Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Oct. 13, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 88 degrees (1975)
- Low temperature: 25 degrees (1988)
- Precipitation: 3.79 inches (2001)
- Snowfall: Trace (1986)
Arlington International Racecourse: History of one of the ‘world’s most beautiful racetracks’
1927: Arlington Park opened for its first season of business — though still under construction. More than 20,000 fans braved the cold weather to celebrate the event in high style. Jockey Joe Bollero guided horse Luxembourg to victory in the race track’s first-ever race. The facility closed in 2021 and the site was bought by the Chicago Bears in 2023.
In his Oakbrook Terrace office on Oct. 12, 2023, David Meilahn holds a 1983 photo of himself making the first commercial cellphone call alongside his wife, Gail Meilahn, and technician Jeff Benuzzi. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)
1983: David Meilahn, a suburban Chicago insurance agent, made the first commercial cellular call in the United States in a parking lot at Soldier Field.
A Chicago police officer guards the scene as an investigator photographs the blood left after the shooting of Dantrell Davis at 502 W. Oak St. on Oct. 13, 1992, in Chicago. (Eduardo Contreras/Chicago Tribune)
1992: Shortly after the 9 a.m. school bell, 7-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot in the head by a sniper while walking with his mother from his Cabrini-Green high-rise to the Jenner Academy of the Arts. Half an hour later, he was pronounced dead at Children’s Memorial Hospital.
Cabrini-Green timeline: From ‘war workers’ to ‘Good Times,’ Jane Byrne and demolition
Later that day, police arrested reputed street gang leader Anthony Garrett in connection with Dantrell’s murder.
The 14th floor window at the Ida B. Wells complex on Feb. 28, 1996, in Chicago. This is the window where two boys dangled and dropped Eric Morse, 5, on Oct. 13, 1994, when he refused to steal candy for them. (Bill Hogan/Chicago Tribune)
1994: Five-year-old Eric Morse was dropped from the 14th floor of the Ida B. Wells public housing complex by Jesse Rankins, 10, and Tykeece Johnson, 11, for refusing to steal candy from a store. The murder plot was hatched by the boys as they walked home from school earlier that day, the Tribune reported at the time.
Morse’s death — he was the 53rd child under the age of 14 to be killed in Chicago that year — came to be a symbol of all that had gone wrong in public housing in Chicago.
Illinois reacted swiftly to the boys’ arrest for Morse’s murder, enacting a new law that lowered the age to 10 from 13 at which offenders could be sentenced to prison.
John A. Pople, center, celebrates his 1998 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Lawrence B. Dumans, provost for Northwestern University, left, and Eric J. Sundquist on Oct. 14, 1998. (Charles Cherney/Chicago Tribune)
1998: Northwestern University chemistry professor John Pople won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He developed the GAUSSIAN computer program in 1970, and shared the prize with Walter Kohn for using mathematics to unscramble the complexities of how atoms glom onto one another to form molecules.
A baseball that was hit for a home run by Chicago Cubs’ Kyle Schwarber in the seventh inning in Game 4 of the NLDS on Oct. 13 sits encased atop the right field video board at Wrigley Field in Chicago on Oct. 14, 2015. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
2015: Kyle Schwarber hit a home run — with an exit velocity of 112.5 mph and distance of 419 feet — atop Wrigley Field’s right field video board in the Chicago Cubs’ win over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 4 of the National League Division Series to advance to the National League Championship Series. The ball was encased in a clear box and remained in that position for the rest of the season.
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