We’ve had a lot enjoyable wanting again into Chicago historical past this 12 months.
Photo editors Andrew Johnston and Marianne Mather and myself sincerely take pleasure in bringing you nice finds from the Tribune’s archives every week. We hit the picture stacks nearly day by day to see what surprises would possibly lie inside the 1000’s of manila file folders there — particularly since most of this stuff usually are not already digitized. The thrill of the chase is once we uncover these not often seen treasures and share them with you.
In 2023, we marked quite a lot of milestones — from Chicago Bears proprietor Virginia McCaskey’s a centesimal birthday to the twentieth anniversary of the in a single day shut down of Meigs Field by Mayor Richard M. Daley to the fiftieth anniversary of the primary cellular phone name (which was made on a Motorola cellphone) and the seventy fifth anniversary of the Tribune’s notorious “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline.
Next 12 months we stay up for marking much more important events. And in case you have any strategies, please get in contact with us.
Did you miss every week? Here’s a complete record.
- Jan. 5: Chicago Bears proprietor Virginia McCaskey — who turns 100 at present — in her personal phrases
- Jan. 12: Martin Luther King Jr. leads ‘the first significant freedom movement in the North’
- Jan. 19: WGN-TV’s Tom Skilling remembers the town’s coldest and snowiest January days
- Jan. 26: Curling, ski leaping, ‘Silver Skates’ and extra — our favourite sports activities from winters previous
- Feb. 2: 10 longstanding Black-owned companies to assist all 12 months
- Feb. 2 (Special version): ‘It’s GROUNDHOG DAY!!!!!’
- Feb. 9: Love bites — scrumptious Valentine’s Day recipes from our archives
- Feb. 16: Michael Jordan — 23 tales about No. 23
- Feb. 23: Curious and quirky tales concerning the Cubs and White Sox at spring coaching
- March 2: 10 belongings you may not find out about Chicago’s mayoral election
- March 9: Murder, mayhem and ‘all that jazz’ — the true girls who impressed Oscar winner ‘Chicago’
- March 16: March Madness was born in Illinois. Here’s historical past of Chicago groups within the match.
- March 23: Hot canine! Pizza! Popcorn! Lemonade! Chicken pot pie! Get your meals historical past, right here!
- March 30: Meigs Field — shut 20 years in the past by Mayor Daley — and Northerly Island’s evolution
- April 6: Dick Tracy and ‘handie-talkie’ paved manner for Motorola’s first cellphone name in 1973
- April 13: A glance again on the Golden Gloves, longest-running, largest non-national beginner boxing occasion in America
- April 20: Watch and revisit ‘The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults’ hosted by Geraldo Rivera
- April 27: Lee Elia’s rant, 40 years later: How the Cubs supervisor’s 3-minute tirade turned one of the notorious speeches in historical past
- May 4: When British royals — together with King Charles — visited the Windy City
- May 11: Medinah Temple — from Shriners to circus, couches to on line casino — by way of the a long time
- May 18: 100 years of mayoral inauguration speeches from William Dever by way of Brandon Johnson
- May 25: World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893 and Century of Progress, 1933-1934
- June 1: 10 key moments within the metropolis’s sanctuary motion
- June 8: Vietnam Veterans Welcome Home Parade of 1986
- June 15: fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat’s ‘runaway’ race at Arlington Park in 1973
- June 22: The disappearance of ‘Foolkiller No. 3′ in Lake Michigan
- June 29: Nine No. 1 draft picks made by Chicago’s skilled sports activities groups
- July 6: We began baseball’s first All-Star Game — 90 years in the past
- July 13: 5 largest crowd estimates in metropolis historical past
- July 20: The first Special Olympics at Soldier Field — 55 years in the past
- July 27: The 5 hottest days in metropolis historical past
- Aug. 3: How Wrigley Field received lights and why Cubs followers needed to wait previous 8-8-88 to boost ‘W’ flag
- Aug. 10: Bernie Sanders, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. protest in opposition to ‘Willis wagons’ in faculties
- Aug. 17: 10 greatest bummers in 100 years of metropolis historical past
- Aug. 24: ‘The whole world is watching’ to the ‘Macarena’ — the town’s political conference previous
- Aug. 31: How Illinois turned the primary state to acknowledge MLK Day
- Sept. 7: Jimmy Buffett, our favourite vacationer
- Sept. 14: 10 key moments from the ‘Summer of Sammy’ Sosa and the race to 62 residence runs
- Sept. 21: Rites of fall — 5 issues to like about autumn that aren’t soccer
- Sept. 28: Pelé, Hamm, Beckham, Rapinoe, Messi and extra. When soccer’s large names got here to play
- Oct. 5: Worst Chicago professional sports activities groups
- Oct. 12: Friday the thirteenth
- Oct. 19: 5 methods to rejoice Halloween and spooky season with treats from the archives
- Oct. 26: 10 key moments in George Halas’ life on the fortieth anniversary of his dying
- Nov. 2: 5 issues that led to ‘Dewey Defeats Truman,’ the newspaper’s most well-known headline
- Nov. 9: How the town celebrated warfare’s finish and welcomed its veterans residence
- Nov. 16: How McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center got here to be on the lakefront
- Nov. 23: Quintessential Thanksgiving film ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ has native roots
- Nov. 30: Chicago-style pizza could owe its existence to a foul enchilada
- Dec. 7: Nobel Prize winners with Chicago connections
- Dec. 14: Shuttered native bakeries the place we want we might store this vacation season
- Dec. 21: How Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer turned a Christmas icon
Andrew Johnston’s decide: WGN-TV’s Tom Skilling remembers the town’s coldest and snowiest January days
The beloved WGN-TV chief meteorologist — who’s celebrating his forty fifth anniversary on the station — will retire on the finish of February.
Skilling recalled a few of the most brutally frigid and blizzard-like circumstances Chicago has ever endured. Read extra right here.
Marianne Mather’s decide: Curling, ski leaping, ‘Silver Skates’ and extra — our favourite sports activities from winters previous
These lovely pictures displaying wintry outside actions that Chicagoans have cherished for generations inspired us to get outdoors! See extra right here.
Andrew Johnston’s decide: March Madness was born in Illinois. Here’s historical past of Chicago groups within the match.
Henry V. Porter, an Illinois High School Association official who was later inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, is credited with initially utilizing the phrase to explain the state’s highschool basketball match in 1939.
The Tribune adopted it in 1940, however Porter’s motto remained largely a regional phenomenon for 4 a long time till CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger, a former Chicago newspaper reporter, started utilizing it throughout the NCAA match in 1982.
The time period caught on — possibly slightly too shortly. The IHSA sued to cease NCAA company sponsor GTE from distributing a online game bearing the March Madness title. Read extra right here.
Kori Rumore’s decide: Meigs Field — shut 20 years in the past by Mayor Daley — and Northerly Island’s evolution
Twenty years in the past, Mayor Richard M. Daley shut down Chicago’s third airport: Merrill C. Meigs Field.
A wrecking crew used bulldozers to carve large X’s into the airstrip late on March 30, 2003. The subsequent day — with the runway rendered ineffective to plane — Daley informed reporters he was attempting to scale back any airborne risk in opposition to downtown buildings “in these very uncertain times” solely a 12 months and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults.
For 55 years the small airport hosted personal and regional constitution flights, turning into the busiest single-runway airport within the United States in 1955. Dignitaries cherished it as a result of it supplied quick access to downtown Chicago with out the necessity to journey on the town’s expressways.
But it was well-documented that Daley needed to shut the airport as a way to convert Northerly Island to a park. By making that transition, mockingly, Daley was fulfilling a serious element of Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago from 1909. Read extra right here.
Andrew Johnston’s decide: Watch and revisit ‘The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults’ hosted by Geraldo Rivera
The most exhilarating dwell tv occasion of 1986 was the Chicago Bears successful Super Bowl XX, for some.
For others, it was a two-hour broadcast from a basement.
On April 21, 1986 — 37 years in the past — Geraldo Rivera hosted “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults” from the depths of the previous Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue and Cermak Road on the town’s Near South Side.
Spoiler alert: The early experiment in unscripted programming was one of the fascinating busts in Chicago historical past. Read extra right here.
Marianne Mather’s decide: The disappearance of ‘Foolkiller No. 3’ in Lake Michigan
It’s an unbelievable true story.
An experimental capsule designed by an eccentric explorer to cross a big physique of water disappears whereas on an epic journey, scrambling volunteers and authorities to seek for it whereas household and mates anxiously anticipate updates understanding oxygen provides are restricted.
The saga mirrors that of the submersible Titan, which was making an attempt to go to the wreck of the Titanic in June earlier than it exploded, however occurred 119 years in the past in Chicago.
Known as Foolkiller No. 3, the 30-foot lengthy and 20-foot vast canvas-covered vessel seemed extra like a floating blimp than a submersible. It was not designed to sink, however to glide — throughout land or water — when propelled by the wind. Its cavity was dotted with one glass porthole on every finish and hole apart from an axle to assist the watermelon-shaped machine flip whereas its occupant was seated atop it.
Peter Nissen, its inventor, packed up some meals, pumped up his vessel by hand than got down to cross Lake Michigan — powered by the wind like a tumbleweed — on Nov. 29, 1904. Read extra right here.
Kori Rumore’s decide: How Illinois turned the primary state to acknowledge MLK Day
We keep in mind Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. every Jan. 15, which was the slain civil rights chief’s birthday.
But, do you know, Illinois was the primary state to acknowledge it as a vacation 50 years in the past?
Schools right here started commemorating the event in 1969. They wouldn’t, nevertheless, shut for the day till Gov. Dan Walker made it a authorized vacation on Sept. 17, 1973. The invoice’s sponsor: Illinois Rep. Harold Washington.
It would take one other decade earlier than the federal authorities designated the third Monday in January as a nationwide vacation in honor of King. By then, Washington had turn into Chicago’s first Black mayor. Read extra right here.
Marianne Mather’s decide: 10 greatest bummers in 100 years of metropolis historical past
Chicagoans are accustomed to disappointment.
“There’s always next year,” was the motto for generations of Cubs followers who waited 108 years between the workforce’s final two championships.
Yet, there have additionally been instances when it appeared that Chicago was prepared for its second within the solar — earlier than abruptly, unexpectedly stumbling.
Those are the disappointments that actually harm. Read extra right here.
Kori Rumore’s decide: 5 issues that led to ‘Dewey Defeats Truman,’ the newspaper’s most well-known headline
The Chicago Tribune lined its first presidential election in 1848.
The race a century later, nevertheless, would outcome within the newspaper’s most well-known headline: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”
The Tribune was on deadline the evening of Nov. 2, 1948. In the absence of election outcomes, the newspaper assumed that New York governor Thomas E. Dewey (Republican) would sink incumbent Harry S. Truman (Democrat). He didn’t. And the blunder appeared atop a single version of the Tribune 75 years in the past.
The headline isn’t the one drawback with the web page — it’s a typographical mess. Lines and sort are askew. It’s a mishmash of kind types. And within the second paragraph of the lead story, 5 traces of kind ran the other way up.
Several information organizations made the identical miscalculation, however no different’s was displayed gleefully by Truman for what’s turn into an iconic {photograph}. Read extra right here.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com