Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on June 11, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 97 degrees (1954)
- Low temperature: 41 degrees (1980)
- Precipitation: 3.02 inches (1926)
- Snowfall: Trace (2001)
1953: Celinus “Clem” Graver, state representative and “Bloody 21st” Ward Republican committeeman, was kidnapped from his garage half a block from his home at 976 W. 18th Place, as his wife and a friend watched. Graver was never heard from again.
Part of the problem — Graver was a mystery himself. “Although his government salary totaled only $5,000, he had two $30,000 homes, wore tailored suits and panama hats, and never carried less than $500 in cash,” Tribune reporter Ann Marie Lipinski wrote in 1978. “Investigators also discovered that the ward committeeman, often described as ‘ruggedly handsome,’ had made several secret trips to Cuba before the kidnapping.”
1964: A news conference held by the Rolling Stones in Nathaniel Hale Court outside Tribune Tower was abruptly ended when Larry Koznatz, a barber at the Chicago Sheraton (now Sheraton Grand Chicago Riverwalk) hotel, offered to give the five lads hair cuts.
1971: As TWA Flight 358 boarded at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, Gregory White grabbed flight attendant Catharine Culver and put a gun to her neck. When passenger Howard L. Franks of Darien, Connecticut, tried to help Culver, White shot and killed him. The Federal Aviation Administration said it was the first time a passenger had been killed in a U.S. airplane hijacking. No metal detector had been used to screen passengers at the gate.
White made Culver sit next to him aboard the aircraft and told all other passengers to exit the plane before it took off for New York, as scheduled. He demanded the pilot take him to North Vietnam, requested $75,000 and “a machine gun with plenty of ammunition.”
During the confusion, word spread at the airport that a short man was needed to crawl into the plane through its cockpit window. Deputy U.S. Marshal Joseph Zito, 5 foot 6, who had just retired as chief of police in Cary, donned a captain’s uniform, slid into the plane undetected, then waited. It was his first-ever plane ride, which he spent most of on his stomach “dodging bullets and matching wits” with White.
With the captain’s permission, Zito fired two shots during the flight, which hit White in the shoulder. After the plane landed, Culver and the flight crew escaped without harm. White, who was taken into custody by federal agents, was later found incompetent to stand trial on hijacking and murder charges. White hung himself at Chester Mental Health Center in Illinois seven years later.
1997: In what would become known as the “Flu Game,” a vomiting, dehydrated Jordan scored 38 points, grabbed 7 rebounds, dished out 5 assists and hit the go-ahead 3-pointer late in a series-shifting Game 5 win against the Jazz in Utah.
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