Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on March 19, 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: 78 degrees (2012)
- Low temperature: Zero degrees (1923)
- Precipitation: 2.5 inches (1948)
- Snowfall: 4.1 inches (1986)
1918: Daylight saving time, also known as “fast time” back in the day, had its first run in the United States when President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law to support World War I efforts. All clocks were moved forward an hour on the last Sunday of March and turned back again on the last Sunday in October.
A Tribune editorial described the effort as giving “the nation the gift of a twenty-fifth hour, a new hour insinuated into the clock at the best time of day.”
It didn’t last. The law was repealed by Congress — overriding Wilson’s veto — in August 1919. President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched year-round daylight saving time in the U.S. on Feb. 9, 1942.
1943: The body of Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti — the man who succeeded Al Capone as head of the Chicago criminal empire — was discovered along a railroad embankment in North Riverside.
In tales of the Chicago Outfit, the widowed Annette Nitti mostly stayed in the shadows
Nitti, facing trial and possible imprisonment for his role in a Hollywood movie studio extortion scheme, drank himself into a semi-stupor and fatally shot himself three times as he wandered in the railroad yard only blocks from his Riverside home.
“In pulling the trigger on himself, Nitti, who had become a pariah among the piranhas, became the first major Chicago gangland character to cheat the government out of a trial by sentencing himself to death,” Tribune reporters Ronald Koziol and Edward Baumann wrote in 1987.
1995: In his first game back with the Chicago Bulls since he retired in 1993, Michael Jordan gave a “less-than-otherworldly performance,” according to Tribune reporter Melissa Isaacson. The Bulls lost in overtime 103-96 to the Indiana Pacers.
Jordan barely left the court, playing 43 minutes and scoring 19 points. He missed his first six shots, was 7 of 28 overall and was certainly not the same player. Jordan showed his work ethic, however, even playing until his legs cramped up at the end of the game.
Michael Jordan: Top moments and stats in the life and career of the Chicago Bulls and NBA legend
“I love the game,” he said solemnly. “I had a good opportunity to come back. I tried to stay away as much as I could. The more active I was in other sports, it kept my mind away from the game. When I was in baseball, I was a distance away. But when you love something for so long …
“I think at the time I walked away from it, I probably needed it — mentally more so than anything. But I really, truly missed the game. I missed my friends. I missed my teammates. I missed the atmosphere a little bit. So I was eager to get back into the little things.”
1996: In an event at the Harold Washington Library Center, Microsoft Corp. chairman and CEO Bill Gates donated $1 million in computer and educational software to the Chicago Public Library system.
On hand for the event, Mayor Richard M. Daley told the Tribune afterward that he didn’t use computers.
2021: Loretto Hospital CEO George Miller and Chief Operating Officer Dr. Anosh Ahmed were reprimanded for their roles in allowing the hospital to improperly distribute coronavirus vaccines at Trump Tower, to Cook County judges and at Miller’s church in south suburban Oak Forest.
The hospital’s board decided to suspend Miller for two weeks without pay, and Ahmed resigned.
Ahmed was charged in July 2024, alleging he embezzled at least $15 million from Loretto.
Miller was charged in October 2024 in an embezzlement scheme that allegedly bilked millions from the small West Side safety-net hospital, even as the COVID-19 pandemic was raging.
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