Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on May 5, 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: 94 degrees (1949)
- Low temperature: 32 degrees (1992)
- Precipitation: 1.66 inches (1892)
- Snowfall: None
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A boy sells the Chicago Defender, a leading Black newspaper, in April 1942. (Jack Delano/Library of Congress)
1905: The Chicago Defender newspaper is founded. Robert Sengstacke Abbott started the newspaper he called “The World’s Greatest Weekly,” encouraging Black Americans born and raised in the South — like himself — to move north during the Great Migration of the 20th century. More than two-thirds of the newspaper’s readership base was located outside of Chicago by the start of World War I, according to the Defender.
Evolving from a weekly into a daily newspaper, the Defender became a national voice for African Americans, documenting racial inequality and championing the Civil Rights movement. Abbott thanked the children who sold his newspaper on street corners by throwing a parade in their honor. It’s known today as the Bud Billiken Parade.
The Defender ceased print publication in 2019, but still exists in a digital format at chicagodefender.com.
1930: The Merchandise Mart opened. At 24 stories and 4.2 million square feet, the building was then the largest in the world, surpassed by the Pentagon a decade later. The space was developed by Marshall Field & Co. to house wholesale products for department store buyers.
The massive building, which had its own 60654 ZIP code, was rebranded as the Mart as part of a $40 million renovation in 2016.
1970: After the fatal shootings that took place during a protest over U.S. military involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia at Kent State University in Ohio, classes were canceled for the rest of the week at Northwestern University.
2005: Podiatrist Ronald Mikos was found guilty in the death of Joyce Brannon, a nurse and church caretaker who was going to testify against him in a Medicare fraud investigation.
Authorities alleged in a 25-count indictment that Mikos defrauded Medicare of more than $1.25 million by falsely claiming to have performed thousands of surgeries and that he obstructed justice by recruiting patients to lie to investigators about the fraud. In Brannon’s case, authorities said, Mikos fraudulently billed Medicare for 85 surgeries on her feet that had not been carried out.
How many presidential pardons or sentence commutations have been granted to people from Illinois?
After deliberating for parts of three days during the punishment phase of the trial, some jurors told the Tribune the decision to impose the death penalty had been a difficult one. Mikos, who claims he is innocent, is incarcerated in the federal prison in Terre Haute. President Joe Biden commuted the federal death sentence for the former Chicago podiatrist to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Dec. 23, 2024.
2017: Ebony announced plans to move editorial operations to Los Angeles, cutting one-third of its staff.
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