Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 14, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Front page flashback: Aug. 15, 1945
1945: At 6 p.m. Chicago time, President Harry S. Truman gathered reporters in the Oval Office of the White House to announce that Japan’s Emperor Hirohito agreed to surrender. Victory over Japan (or V-J) Day marked the end of World War II.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 99 degrees (1944)
- Low temperature: 48 degrees (1964)
- Precipitation: 6.49 inches (1987)
- Snowfall: None
1939: The first Major League Baseball night game in Chicago took place on the South Side.
“It was as though one had suddenly walked into bright sunshine,” the Tribune reported after Charles Comiskey II flipped two switches at 8:25 p.m. to ignite Comiskey Park’s new $140,000 “illuminating plant.” White Sox pitcher Johnny Rigney then threw a three-hitter and struck out 10 St. Louis Browns in a 5-2 win watched by more than 30,000 fans.
Cubs executives — including future Sox owner Bill Veeck — were also in attendance. Charles Drake, assistant to then-Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley, told the Tribune that Wrigley Field would not be lit until the team was certain their fans want night baseball there.
1981: Chicagoan Willye White, the first woman to qualify for five Olympic Games, was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame. White qualified for the Olympics in 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1972. She won a silver medal in the long jump as a 16-year-old at Melbourne in 1956. She later carried the U.S. flag in the Olympic parade and won 13 national titles.
1993: Eighteen-year-old Tricia Pacaccio was discovered by her father stabbed to death on the porch of their Glenview home. Police did not know the motive for the killing.
It wasn’t until a decade later that investigators discovered that the DNA collected from her fingernails belonged to Michael Gargiulo, a neighbor who had moved to Los Angeles and was charged with Pacaccio’s death in 2011. A jury found him guilty in three brutal knife attacks there in 2019. Gargiulo was extradited to Illinois in September 2024, to stand trial on charges of murder in the Glenview teen’s slaying.
2004: What have come to be known as the “Tinley Park lights
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” were seen as well as photographed by hundreds of people not only in Tinley Park but Oak Forest, Orland Park, Frankfort and Mokena, making it one of the better documented UFO phenomena in recent history.Vintage baiduhai: ‘Close encounters’ with UFOs in Illinois!!!!!
All reports of the sightings described three red or white lights in a triangular pattern that moved in unison, hovered for up to 30 minutes and made no audible sound.
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