Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Dec. 5, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago
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)- High temperature: 68 degrees (2001)
- Low temperature: 4 degrees (2005)
- Precipitation: 1.1 inches (1906)
- Snowfall: 3.9 inches (1977)
1853: Constable James Quinn became the first Chicago police officer to be killed in the line of duty, but this recognition was not honored until March 2, 2010.
The night of Dec. 2, 1853, Constable Quinn went to “The Sands,” a tangle of brothels and saloons north of the Chicago River and east of today’s Michigan Avenue. His mission was to arrest an alleged clothing thief, Paul Parmilee. William Rees intervened and beat Quinn, injuring the officer’s jaw and breaking a rib. Parmilee fled, and when Quinn pursued him the next night, Rees again beat Quinn. Twenty-six cops flooded into The Sands to arrest Rees and Parmilee. Quinn died three days later; a coroner’s jury would blame “kicks and blows” from the batterings.
1901: Walter Elias Disney was born in a two-story house at the southwest corner of Tripp Avenue and Palmer Street in Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood.
The home opened to the public for the first time in 2023, as part of Chicago Architecture Center’s Open House Chicago.
1933: Prohibition was repealed — eight months after Chicagoans drank up when 3.2% beer became legal after 13 years.
2001: Edgewater Medical Center, 5700 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago, closed amid criminal and health care fraud allegations.
A Tribune/WGN-TV investigation found that confidential medical files were scattered throughout the vacant main building nearly 12 years after the hospital abruptly closed.
The center’s former CEO Peter Rogan was sentenced in 2015, to 21 months in prison for lying in a 2006 sworn affidavit that he had no control over a multimillion-dollar trust account in the Bahamas when he was actually using the money to support his lavish lifestyle.
2021: Orestes “Minnie” Miñoso — nicknamed “The Cuban Comet” — was finally voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame along with two others with Chicago connections, Jim Kaat and Buck O’Neil.
Miñoso spent parts of 12 seasons with the Sox and was the first Black player for the team in 1951. He quickly emerged as one of the game’s first Afro-Latino stars. Miñoso was a nine-time All-Star and won three Gold Glove Awards as an outfielder during 17 seasons with Cleveland, the White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Washington Senators. Before that, he made the All-Star roster in two of his three Negro Leagues seasons with the New York Cubans and was part of a championship team in 1947.
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The addition of Miñoso’s Negro League stats pushed him over the 2,000-hit mark (2,113), while his career OPS of .848 was ahead of Hall of Fame outfielders including Reggie Jackson (.846), Carl Yastrzemski (.842) and Kirby Puckett (.837).
The on-field statistics are plentiful for Miñoso, who died in March 2015 at 90, but are only a fraction of the story.
“He spoke a universal language off the field and one-on-one because he was such a genuine individual. He was a very passionate Cuban,” his son Charlie Rice-Miñoso said during a phone interview from Cooperstown, N.Y., in 2022. “It means so much that his contributions will always be remembered.”
Miñoso was inducted in July 2022.
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