From the”Vintage Tribune”

history 1 Minute

I am subscribed to the Chicago Tribune’s newsletter “Vintage Tribune.” Each day, it reproduces several old issues of “that day in Chicago,” and I wanted to share some of them.

April 13, 1992 Great Chicago Flood.

Pedestrians step over hoses used to pump flood water out of buildings at the intersection of State and Madison streets in April 1992. Massive basement and sub-basement flooding occurred when crews punctured a century-old freight tunnel located underneath the Chicago River. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune)

May 1. The actual May Day affair happened on May 4, 1886, but the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, the predecessor of the American Federation of Labor, called for May 1, 1886 to be the beginning of a nationwide movement for the eight-hour day. What I didn’t know and just found recently was that the eigh-hour day law was introduced in 1867, but never reinforced.

A crowd marches in a peaceful May Day parade in Chicago’s Loop toward Grant Park on May 1, 1934. Among the paraders, were Joseph Weber, secretary of the Trade Union Unity League, William Gebert, communist organizer, and Nina Spies, widow of August Spies, who was hanged for his role in the Haymarket Riot of 1886. The leaders of the demonstration said the parade represented “a fight against war and fascism and for workers’ unemployment insurance legislation.” (Chicago Tribune historical photo)

May 2. 8000 people attended the opening of the Field Museum.

As with the 1894 opening at the Palace of Fine Arts in Jackson Park, crowds line up when the Field Museum opens in its Grant Park location on May 2, 1921. (Field Museum)
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Published by Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

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