Prairie State Wire

This week in Illinois history: July 9-15

July 9, 1893 - Chicago. Two African-Americans make history as doctor and patient in the first successful open-heart operation. After wounds from a knife fight sent James Cornish to the emergency room, shoemaker-turned-surgeon Dr. Daniel Hale Williams stepped in. “With Cornish’s heart beating 130 times a minute beneath his nimble fingers, Williams closed the wound with catgut,” according to Ronald Kotulak, the Chicago Tribune's medical scribe.

July 10, 1925 - Chicago. Listeners of WGN witness the historic Scopes Trial. The Chicago station was among many that broadcast reports from the Tennessee courtroom where Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was put on trial. Accused of violating state law by teaching the theory, John Scopes hoped to find acquittal at the hands of attorney Clarence Darrow. Only trouble was he met his match in William Jennings Bryant, who won a guilty verdict against Darrow’s client. However, that verdict was later thrown out because of a procedural error in determining the $100 fine, according to Wikipedia.org.

U.S. Sen. William Lorimer

July 11, 1886 - Chicago. The city’s Streeterville neighborhood is launched by its namesake, George Wellington "Cap" Streeter. When a sandbar in Lake Michigan grounded Streeter’s ship, he made lemonade out of lemons by asking builders to dump waste around it, as ChooseChicago.com reports. Streeter “claimed this newly created marshland as his own and it wasn’t until decades later that the courts could finally rule against him.” Today, the neighborhood is home to Navy Pier, with its shopping and amusement park venues.

July 12, 1995 - Chicago. Three days of insufferable heat claim hundreds of Chicago lives. For much of this heat wave, residents sweltered in triple-digit temperatures, but according to Chicago Magazine, the National Weather Service only issued advisories, not calls-to-action. Whether it would have mattered is unknown. As Jerry Taft, ABC-7’s chief forecaster observed, “It’s almost like when there’s a severe thunderstorm watch, nobody really changes what they do.” At the end of Mother Nature’s heat rampage, 739 people died.

July 13, 1911 - Chicago. Congressional colleagues evict U.S. Sen. William Lorimer from his Senate seat. In a scandal pre-dating the debacle of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich by roughly a century, Lorimer’s scam of vote buying ended his political career. Democratic State Sen. Charles White admitted his vote to elect Lorimer to the federal body had been bought and sold for $1,000, as the Chicago Tribune reported.

July 14, 2001 - Chicago. WGN Channel 9 airs final episode of the classic children’s program, Bozo. Before there was Dora the Explorer or Barney & Friends, there was Bozo, an iconic clown who delighted several generations of kids over a four-decade span, according to The New York Times. Station managers told the Times that rivalry from cable networks and “changing tastes” toppled the program in the ratings. “It’s sad,” explained resident Norma Holder, as quoted in the Times. “But I understand why it’s gone. Kids today are much more sophisticated.”

July 15, 1900 - near Waukegan. John Alexander Dowie founds Zion City, a Christian utopia. Dowie traveled from Australia to Scotland to New Zealand before establishing Zion City on land north of Waukegan on this date in 1900. The city was designed to “be free from the evils of the world, a city where God would be the ruler,” according to a biography posted on the Zion Historical Society’s website. Alas, Dowie suffered health and financial setbacks that kept the community from flourishing.