Timeline

1920

Jan. 17, 1920: Prohibition begins.

Aug. 26, 1920: 19th Amendment gives U.S. women right to vote.

Sept. 17, 1920: Professional organization that became National Football League created in auto showroom in Canton, Ohio, by George Halas and others.

Feb. 8, 1921: Medill School of Journalism opens at Northwestern University.

May 2, 1921: Field Museum of Natural History opens in present lakefront location.

Oct. 15, 1921: Tribune, sued for libel by City of Chicago, wins case, which sets precedent protecting media’s right to criticize government.

Oct. 26, 1921: Chicago Theatre opens.

June 10, 1922: Tribune Tower design competition announced as part of 75th birthday celebration.

Oct. 31, 1922: Benito Mussolini takes power in Italy.

Sept. 2, 1923: Tribune provides first reports to America on great Japanese earthquake.

May 21, 1924: Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb murder 14-year-old Bobby
Franks on South Side in first celebrated “crime of the century.”

July 15, 1924: WDAP radio station renamed WGN by Tribune in honor of paper’s slogan.

July 10, 1925: John Thomas Scopes, charged with teaching evolution, goes to court in celebrated “Monkey Trial.” WGN broadcasts Clarence Darrow’s defense of Scopes.

Jan. 7, 1927: Abe Saperstein and his Chicago-based Harlem Globetrotters basketball team play first road game in Hinckley, Ill.

May 21, 1927: Tribune reporter Henry Wales is first to greet Charles Lindbergh in Paris after his historic trans-Atlantic flight.

Sept. 22, 1927: Heavyweight boxer Gene Tunney beats Jack Dempsey before 104,943 at Soldier Field in “long count” bout.

Sept. 30, 1927: Babe Ruth hits 60th homer.

Dec. 12, 1927: Dedication of Municipal (later Midway) Airport.

Feb. 14, 1929: Seven members of George “Bugs” Moran’s gang slain in St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in garage at 2122 N. Clark St.

Oct. 29, 1929: Stock market crashes.

1930
June 9, 1930: Tribune police reporter Alfred “Jake” Lingle shot and killed; later revealed to have ties to mob.

Aug. 23, 1930: Tribune begins annual Music Festivals at Soldier Field.

Oct. 24, 1931: Al Capone goes to prison for tax evasion.

March 2, 1932: Tribune scoop on details of Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

Jan. 30, 1933: Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany.

Feb. 15, 1933: Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak shot by assassin’s bullet presumably intended for President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami; he dies March 6.

March 6, 1933: FDR temporarily closes nation’s banks, signaling the start of the New Deal.

May 27, 1933: Century of Progress World’s Fair opens in Chicago, along with Museum of Science and Industry.

July 6, 1933: Comiskey Park hosts baseball’s first All-Star Game, conceived by Tribune sports editor Arch Ward.

Dec. 5, 1933: Prohibition repealed.

July 22, 1934: John Dillinger slain by police in North Side alley outside
Biograph Theater.

Aug. 31, 1934: First Tribune-sponsored All-Star Football Game at Soldier Field.

Nov. 9, 1935: Birth of CIO in Washington, D.C., marks first successful attempt to expand union movement beyond skilled craftsmen.

July 17, 1936: Spanish Civil War begins.

Aug. 3, 1936: Jesse Owens wins first of four gold medals at Summer Olympics in Berlin.

Dec. 10, 1936: King Edward VIII of England forsakes throne for American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

May 6, 1937: Hindenburg dirigible goes down in flames in New Jersey.

May 30, 1937: Republic Steel Massacre: 10 marchers die in confrontation with police at Southeast Side plant.

June 22, 1937: Joe Louis wins heavyweight boxing championship at Comiskey Park.

July 1, 1937: Last contact with Amelia Earhart, who disappears during Pacific flight.

Oct. 30, 1938: Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast causes panic with fictional landing of aliens in New Jersey.

April 2, 1939: Marian Anderson’s concert at Lincoln Memorial; she had been denied use of Constitution Hall because of her race.

May 12, 1939: Tribune first newspaper to print color photo of breaking news event–a grain elevator fire.

Sept. 1, 1939: Hitler invades Poland.

1940
Dec. 7, 1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Dec. 2, 1942: Team of physicists led by Enrico Fermi splits atom at University of Chicago.

Dec. 3, 1943: Pizzeria Uno, home of Chicago-style pizza, opens at Ohio Street and Wabash Avenue.

Jan. 27, 1945: Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz death camp.

June 25, 1945: United Nations charter approved in San Francisco.

Aug. 6, 1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Aug. 14, 1945: World War II ends.

Nov. 20, 1945: Nuremberg war crimes trials begin.

March 5, 1946: Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Mo.

Oct. 21, 1946: Navy Pier becomes Chicago branch of University of Illinois to accommodate veterans returning to college on GI Bill.

April 15, 1947: Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson breaks baseball’s color
line in game against Boston Braves.

June 5, 1947: With the announcement of Marshall Plan, U.S. prepares to finance recovery of war-devastated Europe.

April 5, 1948: WGN-TV begins broadcasting.

May 14, 1948: Israel founded.

Nov. 3, 1948: “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.”

April 22, 1949: Mao Tse-tung’s forces take Nanking, winning China.

1950
June 25, 1950: Tribune’s Walter Simmons first to report outbreak of Korean War.

March 5, 1953: Josef Stalin dies.

May 29, 1953: New Zealand’s Edmund Hillary and Nepal’s Tenzing Norgay first to reach summit of Mt. Everest.

July 27, 1953: Armistice signed, ending Korean War.

Dec. 1, 1953: Hugh Hefner launches Playboy magazine.

Feb. 5, 1954: Lyric Theater of Chicago (later Lyric Opera) debuts.

May 6, 1954: Roger Bannister breaks 4-minute-mile barrier in England.

May 17, 1954: Supreme Court strikes down public school segregation.

April 1, 1955: Col. McCormick dies at 75.

April 5, 1955: Richard J. Daley elected mayor.

April 15, 1955: First McDonald’s franchise opens in Des Plaines.

Oct. 29, 1955: O’Hare International Airport begins scheduled service.

Dec. 15, 1955: Congress Expressway opens.

Oct. 20, 1956: Tribune buys Chicago American.

Oct. 4, 1957: USSR launches Sputnik.

June 21, 1958: Last Chicago streetcar makes its final run.

Dec. 1, 1958: Our Lady of Angels school fire on West Side kills 3 nuns and 87 children.

Jan. 1, 1959: Fidel Castro takes over Cuba.

Dec. 16, 1959: Second City comedy cabaret debuts.