Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Dec. 18, 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: 62 degrees (1877)
- Low temperature: Minus 11 degrees (1983)
- Precipitation: 1.41 inches (2002)
- Snowfall: 6.7 inches (1929)
1932: The Chicago Bears moved their NFL title game inside to Chicago Stadium because of zero-degree weather and 5 inches of ice at Wrigley Field.
The Bears beat the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans before 11,000 fans on a field reduced to 80 yards in length and 145 feet in width and scored the game’s only touchdown on a fourth-down play-action 2-yard pass from Bronko Nagurski to Red Grange.
A circus had just played in the stadium. So the straw and other elements made a softer field than frozen turf. However, the other elements left behind by horses and elephants made the place “a little too aromatic,” according to one media critic.
Virginia Halas McCaskey didn’t hesitate when asked in 2019 about her lasting memory of the Bears’ 9-0 victory.
“Just the odor,” she said with a laugh. “It was almost overwhelming.”
1963: Ara Parseghian, Northwestern’s only winning football coach during a 46-year period, left Evanston to accept the head coaching job at the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, Parseghian coached two national championship teams and had an 11-year record of 95-17-4.
1971: The Rev. Jesse Jackson announced the formation of Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity, later changed to “Serve” Humanity) at 47th Street and King Drive in Chicago.
PUSH, which is about economic empowerment and expanding educational, business and employment opportunities for disadvantaged and people of color, merged with the National Rainbow Coalition in 1996. It is known today as the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
Jackson, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2017, handed the reins of the influential Chicago-based civil rights organization to successor the Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III in 2023. Jackson was hospitalized in Chicago last month.
1987: Guns N’ Roses performed in Chicago for the first time.
After canceling an earlier Aragon Ballroom opening show for The Cult, this show was almost canceled as well — drummer Stephen Adler broke his hand as the band was getting on the bus to head to the UIC Pavilion show. Fred Coury from the band Cinderella sat in on drums.
1997: “Saturday Night Live” star and comedian Chris Farley was found dead in the entrance hallway of his 60th-floor condominium at the John Hancock Center. He was 33.
2012: Two convicted bank robbers, Joseph “Jose” Banks and Kenneth Conley, escaped from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the Loop. They scaled down some 15 stories of the sheer wall using a rope fashioned from knotted bedsheets. It was the first jailbreak at the facility in nearly 30 years.
Bedsheets and dental floss: 10 years ago, two Chicago bank robbers pulled off a stunning jail escape
Banks hid in a predictable spot less than 5 miles from the South Loop jail and was betrayed by someone who had spoken with the fugitive and was able to give authorities his exact location, a law enforcement source said. When he was captured, Banks had no cash, weapon or cellphone, and he was wearing some of the same clothes he had on when he escaped three days earlier, the source said.
Conley remained on the loose for 18 days until he was found sleeping in a basement furnace room at a Palos Hills apartment complex.
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