I tend to think of L.A.’s smog problem as being more of an 1950s thing but this photo shows that it was pervasive in the 1940s. This shot was taken on September 23, 1949 and shows a man standing on the observation platform the Los Angeles City Hall and seeing . . . not much. The smog had already grown so bad that the view is largely obscured. We can juuuuuuust see the L.A. Times building in the bottom right hand corner.

By contrast, this is a photo I took from much the same angle on May 15, 2018: