History/kanter/dt1st/mark2nd

30 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK: In a deal valued at $39 million, Broadway-Hale Stores Inc. acquired the Dallas-based department store chain Neiman Marcus Howard Hughes announced he was purchasing the space-needle shaped Landmark Tower hotel-casino in Las Vegas for $17.3 million West L.A.-based Western Air Lines said it had linked its 200,000 passenger reservations into its first, $10 million computer system.

THE NEWSMAKER

Phil Bentley, senior vice president of the advertising agency Gumpertz, Bentley & Dolan, received a tough assignment luring Angelenos to leave the suburbs and move to downtown L.A.’s new Bunker Hill Towers complex. “We have to generate the idea that there’s a renaissance downtown,” Bentley said.

THE NUMBERS

OCTOBER 19, 1968

Dow Jones Industrial Average 967.49

New York gold $39.25/oz.

1969 Datsun $1,866

Bottle of aspirin, 100 count 48 cents