Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Oct. 8, 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: 88 degrees (1997)
- Low temperature: 27 degrees (1987)
- Precipitation: 1.26 inches (1884)
- Snowfall: None
1871: The Great Chicago Fire began in the hay-filled cow barn behind the frame house that Mrs. Catherine O’Leary shared with her husband, Patrick, and their five kids on De Koven Street on the Near West Side.
The fire ran and it grew, swept by a strong wind from the southwest, eating its ravenous way north and toward downtown and beyond. People ran to the lake for shelter as the city became a vast ocean of flame. After that horrible night and the equally terrifying and destructive day and night that followed, the fire finally burned itself out. The city awoke two days later to find almost 18,000 buildings destroyed, much of the city leveled, 90,000 people homeless and 300-some people dead.
1922: Chicago swimmer Sybil Bauer became the first woman to beat a world record held by a man. She completed a 440-yard backstroke race in 6 minutes, 24 seconds — almost four seconds faster than the old record held by Harold Krueger of Honolulu.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: Summer Olympians from the area who won gold
Bauer, a Chicago native and Northwestern sophomore, won the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Her time was a world-record 1:23.20 seconds.
She was engaged to Edward Sullivan, then sports editor of the New York Evening Graphic and future television show host, but was stricken with cancer and died in 1927. Bauer was just 23.
1969: Hundreds of demonstrators summoned to Chicago by leaders of the radical Students for a Democratic Society to protest the ongoing Chicago 8 trial of the leaders of the Democratic National Convention riots of 1968 erupted into a four-day orgy of violence. More than 2,500 National Guard members took to the streets in what became known as the Days of Rage.
1983: The Baltimore Orioles beat the “Winning Ugly” Chicago White Sox 3-0 in Game 4 at Comiskey Park to take the best-of-five American League Championship Series. The Sox won the American League West by 20 games with a 99-63 record but couldn’t muster much offense against the Orioles.
Tito Landrum broke the hearts of Sox fans with a 10th-inning homer after Sox starter Britt Burns had tossed nine scoreless innings. The loss is also remembered for a crucial baserunning mistake by Jerry Dybzinski.
1997: Chicago’s new MLS expansion team name was announced — the Fire.
An entirely different name, the Rhythm, was all but set in stone earlier in the year when the MLS announced its expansion into Chicago for 1998. It had been conceived by sportswear monolith Nike, which held the first option to be the team apparel supplier, and approved by the league office. The Rhythm logo and colors, a coiled cobra in red, yellow and black, had already appeared on merchandise in soccer catalogues. But there was one small glitch. The Colorado-based ownership balked at the name.
The Fire won the 1998 MLS Cup during its inaugural season.
2023: Twenty-three-year-old Kelvin Kiptum set a world record in the Chicago Marathon with a time of 2:00:35. Kiptum ran to the grandstand, where he hugged Khalid Khannouchi, who became the last man to set the world record in Chicago in 1999.
Kiptum was killed in a car crash in his native Kenya in February 2024.
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