Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 9, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Front page flashback: Aug. 10, 1974
1974: Gerald Ford was sworn in as the 38th president at 11:05 a.m. CST, although he legally became president 40 minutes earlier when Richard Nixon’s one-line letter of resignation was delivered to the office of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Vintage baiduhai: The paper’s role in the demise of Richard Nixon’s presidency after Watergate
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The Tribune played a key role in the demise of Nixon’s presidency. In April 1974, a small team of Tribune employees flew to Washington, D.C., and back to beat every other American newspaper to the punch — printing the entire transcript of the Watergate tapes, which were conversations Nixon recorded in the White House.
The 246,000-word record was printed in a 44-page special section in the next day’s Tribune. This was, of course, before the widespread use of computers, and so hundreds of Tribune employees were involved in the effort.
Vintage baiduhai: The entire transcript of President Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 97 degrees (1913)
- Low temperature: 51 degrees (1972)
- Precipitation: 1.6 inches (1952)
- Snowfall: Trace (1954)
1922: A 20-year-old Louis Armstrong arrived at Illinois Central Station from New Orleans — but he wasn’t sure he made the right decision.
100 years ago, Louis Armstrong arrived in Chicago. What happened next would change jazz forever.
“Anybody watching me closely could have easily seen that I was a country boy,” he wrote in his first memoir, “My Life in New Orleans.” “I had a million thoughts as I looked at all those people waiting for taxi cabs. … As I waved goodbye I thought to myself: ‘Huh. I don’t think I am going to like this old town.’”
Thank heavens, then, that Joe “King” Oliver — his idol — extended him an invitation to play second cornet in his band here. The rest, as they say, is history — and thus began the years, 1922 to 1929, that Armstrong would later call “some of (his) finest days.”
1973: Lincoln Mall held its grand opening, becoming the first enclosed mall in the far south suburbs of Chicago. It predated the opening of Orland Square in Orland Park by nearly three years.
The mall closed in January 2015, except for Carson Pirie Scott, which shut its doors abruptly in March 2018. Demolition of the mall followed, and now there is little evidence the mall ever existed, except memories and old photos.
1985: Bruce Springsteen played Soldier Field during his “Born in the U.S.A.” tour. Seven people were killed on their way to the show when a CTA articulated bus struck a 1975 Cadillac.
1988: Night ball, at long last, had reached Clark and Addison. After a rainout the previous night, Mike Bielecki fired a called strike to Lenny Dykstra to start the game.
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The Cubs hit the Mets with four runs in the seventh inning, then held on for a 6-4 victory before 36,399 very noisy people.
“It might have been louder last night,” said Mark Grace, who drove in one of the runs in the decisive seventh. “But that’s the loudest for a complete game that I’ve ever been associated with.”
1993: The White Sox’s Bo Jackson broke a bat over his knee after striking out against Oakland Athletics pitcher Bobby Witt in the bottom of the fifth inning at Comiskey Park. Frank Thomas and Robin Ventura — in the middle of the batting order — had six hits.
Thomas broke a 4-4 tie with a game-winning solo home run.
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