Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 14, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 99 degrees (1944)
- Low temperature: 48 degrees (1964)
- Precipitation: 6.49 inches (1987)
- Snowfall: None
The White Sox played their first night game at Comiskey Park on Aug. 14, 1939, in Chicago. (Chicago Tribune)
1939: The first Major League Baseball night game in Chicago took place on the South Side.
“It was as though one had suddenly walked into bright sunshine,” the Tribune reported after Charles Comiskey II flipped two switches at 8:25 p.m. to ignite Comiskey Park’s new $140,000 “illuminating plant.” White Sox pitcher Johnny Rigney then threw a three-hitter and struck out 10 St. Louis Browns in a 5-2 win watched by more than 30,000 fans.
Cubs executives — including future Sox owner Bill Veeck — were also in attendance. Charles Drake, assistant to then-Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley, told the Tribune that Wrigley Field would not be lit until the team was certain their fans want night baseball there.
People celebrate news of the end of World War II at Randolph and Dearborn streets in Chicago on Aug. 14, 1945. (Joe Mastruzzo/Chicago Herald-American)
1945: At 6 p.m. Chicago time, President Harry S. Truman gathered reporters in the Oval Office of the White House to announce that Japan’s Emperor Hirohito agreed to surrender. Victory over Japan (or V-J) Day marked the end of World War II.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: How the city celebrated war’s end and welcomed its veterans home
Within minutes of the announcement, tens of thousands of people gathered in the Loop to celebrate.
“They were noisy. They represented all ages and all classes. Elderly men and women were as numerous as bobby soxers,” the Tribune reported. “The celebrants shouted, they sang and danced, but they were orderly. Taverns and cocktail lounges had closed their doors immediately.”
Willye White of Chicago was a surprise winner with a 21 feet, 3/4 inch leap in the broad jump in women’s competition at the U.S.-Poland track and field meet in Warsaw on July 27, 1963. The U.S. women made their best showing ever against Poland but lost 58-47. (AP)
1981: Chicagoan Willye White, the first woman to qualify for five Olympic Games, was inducted into the Track and Field Hall of Fame. White qualified for the Olympics in 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968 and 1972. She won a silver medal in the long jump as a 16-year-old at Melbourne in 1956. She later carried the U.S. flag in the Olympic parade and won 13 national titles.
Tricia Pacaccio in her 1993 senior photo from Glenbrook South High School. (Pacaccio family)
1993: Eighteen-year-old Tricia Pacaccio was discovered by her father stabbed to death on the porch of their Glenview home. Police did not know the motive for the killing.
It wasn’t until a decade later that investigators discovered that the DNA collected from her fingernails belonged to Michael Gargiulo, a neighbor who had moved to Los Angeles and was charged with Pacaccio’s death in 2011. A jury found him guilty in three brutal knife attacks there in 2019. Gargiulo was extradited to Illinois in September 2024, to stand trial on charges of murder in the Glenview teen’s slaying.
Party Fortress, of Tinley Park, celebrated the anniversary of the “Tinley Park lights” UFO occurrence with a commemorative T-shirt in 2015. (Julie Dekker/Daily Southtown)
2004: What have come to be known as the “Tinley Park lights” were seen as well as photographed by hundreds of people not only in Tinley Park but Oak Forest, Orland Park, Frankfort and Mokena, making it one of the better documented UFO phenomena in recent history.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: ‘Close encounters’ with UFOs in Illinois!!!!!
All reports of the sightings described three red or white lights in a triangular pattern that moved in unison, hovered for up to 30 minutes and made no audible sound.
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