TIME CAPSULE/SEPT. 18, 1975

CHICO AND THE MAN (with Freddie Prinze and Jack Albertson, right) is starting its second season after debuting at No. 3. Actor Freddie Prinze Jr., born 10 months before his dad's 1977 suicide at 22, would break into movies with 1996's To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday. RAGTIME TOPPED the fiction best-seller list; the story of an early-1900s black pianist's quest for justice would be a film six years later -- and starting Dec. 26, 1997, it'll be a Broadway musical. TIDAL WAVE sweeps up. Though the decade's high tide of disaster movies soon ebbs, it flows again in the '90s with Volcano, Dante's Peak, and Titanic. AND IN THE REAL WORLD, Lynette ''Squeaky'' Fromme, 25, pleads not guilty this week to charges of attempting to assassinate President Ford; she's still serving a life sentence.