1860    Telegraph line between Los Angeles and San Francisco opens.

1902    "Electric Theatre", the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opens in Los Angeles, California.

1923    The Hollywood Sign is officially dedicated in the hills above Hollywood, Los Angeles. It originally reads "Hollywood''land'' " but the four last letters are dropped after renovation in 1949.

1942    Battle of Los Angeles: a UFO flying over wartime Los Angeles causes a blackout order at 2:25 a.m. and attracts a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, ultimately killing 3 civilians.

1942    Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra record Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", the best-selling Christmas single in history, for Decca Records in Los Angeles.

1947    The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short ("The Black Dahlia") is found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, California.

1953    The first U.S. experimental 3D-TV broadcast showed an episode of Space Patrol on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV.

1962    Andy Warhol's ''Campbell's Soup Cans'' exhibition opens at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.

1963    Baldwin Hills Reservoir wall bursts, killing five people and damaging hundreds of homes in Los Angeles.

1967    The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles, California. The Green Bay Packers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10

1969    The ''Apollo 11'' astronauts are released from a three-week quarantine to enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

1972    Vietnam War: Increased American bombing in Vietnam prompts anti-war protests in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.

1973    Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California.

1985    Serial killer Richard Ramirez, aka the "Night Stalker", commits the first two murders in his Los Angeles, California murder spree.

2005    A mudslide occurs in La Conchita, California, killing 10 people, injuring many more and closing the Highway 101, the main coastal corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, for 10 days.

2005    Glendale train crash: Two trains derail killing 11 and injuring 200 in Glendale, California, near Los Angeles.

2008    The 2008 Chatsworth train collision in Los Angeles between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train kills 25 people.