Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Dec. 17, 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: 60 degrees (1977)
- Low temperature: Minus 7 degrees (1951)
- Precipitation: 1.28 inches (1921)
- Snowfall: 4.6 inches (1951)
Chicago’s 10 largest snowfalls since 1886 — and how the Tribune covered them
1929: The city’s 10th largest snowstorm on record dumped 14.8 inches on Chicago.
1933: The Chicago Bears won the inaugural NFL championship 23-21 over the New York Giants at Wrigley Field.
“Six times the lead changed, and on each occasion that New York or Chicago went to the fore the tension increased,” the Tribune’s Wilfrid Smith wrote. “The Bears, whose fourth period rallies now have become famous, completed a forward-lateral pass with only three minutes of the game remaining and tacked the final victory statistics securely to the green scoreboard in center field.”
1979: Up to 11,000 Chicago Transit Authority workers walked off the job eight days before Christmas, causing 700,000 daily riders to either jam the roads in private cars, fill up commuter railroad trains or just stay home. The workers had demanded cost-of-living increases.
A Cook County judge ordered strikers back to work after four days. The court also required retroactive pay increases and contract arbitration.
Five years after that strike, in 1984, the state enacted the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act. The act specifies that public safety workers such as police officers, firefighters and paramedics cannot strike — but they can threaten to.
2003: A sweeping federal indictment of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan charged that he received illegal cash payments, gifts and vacations, and helped his family members reap almost $167,000 in similar benefits — all from a Ryan confidant who made huge illicit profits on state contracts and leases.
Ryan was convicted in 2006 on 18 felony counts, including racketeering conspiracy, tax and mail fraud and lying to the FBI. It was the culmination of the federal Operation Safe Road investigation that exposed rampant bribery in state driver’s license facilities while he was secretary of state as well as misdeeds as governor.
The former governor was given a 6½ year prison sentence. Ryan spent more than five years in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and was released from home confinement in 2013.
2018: Chicago police Officers Eduardo Marmolejo and Conrad Gary were struck and killed by a South Shore train while pursuing a suspect during a shots-fired investigation after a ShotSpotter sensor detected gunfire near 103rd Street and Dauphin Avenue about 6:20 p.m., authorities said.
Edward Brown later pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful use of a weapon in exchange for a sentence of one year in prison. Prosecutors said Brown found the gun in an alley Dec. 17, 2018, and took it to nearby train tracks to test it. The sound of the pistol going off drew the officers to the tracks to investigate.
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