Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on May 21, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Front page flashback: May 22, 1932
1932: Hyde Park High School alumna Amelia Earhart completed “the first solo flight by a woman across the Atlantic ocean — 2,026½ miles in 14 hours and 54 minutes,” the Tribune reported.
“I made this flight just for fun,” she told the Tribune. “I have always wanted to do the flight myself and my husband is a good sport. He does not interfere with my flying and I don’t interfere with his affairs.”
Earhart landed in Chicago a month later where she received a medal for her trans-Atlantic flight during a show for the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth.
Amelia Earhart soars back into the headlines in new book ‘The Aviator and the Showman’
That’s when she made it clear to reporters that though she was recently married, she preferred to still be known professionally by her own last name — the one she made famous.
“I think women in aviation should have the same privileges as women who write — and my husband doesn’t mind,” she said. “For social purposes, I think Putnam’s a grand name, though.”
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 92 degrees (1977)
- Low temperature: 31 degrees (2002)
- Precipitation: 1.96 inches (2018)
- Snowfall: Trace (1969)
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Lake Michigan shipwrecks close to the city
1891: The Thomas Hume schooner left Chicago — with Capt. Harry Albrightson and six crew members — bound for Muskegon, Michigan, with another schooner, the Rouse Simmons. Due to rough water conditions, the Rouse Simmons turned back.
The Thomas Hume did not and was not seen again. Members of the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association have dived to the schooner’s final resting place — 147 feet down, 22 miles from Belmont Harbor.
1924: Friends Nathan “Babe” Leopold Jr. and Richard “Dickie” Loeb — the pampered sons of prominent Kenwood families — killed Robert “Bobby” Franks after they offered him a ride home from school.
To the public, Franks’ death appeared to have been orchestrated for money and for thrill. But the two brilliant masterminds behind the crime simply referred to it as a “perfect murder” — for which they believed they could outsmart the authorities and would never stand trial.
After they dumped the boy’s body near Wolf Lake in Indiana, they confessed to the murder and were brought to trial for what became the “crime of the century.”
1927: Aviator Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris at 10:21 p.m. after flying for 33 hours and 29 minutes from New York. It was the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight executed by one person.
“Am I in Paris?” were Lindbergh’s first words as he was dragged out of the cockpit of his plane, “The Spirit of St. Louis.”
“You’re here,” Tribune reporter Henry Wales — the first to greet the pilot — said.
1943: The White Sox won the fastest nine-inning game in American League history under the lights at Comiskey Park. The Sox beat the Washington Senators 1-0 in 1 hour and 29 minutes.
The fastest complete game in MLB history lasted just 51 minutes.
2017: A jewel-encrusted Asprey & Co. mystery clock, valued at $425,000, was stolen from an antiques exhibition at Merchandise Mart.
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