September 26, 1975

That fall of 1975, gas ran $0.57 a gallon and Ford was in the White House — the attempted assassination of President Ford by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme had just placed the nation's security under sharp scrutiny, with Fromme convicted that fall after pointing a loaded pistol at the president in Sacramento. On television, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was taking home the Emmy for comedy while E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" sat atop the fiction bestseller lists, a snapshot of a country consuming serious, character-driven storytelling. The Cincinnati Reds defeated the Boston Red Sox in one of the most dramatic World Series in memory, and across the Atlantic, Rembrandt's masterpiece "The Night Watch" was slashed a dozen times by a visitor at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, prompting new conversations worldwide about the security of irreplaceable cultural treasures.