Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Aug. 15, 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: 98 degrees (1944)
- Low temperature: 48 degrees (2004)
- Precipitation: 1.87 inches (1993)
- Snowfall: None
1812: Some 500 Potawatomi and their allies encircled 110 men, women and children who had marched out of Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago River, heading for Fort Wayne in Indiana Territory. Soldiers from the garrison formed a line and advanced on the Native Americans.
Sixty-eight of the Fort Dearborn contingent lost their lives in the fighting and its aftermath. The Potawatomi losses are unknown but were certainly far fewer. The next day, the Indians burned Fort Dearborn.
Though the bloody clash took place somewhere between what’s now Roosevelt Road and 18th Street, it was traditionally known as the Fort Dearborn Massacre. Recently it was renamed the Battle of Fort Dearborn, acknowledging that both sides committed atrocities in the centuries-long struggle between Native Americans and European colonizers for control of what became the United States. Already in 1899, Simon Pokagon, a Potawatomi writer, observed, “When whites are killed, it is a massacre; when Indians are killed, it is a fight.”
1967: Pablo Picasso — who never visited Chicago — presented a “gift” to the city. The octogenarian Spanish artist had been wooed by architects of the Civic Center (now named for Daley) to create a focal point for its plaza.
After a performance by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a poetic tribute recited by Pulitzer Prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks, about 50,000 Chicagoans got their first glimpse of Picasso’s present.
“Although we were willing to experiment along many lines in other situations, we wanted the sculpture to be the work of the greatest master alive,” said William E. Hartmann, senior partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, in 1967.
“Oh mommy, it’s terrible,” a young Bob Wadell told his mother.
“I hope it’s a phoenix,” she responded.
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“It’s hideous, it means nothing, it’s like a cow sticking out its tongue at Chicago,” an elderly woman told everyone within earshot.
Others suggested the 50-foot steel sculpture was a bird, a horse, a Viking ship, a baboon or a modernistic representation of Picasso’s dog. Nobody really had an answer — especially since Picasso himself didn’t show up for the ceremony.
The Tribune summed up the untitled masterpiece like this: “For decades, possibly for generations, Chicagoans will dispute about this huge semi-abstract head of a woman — or is it something else? — which will be like a brooding presence in the center of the city. It will be derided, defended, laughed at, and — who knows? — maybe eventually loved.”
2006: Ordered to be deported, Elvira Arellano and her U.S.-born son took refuge inside Adalberto United Methodist Church in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.
Arellano had been arrested in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, sweep of O’Hare International Airport, where she was working as a cleaner. Authorities discovered she had been using a fake Social Security number and had been previously deported to Mexico. Arellano would spend a year living in the church with her story receiving national attention.
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