Feb. 4, 1959: Plane crashes were much more common 60 years ago. The late Eric Malnic, who specialized in covering them for the L.A. Times, once noted that “we haven’t had a big plane crash in years.”

In sports, Wally Moon, Gil Hodges, Carl Erskine, Jim Gilliam and Larry and Norm Sherry  sign contracts and Keith Thursby has the story.

The post originally appeared on latimes.com in 2009 and is available via Archive.org.