tree planted by a Los Angeles-area mail carrier in 1926. Rudolph Hass had purchased some seedlings of unknown origin and planned to use them as rootstock on which to graft another avocado variety. But one of them didn’t take. A few years later, according to one version…

On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down in Los Angeles. The 42-year-old senator had just won the California primary, a crucial victory in his quest for the U.S. presidency. Supporters believed Kennedy could heal a nation torn by divisions of race and the Vietnam War. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and former Gov.…

Like pretty much every startup, the California Sun launched with a mix of sweat, borrowed money, and optimism. We recently passed the six-month mark, and the response has been encouraging enough that we’re doubling down with a redesign of the newsletter and website. We’ve partnered with the makers of Proof, an editorial suite aimed at…

Blend Burning Man and Nascar and you might get something like the art sculpture race held every Memorial Day weekend in Humboldt County. Known as the “triathlon of the art world,” the annual Kinetic Grand Championship challenges teams to race human-powered works of art across three days and 50 miles of sand, mud, pavement, and…

William Randolph Hearst not only ruled over a sprawling media empire. He wielded power as a congressman, a Hollywood heavyweight, and a real estate tycoon whose holdings were so vast that a magazine dubbed him New York City’s “number one realtor.” Naturally, he needed castle. If Hearst was among the 20th century’s most powerful men,…

An orangutan at the San Diego Zoo once gained national fame as a serial escape artist. Born at the zoo in 1971, Ken Allen outwitted zookeepers in three widely publicized breakouts from his enclosure during the 1980s. The shaggy, red-haired ape never went far. He simply wandered the grounds, as if a tourist, looking at the…

America’s first Black millionaire was an immigrant from the Virgin Islands who became one of California’s founding fathers. William Leidesdorff was born in 1810 to a Danish sugar planter and a Caribbean woman believed to be of African and Spanish descent. In his early 30s, he found his way to Alta California, then under Mexican rule, and…

Marijuana once fell from the sky in Yosemite. In December 1976, a drug smuggler’s plane ran into engine trouble over the park and crashed near a high-altitude lake about 10 miles from Yosemite Valley, killing its two pilots. Word got out to the valley’s community of so-called dirtbags, a ragtag group of outlaw rock climbers,…

1California’s Lost Coast is the longest stretch of undeveloped beachfront in the continental U.S. Highway 1 starts in Southern California and hugs the coast pretty much the entire the way north until petering out in Mendocino County. Why? Engineers building the road in 1919 found the coastal area between Mendocino and Humboldt counties so forbidding…

With floods, wildfires, and earthquakes, Californians have plenty to worry about. But don’t forget the raining lava. To be sure, the threats posed by California’s volcanoes are by no account imminent. But the terrifying rivers of lava now inching across Hawaii have been a reminder of how devastating they can be. California last experienced an…

In 1982, a Los Angeles truck driver named Larry Walters rigged 42 helium-filled weather balloons to a lawn chair, took a seat, and untethered the craft. He soared rapidly. At one point, the pilot of a passing airplane radioed that he saw a man in a lawn chair at 16,000 feet  —  3 miles  —  who…

Yuba City, about 35 miles north of Sacramento, is home to one of the largest Sikh populations in the world outside of the Indian state of Punjab. In the early 1900s, the first Punjabis immigrated to California, where they worked at lumber mills, farms, and the railroad. The most famous among them, Didar Singh Bains, arrived in…

1. San Francisco International Airport has a therapy pig. It’s become fairly common for volunteers to walk therapy dogs around terminals as a way to cheer up stressed-out travelers. But Lilou, a pink-nosed 3-year-old, is believed to be the world’s only airport therapy pig. She wears a variety of costumes and performs tricks, including waving…