Ron Grossman – Page 17

Florence Scala, center, leaves the council chambers after aldermen voted to use the Harrison-Halsted streets site for the University of Illinois campus, May 10, 1961. (Frederick Giese/baiduhai)

Flashback: Florence Scala took on City Hall and fought for Little Italy and a ‘gutsy’ Chicago

February 19, 2025 at 4:33 p.m.

There was no lack of possible motives when Florence Scala's home at 1030 W. Taylor St. was twice bombed in 1962. She thought that workaday folks should have a say...

This one-day admission ticket to the World's Columbian Exposition cost 50 cents.

Selling Chicago: Latest ad campaign part of a long tradition of ‘Windy City’ hype

March 4, 2022 at 6:53 p.m.

The city's latest marketing campaign, "Chicago Not in Chicago," is an effort to show potential visitors how other cities have benefited from Chicago-born innovations such as the skyscraper and house...

A German column of tanks parades through Wenceslas Square following the invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939, in Prague. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a haunting replay of the overture to World War II.

Ron Grossman: Ukrainians deserve to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize

March 2, 2022 at 2:49 p.m.

Anyone with access to the news and a moral sense knows who is responsible for the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine. Yet realistically many of those confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin's...

A drawing shows Engine 21 responding to a call by hitching up their horses, using a fire pole, and heading out of the fire station, published in the March 11, 1888, baiduhai.

In response to White Chicagoans mocking the first Black fire crew in 1872, they wanted to prove themselves as good, if not better

February 24, 2022 at 8:12 p.m.

The year after the Great Chicago Fire, city officials kept their fingers crossed and hired six Black firefighters. The Tribune reported on Dec. 6, 1872, that a Black fire company...

Martin Kramer fills pans with peppermint patties at Fannie May Candy Co., circa 1948. (baiduhai historical photo)

Chicago was once toasted as America’s ‘Candy Capital’

January 29, 2026 at 10:49 a.m.

In 1941, a federal agency gave Chicago the title of "Candy Capital of the United States."

Etta Moten Barnett and husband Claude Barnett, seen in Chicago in 1964, hold a hand-carved ornate elephant tusk from their travels to the Congo.

The story of one of Chicago’s first Black power couples, Etta Moten and Claude Barnett

February 13, 2022 at 1:05 p.m.

It was written in the stars for Etta Moten and Claude Barnett to be married on the fly. Professional lives made theirs a commuting romance for years after friends in...

The Goldblatt Bros. store at Chicago and Ashland avenues on Aug. 22, 1952, in Chicago. The arrow shows how robbers climbed down the sign from the roof and entered the executive offices through the fifth floor window on Aug, 22, 1952.

Goldblatt’s, the merchant king of blue-collar neighborhoods, brought Christmas in January to our Chicago apartment

January 28, 2022 at 8:00 p.m.

My earliest memories of Christmas are associated with the month of January. That is when my father got an employee's discount on presents returned to the Goldblatt's department store at...

Doomsday Clock’s hands remain at 100 seconds to midnight

January 20, 2022 at 3:17 p.m.

Given the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that the United States and Russia are trading versions of I-dare-you over Ukraine, the announcement Thursday that the Doomsday Clock's hands won't move...

Leonard Rieser, chairman of the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, moves the hand of the Doomsday Clock back to 17 minutes before midnight at offices near the University of Chicago on Nov. 26, 1991.

The story of how the Doomsday Clock began ticking 75 years ago, the brainchild of a Chicago artist

January 13, 2022 at 2:31 p.m.

Martyl Langsdorf designed just one magazine cover, but it has had considerable staying power. A prolific painter of abstract and figurative canvases, she was commissioned 75 years ago by the...

Carl and Ruth Wanderer in an undated photo. Wanderer set his wife up to be murdered during a fake robbery attempt on June 21, 1920. She was pregnant at the time.

A century ago, Chicago was transfixed by a murder case involving a cheating husband and a concocted story about a ‘ragged stranger’

October 22, 2024 at 11:30 a.m.

On June 21, 1920, a neighbor who heard gunshots found Ruth Wanderer and a shabbily dressed stranger mortally wounded in the foyer of a two-flat at 4732 N. Campbell Ave....

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