Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Dec. 10, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Vintage Chicago Tribune: Nobel Prize winners with Chicago connections
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 62 degrees (1879)
- Low temperature: Minus 8 degrees (1978)
- Precipitation: 2.18 inches (1971)
- Snowfall: 10.9 inches (1934)
1907: Albert A. Michelson, the first head of the physics department at the University of Chicago, won the first Nobel Prize ever presented to an American (though he was born in Prussia) in science. The U.S. Naval Academy graduate measured the speed of light with unsurpassed accuracy and built several machines for studying the length of light waves.
1925: Vice President Charles Gates Dawes won the Nobel Peace Prize (shared with Sir Austen Chamberlain) for his Dawes Plan, which helped stabilize Germany’s finances and repay reparations after World War I. The award was accepted by Laurits Selmer Swenson, U.S. minister in Oslo, in 1926.
A heart attack killed Dawes in 1951. His home is now the Evanston History Center.
1931: Hull House founder Jane Addams was presented the Nobel Peace Prize (shared with Nicholas Murray Butler) for her activities in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which she helped to found and served as its first president. Addams was the second woman — and the first American woman — to win the award.
1935: John Jacob “Jay” Berwanger, University of Chicago running back, received the first Heisman Memorial Trophy recipient, although the honor wasn’t called that until a year later. The trophy was named for club athletic director John W. Heisman after he died in 1936. Berwanger traveled to New York to accept “a special trophy at a luncheon,” the Tribune reported.
Berwanger, an Iowa native, was often dubbed the “one-man football team” for his ability to play offense, defense and special teams for the Maroons (the University of Chicago abandoned the sport just four seasons after Berwanger departed).
Finances are what might have persuaded the man with a blue-collar background to choose a career in sales over suiting up in the NFL.
1940: The Chicago Bears selected University of Michigan back Tom Harmon with the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.
Harmon, a Gary native, was considered by many who covered college football — including the Tribune — to be its best player that year. He was a two-time All-American, was named The Associated Press’ athlete of the year in 1940 and received the Maxwell Award as the college football player of the year.
When the Tribune gave him its Silver Football trophy in early 1941, he said, “This moment is perhaps the happiest in my life.” That was just months after the Michigan running back became the school’s first Heisman Trophy winner.
But instead of signing with the Bears, Harmon signed one for $15,000 with Columbia Pictures — to star in a film called “Harmon of Michigan.” The Tribune called the movie’s storyline “a weak, stupid and incredible affair, punctuated with banal dialog and incident.” He followed that up with a sports director radio contract in Detroit.
Harmon did play football in Chicago in 1941 but not for the Bears — before more than 98,000 fans at Soldier Field as part of the Chicago Tribune All-Star Charity Football Game.
1944: R. Marlin Perkins was named director of the Lincoln Park Zoo. The next year, Perkins began his career as a television animal show host. His ”Zoo Parade” went on the air live on NBC that year, when there were only 300 television sets in the city.
1948: Chicago’s downtown airport was officially opened on Northerly Island. A ”sky parade” of official planes and about 100 private planes emerged from overcast skies in subfreezing temperatures for the occasion, but its dedication as Meigs Field took place two years later.
1970: A one-day national rail strike by the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks — the third of its kind in 50 years — was ended under threat of a federal judge who called the union in contempt of court. Some 40,000 union railroad workers in the Chicago area were involved in the short-lived strike.
1975: With American League owners set to move the Chicago White Sox to Seattle and allow Charlie Finley to move his A’s to Comiskey Park, Bill Veeck and his investors repurchased the club from John Allyn — keeping the Sox in Chicago.
Veeck sold the team to Skokie real estate developer Jerry Reinsdorf and New York television executive Eddie Einhorn in January 1981.
1976: A bronze bell dating back to the late 1500s and weighing 600 pounds was installed at Church of Our Saviour in Lincoln Park. It is the oldest known bell in Chicago.
1977: Hanna Holborn Gray was named the 10th president of the University of Chicago — the first woman to hold the position. She was installed in October 1978.
2009: Just 11 months after he celebrated his election as president in Grant Park and nine months after his inauguration, President Barack Obama became a Nobel laureate. He was the fourth U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the third to do so while in office (the other two were Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson).
The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on Obama, who had yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps from the audience at the announcement ceremony in Oslo, Reuters reported.
Obama, as if accepting the unusual circumstance of the award, accepted it “as a call to action” rather than a reward for accomplishments.
2014: Left-handed pitcher Jon Lester agreed to a six-year, $155 million deal with the Chicago Cubs.
Lester, who led the Cubs to five playoff appearances, three National League Central titles and the 2016 World Series title, received a $10 million buyout from the team in October 2020.
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