Paul Dailing

Paul Dailing is a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune.

Men and women line up along the window of the Milwaukee Avenue State Bank, with police standing nearby, during the Chicago bank's failure in August 1906. Editor's note: This historic glass plate negative shows handwriting and some damage. (Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum)

Vintage Tribune: Newspaper editor and Cook County prosecutor traveled to Morocco to nab fugitive banker

September 20, 2026 at 5:00 a.m.

The story ranges from Chicago's tenement slums to the private mansions of the president of the United States and the sultan of Morocco.

Actor Tani Freiwald, right, has an angry exchange of words with talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael in 1988 as Freiwald defends why she played the part of a sex surrogate and also as a woman bored with sex on several different TV talk shows. A part-time actor, Freiwald said she decided to play the part of a sex surrogate on Raphael’s show because it was an improvisational challenge. (AP)

Vintage Tribune: Geraldo and Sally Jessy outraged when actors pretended to be guests on daytime TV talk shows

September 6, 2026 at 5:00 a.m.

Two actors appeared as various personas on the daytime talk show circuit in the late 1980s, recruiting more friends from Chicago’s theater community as needed.

A train car load of onions sits at a terminal in Chicago in July 1941. The Tribune editorial board wrote in 1957 that the price of onions can fluctuate wildly because they are “a relatively small volume item, always in demand, perishable, seasonal in production, and subject to changes in weather and the labor force.” (John Vachon/Library of Congress)

Vintage Chicago Tribune: How 2 men got rich cornering the onion market

July 19, 2026 at 5:00 a.m.

The pair placed bets that onion prices would plunge, released their glut of onions into the market and cashed in.

A golden dancer performs at Medusa’s at 3257 N. Sheffield Ave. during the Voguers' Ball held on Sept. 7, 1989. The event was a fundraiser for LGBTQ+ health care provider Howard Brown. (John Bartley/Chicago Tribune)

Vintage Tribune: How Chicago’s queer community embraced the art of voguing

June 18, 2026 at 5:03 p.m.

Popularly known from the film “Paris is Burning” and Madonna's hit “Vogue,” voguing is based on striking the poses seen in fashion magazines.

A band participates in an I Am an American Day parade outside Chopin Elementary in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood on May 20, 1951. (Petro Oleksijenko/Ukrainian National Museum)

Vintage Tribune: Now-forgotten ‘I Am an American Day’ didn’t welcome all immigrants equally

June 1, 2026 at 4:50 p.m.

The day promoted immigration that was more melting pot than patchwork quilt. Immigrants were expected to leave their culture at the border.

Doris Vaughn, right, shown with her mother, Mrs. Edward F. Vaughn, in Chicago in January 1915, was one of the women to consider herself married to the Rev. James Morrison Darnell. (Chicago History Museum)

‘Marrying parson’ had bevy of wives in 1910s Chicago

March 31, 2026 at 9:47 a.m.

The Rev. James Morrison Darnell's life was marked by bigamy, fraud, confidence games, fake names and a two-year stint in Leavenworth Prison.

The Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, or W.I.T.C.H., chants "justice is dead" outside the Federal Building on Sept. 24, 1969, to protest the conspiracy trial for the Chicago Eight, later the Chicago Seven after Bobby Seale's mistrial. (Michael Budrys/Chicago Tribune)

Vintage Tribune: FBI was unamused as W.I.T.C.H. activists cast witty spells at satirical ‘hexes’

March 1, 2026 at 5:00 a.m.

W.I.T.C.H., or the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, staged satirical protests around Chicago in 1969 and 1970.

Jack L. Cooper in the WSBC studio in Chicago in 1954. Beginning in the late 1920s, Cooper built a media empire aimed at the Black community. (WSBC/Chicago History Museum)

Vintage Tribune: Pioneering Black broadcaster Jack Cooper modeled success as host, businessman

February 1, 2026 at 2:36 p.m.

Before Herb Kent “The Cool Gent,” Don Cornelius and so many others, there was Jack L. Cooper, who pioneered a Black radio empire in Chicago.

Hazel McNally smiles while on trial in October 1922, accused of murdering her twin babies, according to her husband, Frank McNally. Hazel McNally insisted there were no real children, only dolls she pretended were her newborns. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

Twins or dolls? The ‘Sawdust Babies’ murder trial of 1922 spread confusion in Hammond.

December 7, 2025 at 5:00 a.m.

Autoworker Frank McNally said his wife Hazel got away with killing their twin babies by concocting a story too ridiculous to doubt.

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