Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Feb. 8, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Front page flashback: Feb. 9, 2000
2000: WGN-AM 720 morning host Bob Collins was among three people killed in a midair collision of two small planes in Zion, about 45 miles north of Chicago. Investigators concluded a chain of miscalculations that began with an inaccurate position estimated by Collins.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 62 degrees (1925)
- Low temperature: Minus 17 degrees (1899)
- Precipitation: 1.1 inches (1887)
- Snowfall: 3.9 inches (2021)
1896: The Big Ten Conference was organized at the Palmer House. One faculty member from each of seven schools — Purdue University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University and University of Wisconsin — established the fundamentals of the conference, which was officially incorporated as the “Intercollegiate Conference Athletic Association” in 1905.
1921: Medill School of Journalism opened at Northwestern University.
1936: Jay Berwanger, University of Chicago running back and Tribune Silver Football winner, became the first pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in the very first NFL draft at Philadelphia’s Ritz-Carlton.
Two months earlier, New York’s Downtown Athletic Club named Berwanger, nicknamed “Genius of the Gridiron,” the “most valuable football player east of the Mississippi River.” The trophy was named for club athletic director John W. Heisman the following year after Heisman died.
Chicago Tribune Silver Football: What to know about the Big Ten’s highest honor
“It was to be my first airplane ride, and that was a bigger thrill than getting the trophy! They treated us royally in New York,” Berwanger recalled in 1992.
The trophy sat in the home of Berwanger’s Aunt Gussie for years, and she used it as a doorstop. Berwanger later donated it to his high school in Dubuque, Iowa. The Heisman committee later created a duplicate, which he donated to the University of Chicago, where it resides in the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center.
Berwanger never played in the NFL. He died in 2002.
1974: “Good Times,” a weekly comedy about a fictional Chicago family that lived in Cabrini-Green (though the development was never mentioned during the show), premiered on CBS. Esther Rolle starred as Florida Evans, the family matriarch, who returned to Chicago after previously working as the housekeeper on “Maude.” The show aired for six seasons.
The painting shown during the show’s closing credits was “The Sugar Shack” by Ernie Barnes. It sold at auction in 2022 for $15.3 million.
Chicago weather: A look back at our coldest recorded temperatures
1977: Chicago emerged from a 43-day streak of temperatures below freezing — the longest in city history.
2019: Chicago’s Oriental Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St. was renamed in honor of James M. Nederlander, the former chairman of the theater-owning Nederlander Organization and a famous Broadway character, who died in 2016 at the age of 94.
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