Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Feb. 2, according to the Tribune’s archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Vintage Chicago Tribune Special Edition: ‘It’s GROUNDHOG DAY!!!!!’
Front page flashback: Feb. 2, 2008
Five women were killed and another was wounded when a man posing as a delivery driver entered the Lane Bryant women’s clothing store at Brookside Marketplace in Tinley Park on Feb. 2, 2008. Since then, police have sifted through thousands of leads in attempt to find the killer. (Chicago Tribune)
2008: Five women — 42-year-old store manager Rhoda McFarland of Joliet; Jennifer Bishop, 34, of South Bend, Indiana; Sarah Szafranski, 22, of Oak Forest; Connie Woolfolk, 37, of Flossmoor; and Carrie Hudek Chiuso, 33, of Frankfort — were killed, shot execution-style, inside a Lane Bryant women’s clothing store in Tinley Park by a gunman who posed as a delivery man. A sixth woman, also a store employee, was shot in the neck but survived and provided police with a description of the killer. The case is still unsolved.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 52 degrees (2020)
- Low temperature: Minus 16 degrees (1996)
- Precipitation: 1.45 inches (1983)
- Snowfall: 6.6 inches (2011)
According to an advertisement in the Feb. 1, 1925, edition of the Tribune, the first Sears Roebuck and Co. store at Homan Avenue and Arthington Street offered deals of great value. “Never has any store in Chicago, or elsewhere, for that matter, been able to offer the savings Sears, Roebuck and Co. do!” (Chicago Tribune)
1925: Sears opened its first retail store on Chicago’s West Side.
The Homan Square site was already home to the company’s mail-order plant when the store, which featured an optical shop and a soda fountain, opened. Sears’ national headquarters was based here on a 55-acre site. Operations moved to the new Sears Tower headquarters in 1973, then to Hoffman Estates in 1995.
Sears closed its last Chicago store in 2018.
The only North American elevated on Feb. 2, 1983, in Vatican City to the Sacred College of Cardinals, Joseph Bernardin was the fifth archbishop of Chicago to receive the red biretta and scarlet robes of the office. (Chicago Tribune)
1983: Pope St. John Paul II elevated Archbishop Joseph Bernardin to become the fifth Chicago Cardinal.
Chicago Bears legend Walter Payton during a news conference in Rosemont, Feb. 2, 1999, at which he announced he was being treated for a rare liver disease. (Charles Bennett/AP)
1999: Former Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton announced that he had primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), a rare, life-threatening liver disease.
“The people that really care about me, if you could continue to pray. And to those who want to say what they say, God be with you also,” he said.
Abandoned vehicles sit along northbound Lake Shore Drive after a blizzard hit the area on Feb. 2, 2011. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune)
2011: Snowmageddon. Seven people died during a snowstorm from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 (nicknamed the Groundhog Day blizzard) that dropped 21.2 inches — the third largest snowfall in the city’s history.
Chicago’s 10 largest snowfalls since 1886 — and how the Tribune covered them
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