Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Dec. 1, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 68 degrees (1970)
- Low temperature: Minus 6 degrees (1893)
- Precipitation: 1.23 inches (2006)
- Snowfall: 7.8 inches (1978)
1949: The Midwest Stock Exchange (now known as Chicago Stock Exchange), which merged the old Chicago Stock Exchange and the exchanges in St. Louis, Cleveland and Minneapolis-St. Paul, began trading.
1953: Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine in his Hyde Park apartment.
In an April 21, 2012, editorial in the Tribune, Hefner said he started the magazine with $8,000 raised through selling his furniture and borrowing from family and friends.
His debut issue, produced at his apartment’s kitchen table, featured a Marilyn Monroe photograph purchased from a suburban calendar company. It didn’t include a cover date since Hefner was unsure when or if he would be able to produce another. He described his enjoyment in watching people pick up the magazine from newsstands in December 1953.
By 1971, when Playboy Enterprises went public, the magazine was selling more than 7 million copies a month. In 2017, the magazine had about 800,000 subscribers.
1957: The Old Town School of Folk Music opened.
1958: Shortly before classes were to be dismissed, a fire broke out in the basement of Catholic school Our Lady of the Angels in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. The fire swept through the school of 1,600 students in a few hours.
Children jumped from windows, and neighbors and families ran to the school, at 909 N. Avers Ave., with ladders and blankets.
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It took firefighters only four minutes to arrive, but there was only so much they could do as 92 students and three nuns died.
The fire led to massive overhauls of fire codes and higher standards for building safety, such as brighter exit signs. The cause of the fire has never been officially determined.
2018: At least 22 people were injured when 29 tornadoes hit central Illinois, centered around Taylorville, which was hit by an EF-3. It was the state’s largest tornado outbreak on record for December.
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