Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Dec. 1, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Chicago’s winter parking ban goes into effect Dec 1. Here’s what to know — snow or no snow.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 68 degrees (1970)
- Low temperature: Minus 6 degrees (1893)
- Precipitation: 1.23 inches (2006)
- Snowfall: 7.8 inches (1978)
Frank Rothing, center, senior vice president of the Midwest Stock Exchange (MSE), samples one of the 3.5 million hamburgers a day McDonald’s serves at its more than 1,200 outlets, in honor of the listing of the Chicago-based restaurant chain’s common stock on the MSE. With Rothing are Robert Wilson Jr., left, MSE specialist for the stock, and Ray Kroc, chairman and founder of McDonald’s. (Chicago Tribune archive)
1949: The Midwest Stock Exchange (now known as Chicago Stock Exchange), which merged the old Chicago Stock Exchange and the exchanges in St. Louis, Cleveland and Minneapolis-St. Paul, began trading.
Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner, a University of Illinois alum, turned a modest America on its ear with photographs of beautiful nude women mixed with provocative writing. Date on magazine is June 1963. (John Austad/Chicago Tribune)
1953: Hugh Hefner launched Playboy magazine in his Hyde Park apartment.
In an April 21, 2012, editorial in the Tribune, Hefner said he started the magazine with $8,000 raised through selling his furniture and borrowing from family and friends.
His debut issue, produced at his apartment’s kitchen table, featured a Marilyn Monroe photograph purchased from a suburban calendar company. It didn’t include a cover date since Hefner was unsure when or if he would be able to produce another. He described his enjoyment in watching people pick up the magazine from newsstands in December 1953.
By 1971, when Playboy Enterprises went public, the magazine was selling more than 7 million copies a month. In 2017, the magazine had about 800,000 subscribers.
Frank Hamilton, head instructor of the Old Town School of Folk Music, takes part in an informal hootenanny at Tribune writer Norma Lee Browning’s home in 1960. (Russell Ogg/Chicago Tribune)
1957: The Old Town School of Folk Music opened.
Dense smoke from Our Lady of the Angels school on Dec. 1, 1958, in Chicago. The fire on the city’s West Side took the lives of 92 children and three nuns. It remains one of the worst tragedies in Chicago history. (Chicago Tribune historical photo)
1958: Shortly before classes were to be dismissed, a fire broke out in the basement of Catholic school Our Lady of the Angels in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. The fire swept through the school of 1,600 students in a few hours.
Children jumped from windows, and neighbors and families ran to the school, at 909 N. Avers Ave., with ladders and blankets.
Our Lady of Angels school, site of devastating 1958 fire, has fire sprinkler system installed
It took firefighters only four minutes to arrive, but there was only so much they could do as 92 students and three nuns died.
The fire led to massive overhauls of fire codes and higher standards for building safety, such as brighter exit signs. The cause of the fire has never been officially determined.
2018: At least 22 people were injured when 29 tornadoes hit central Illinois, centered around Taylorville, which was hit by an EF-3. It was the state’s largest tornado outbreak on record for December.
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