Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 23, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Flashback: Aug. 23, 1938
1938: Gates at Soldier Field were forced open by a crowd of thousands intent on dancing during the “Jitterbug riot.” Police said there were 100,000 inside the stadium at 7 p.m. — an hour before the free program was scheduled to begin.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 98 degrees (2023)
- Low temperature: 48 degrees (1904)
- Precipitation: 2.35 inches (2007)
- Snowfall: None
1982: Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson signed into law legislation that banned all but daytime games.
“I believe that night-time baseball in Wrigley Field would impose an undue hardship on nearly 60,000 residents who live within a four-block area of the stadium,” he said in a statement.
The new law banned noise pollution — but specifically targeted sporting events in Chicago that generate noise levels above 45 decibels after 10 p.m. Soldier Field and Comiskey Park, however, were exempted under a “grandfather clause,” meaning that stadiums where night games were played before July 1, 1982, were not affected.
Six years later, however, the City Council passed an ordinance that gave the Chicago Cubs night games.
1983: Fred Rice became the first Black superintendent for Chicago police.
1992: Tammy Zywicki was a 21-year-old college student traveling from her New Jersey home to her last year in college in Grinnell, Iowa. She had left Evanston, where she dropped off her brother at Northwestern University, but never arrived at Grinnell College.
She was last seen with her car on Interstate 80 at mile marker 83 in LaSalle County between 3 and 4 p.m. An Illinois State Police trooper found her car, a 1985 white Pontiac T1000, and marked it as abandoned.
Nine days later, Zywicki’s body was found hundreds of miles away along Interstate 44 in rural Lawrence County, Missouri, wrapped in a red blanket that was sealed with duct tape. She had been stabbed eight times and sexually assaulted, the Tribune reported.
Zywicki’s slaying has never been solved
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and no one has been arrested or charged.2002: The flamboyant onetime mayor of Cicero, a town long affiliated with organized crime, Betty Loren-Maltese was convicted along with six others in August 2002 of racketeering conspiracy and fraud in connection with the theft of more than $12 million from town coffers.
The charges came after years of chaos surrounding the leadership of Loren-Maltese, who federal authorities said came to power with the help of people tied to organized crime. Shortly before she took office, authorities said, the mob brought in a firm to handle insurance claims filed through Cicero, a scheme orchestrated in part by her husband and then-Cicero town assessor, Frank Maltese.
The firm, Specialty Risk Consultants Inc., soon aided by Loren-Maltese, diverted millions of dollars in health insurance claims to personal projects, including the purchase and restoration of a remote Wisconsin golf course and clubhouse that prosecutors said the mob was planning to convert to a casino.
She was sentenced to eight years in prison but served six. After her release, Loren-Maltese worked at a pizzeria and held a garage sale to help her daughter attend beauty school and to pay back taxes.
2020: Chicago White Sox first baseman José Abreu became the 43rd MLB player to hit four home runs in four consecutive at-bats. Abreu, who completed the feat by hitting a 449-foot blast to left-center off Yu Darvish in the second inning, faced four different Cubs pitchers during the Crosstown Series.
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