Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on July 5, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 103 degrees (2012)
- Low temperature: 46 degrees (1972)
- Precipitation: 1.48 inches (1930)
- Snowfall: None
Walter Kale/Chicago Tribune
Cars are covered with a roof and other rubble after violent winds tore the top off a Northbrook garage on July 5, 1980. (Walter Kale/Chicago Tribune)
1980: Derecho! The temperature reached a high of 94 degrees — surpassing the previous high for July 5 — at 4 p.m., but dropped to a chilly 64 degrees when a cold front swept in around 11 p.m.
Winds reached 82 mph and left 100,000 homes in the area without power. The most violent wind report came from Northbrook, where half of a roof on a 20-car garage was lifted and then dropped, damaging at least seven cars in a parking shelter for a condominium. No injuries were reported in the Chicago area due to the storm.
Outside the original Chicago Defender building in Chicago, newspaper founder Robert Sengstacke Abbott stands amid bundles of donations to be given out as charitable gifts, circa 1910s. (Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)
2019: The Chicago Defender announced it was ceasing print publication and switching to a digital-only format. It still exists at chicagodefender.com.
The newspaper was founded in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, who called it “The World’s Greatest Weekly.” He encouraged Black Americans born and raised in the South — like himself — to move north during the Great Migration of the 20th century. More than two-thirds of the newspaper’s readership base was located outside of Chicago by the start of World War I, according to the Defender.
Want more vintage Chicago?
Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago’s past.
Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather at krumore@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com