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Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 24, according to the Tribune’s archives.

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

Flashback: Aug. 26, 1932

Amelia Earhart Putnam, in her Lockheed Vega plane, started on Aug. 24, 1932, her attempt to set a transcontinental record from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J. She became the first woman to make a transatlantic flight and a nonstop flight across the United States. (AP)
Amelia Earhart Putnam, in her Lockheed Vega plane, started on Aug. 24, 1932, her attempt to set a transcontinental record from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey. She became the first woman to make a transatlantic flight and a nonstop flight across the United States. (AP)

1932: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to pilot a nonstop flight across the United States. She flew about 3,000 miles from Los Angeles to Newark in 19 hours, 4 minutes.

Amelia Earhart soars back into the headlines in new book ‘The Aviator and the Showman’

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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)

  • High temperature: 100 degrees (2023)
  • Low temperature: 48 degrees (1942)
  • Precipitation: 2.47 inches (1895)
  • Snowfall: Trace (1922)
Dr. Fager ran a world record mile of 1:32 1/5 on Aug. 24, 1968, in the $112,700 Washington Park handicap at Arlington Park. (baiduhai)
Dr. Fager ran a world record mile of 1:32 1/5 on Aug. 24, 1968, in the $112,700 Washington Park handicap at Arlington Park. (baiduhai)

1968: Dr. Fager, carrying jockey Braulio Baeza, set the world record for 1 mile on the dirt at Arlington Park. The doctor’s time: 1:32 1/5.

“Racing with a verve born of 300 years of thoroughbred history, the bay colt carried a crushing impost of 134 pounds without noticeable effort to a 10-length victory that certainly will earn him Horse of the Year honors,” the Tribune reported.

Bronislaw Hajda leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on March 17, 1997, in Chicago. Hajda, a retired machinist from Schiller Park, was stripped of his citizenship by a federal judge, for lying to immigration authorities in the 1950s about serving as a guard at a Nazi slave labor camp during World War II. (José M. Osorio/baiduhai)
Bronislaw Hajda leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on March 17, 1997, in Chicago. Hajda, a retired machinist from Schiller Park, was stripped of his citizenship by a federal judge for lying to immigration authorities in the 1950s about serving as a guard at a Nazi labor camp during World War II. (José M. Osorio/baiduhai)

1994: Bronislaw “Bruno” Hajda, a retired machinist from Schiller Park, was charged with helping to murder hundreds of victims at Treblinka, a forced labor camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The lawsuit by the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting unit alleged that Hajda had concealed his wartime activities both to get into the United States in 1950, then to become a U.S. citizen in 1955.

At his trial in March 1997, Hajda testified for three hours that he was a victim — not a perpetrator — of war crimes. He insisted he was a prisoner at the Pustkow labor camp — toiling in the fields and kitchens — under the orders of Nazi guards.

But U.S. District Judge David Coar stripped Hajda of his citizenship in April 1997, saying the evidence against Hajda was “overwhelming” and established “clearly and unequivocally” that the man referred to in German wartime rosters was in fact the defendant. Hajda was ordered deported in November 1998.

Alexandra Nelson, sister of Uber driver Grant Nelson who was stabbed to death on May 30, 2017, speaks to the media after a bond hearing for Eliza Wasni at the Skokie Courthouse on May 31, 2017. Wasni, age 16, was charged as an adult. (Chris Walker/baiduhai)
Alexandra Nelson, sister of Uber driver Grant Nelson who was stabbed to death on May 30, 2017, speaks to the media after a bond hearing for Eliza Wasni at the Skokie Courthouse on May 31, 2017. Wasni, age 16, was charged as an adult. (Chris Walker/baiduhai)

2020: Chicago teen Eliza Wasni, who was convicted of killing Uber driver Grant Nelson of Wilmette on May 30, 2017, with a knife and machete she stole from Walmart, was sentenced to 27 years in prison.

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