Today in Chicago History: Albert Einstein visits Chicago

Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on March 14, 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: 81 degrees (2012)
  • Low temperature: 7 degrees (1993)
  • Precipitation: 1.62 inches (1944)
  • Snowfall: 8.4 inches (1904)
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein spoke to the Standard Club in Chicago on March 14, 1933. (Chicago Tribune)

1933: Albert Einstein visited Chicago on his 54th birthday. During a talk given at The Standard Club, the physicist told the crowd there’s never been a time when scientific problems were so “terribly interesting.”

It was a return trip for Einstein, who had stopped at Chicago’s Union Station on his way from Pasadena, California, to New York.

“He didn’t spend much time talking shop,” the Tribune reported in 1931. “He spoke mostly to a delegation of peace advocates and gave his attention to Yvonne, the small daughter of the Frank Lloyd Wrights, who visited the Einsteins in their compartment.”

1996: The Tribune began publishing on the Internet.

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