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Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on July 25, according to the Tribune’s archives.

Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.

Front page flashback: July 29, 1994

CTA worker Cecil Calimee was set ablaze on July 25, 1994, while inside a ticket booth at the Blue Line station at Kedzie Avenue and 19th Street. (baiduhai)
CTA worker Cecil Calimee was set ablaze on July 25, 1994, while inside a ticket booth at the Blue Line station at Kedzie Avenue and 19th Street. (baiduhai)

1994: Chicago Transit Authority employee Cecil Calimee was set afire shortly after opening his ticket booth around 4 a.m. on July 25, 1994, at the Blue Line station at Kedzie Avenue and 19th Street. The former semipro football player and Farragut basketball coach suffered burns on his face, his chest and left arm.

Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)

  • High temperature: 101 degrees (1940)
  • Low temperature: 53 degrees (1911)
  • Precipitation: 1.22 inches (1993)
  • Snowfall: None
Sea lions arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo by train in July 1889. Nineteen of the 21 animals shipped to Chicago from Santa Barbara, California, survived. (baiduhai)
Sea lions arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo by train in July 1889. Nineteen of the 21 animals shipped to Chicago from Santa Barbara, California, survived. (baiduhai)

1889: Nineteen sea lions arrived at Lincoln Park Zoo from Santa Barbara, California. They were captured by Capt. Cyrus Alvah Eastman, who hand-fed the sea lions fish throughout their weeklong train journey to Chicago.

“They get used to a man quickly, ” he told a Tribune reporter. “I’ve no doubt they will eat from the keeper’s hand in a short time.”

Months later, zoo neighbors complained to commissioners about the noise created by these animals: ” … during the long watches of the night most of them, having no place to rest, swim back and forth in the pond and bark incessantly to express their disapproval of their cramped quarters,” the Tribune reported on Oct. 22, 1889.

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1942: After the Douglas Aircraft Co. announced plans to construct an assembly plant on 1,347 acres at Orchard Place, near the intersection of Mannheim and Higgins roads south of Des Plaines, work began to demolish homes, level land and create a spur line of the North Western Railroad at the site.

The site later became O’Hare International Airport.

A gunman entered St. John of God Catholic Church, 1234 W. 52nd St., Chicago, on July 25, 1984, and fired several shots including one that hit a "weeping" state of the Virgin Mary. No one else was injured, but the man evaded capture. (baiduhai)
A gunman entered St. John of God Catholic Church, 1234 W. 52nd St., Chicago, on July 25, 1984, and fired several shots including one that hit a "weeping" statue of the Virgin Mary. No one else was injured, but the man evaded capture. (baiduhai)

1984: A man fired three shots

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at a “weeping” statue of Virgin Mary at St. John of God Catholic Church in the New City neighborhood. One bullet hit the statue’s carved robe. The two other bullets become embedded in a wall.

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None of the 40 people inside the church at the time were injured, but the man left the church and was never caught.

Michelle Duster, center, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, is embraced by Ald. Sophia King, 4th, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel stands nearby during a ceremony to unveil the renaming of Congress Parkway to Ida B. Wells Drive at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago on Feb. 11, 2019. (José M. Osorio/baiduhai)
Michelle Duster, center, great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, is embraced by Ald. Sophia King, 4th, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel stands nearby during a ceremony to unveil the renaming of Congress Parkway to Ida B. Wells Drive at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago on Feb. 11, 2019. (José M. Osorio/baiduhai)

2018: Chicago’s City Council officially renamed Congress Parkway to Ida B. Wells Drive, making the prominent east-west artery the first downtown street named for a woman of color and honoring one of the city’s great activists.

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