Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Nov. 19, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 75 degrees (1930)
- Low temperature: 10 degrees (1894)
- Precipitation: 0.96 inches (1985)
- Snowfall: 2.2 inches (1955)
1934: William “Billy Goat” Sianis bought the Lincoln Tavern, 1855 W. Madison St., across from the old Chicago Stadium (which was replaced in 1995 by the United Center).
According to a Tribune story from 1938, Sianis renamed the bar the Billy Goat Tavern within a year of opening after a goat fell off a truck and wandered into the bar. When Sianis and his goat, Murphy, tried to enter a World Series game at Wrigley Field on Oct. 6, 1945, they were turned away. Thus began the curse of the billy goat.
That ‘marvelous burger place’: 84 years of Tribune coverage of the Billy Goat Tavern
“Billy — that’s the goat — brought good luck to Mr. Sianis because business improved at his restaurant when the goat was put on the floor show,” the Tribune reported. “Mr. Sianis grew a set of whiskers just like Billy’s so Billy would feel at home.”
One thing was missing — cheeseburgers (or cheezborgers, according to a John Belushi “Saturday Night Live” skit from 1978). The location didn’t have a grill. It was only after moving to the Apollo Savings and Loan building on Lower Michigan Avenue in 1964 that the Billy Goat started serving food.
1964: Farm-in-the-Zoo opened at Lincoln Park Zoo. It was designed to show “city folks where most of their food comes from,” as suggested three years prior by the Lincoln Park Zoological Society.
“We had in mind that segment of the population which in its visits to the zoo becomes acquainted with animals from Africa and other faraway places, but has little knowledge of the animals in rural areas,” said Frederick M. Gillies, society president.
It was the first major zoo project made possible by the society, featuring two red barns on Chicago Park District land just south of the zoo entrance.
While digging the foundation for a barn, workers found a fully intact coffin. The site was formerly part of Chicago City Cemetery. Many of the 35,000 bodies buried there were relocated to other cemeteries by the 1880s.
The main barn featured an Angus steer, a ewe and her lamb, a sow with 12 piglets, and an incubator. The dairy barn included a herd of six Holstein cows, a heifer, a bull and two newborn calves. The attraction became so popular that horse and beef cattle barns were added in 1965.
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1968: A new $500,000 McDonald’s Hamburger University opened at 2010 E. Higgins Road in Elk Grove Village and included closed-circuit television to demonstrate techniques used in the company’s restaurants. Cutaway models of kitchen equipment and even classes on how to serve dine-in guests — which McDonald’s didn’t accommodate until 1969 — gave students hands-on experience.
1986: Gambler, pool hall owner and rumored drug dealer Willie “Flukey” Stokes and his chauffeur were shot to death inside a limousine outside his girlfriend’s apartment on South Ellis Avenue.
Stokes’ former bodyguard Earl Wilson was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 1988 after a prosecutor argued that he ”directed the hands of the gunmen” who shot down Stokes and his driver.
1996: Fourteen people were killed when United Express Flight 5925 from Chicago collided on the runway with a private plane at Baldwin Municipal Airport outside Quincy, Illinois.
Also in 1996: An Illinois appellate court reversed the conviction of Juan Rivera, who was found guilty in 1993 for the Aug. 17, 1992, rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker of Waukegan.
Juan Rivera attends documentary screening about his wrongful convictions in killing of Waukegan girl
Rivera was convicted in three separate trials, despite evidence that continually unraveled over the years, including a false confession extracted from a then 19-year-old Rivera that came at the end of a grueling three-day police interrogation.
No physical evidence linked Rivera to the crime, and DNA evidence later excluded Rivera as Staker’s killer. An appeals court vacated his conviction in early 2012, and Lake County later paid Rivera a $20 million lawsuit settlement.
2016: Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich was elevated to cardinal by Pope Francis at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
2018: Three people — Chicago police Officer Samuel Jimenez, emergency room doctor Tamara O’Neal and first-year pharmacy resident Dayna Less — were shot and killed during an attack at Mercy Hospital.
2020: Wrigley Field was designated a National Historic Landmark in the National Register of Historic Places — seven years after ownership applied for the federal status.
2021: Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin bought a rare first printing of the U.S. Constitution sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $43.2 million, then a record price for a document or book sold at auction.
Also in 2021: A Kenosha County jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges against him, finding the Antioch teenage gunman acted in self-defense when he fatally shot two men and wounded a third.
A sobbing Rittenhouse, 18, collapsed after the five acquittals were read as the families of the men he killed wept just a few feet away.
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