Today in Chicago History: Donald Trump tells ‘Apprentice' Bill Rancic — ‘You're hired'

Chicago Tribune

15-04-2025

Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on April 15, according to the Tribune's archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
1912: Who was on board and who survived? That's what was being asked — for days — after the White Star Line's famous steamship Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. News of the ocean liner's peril was carved into a late, extra edition of the Tribune on April 15, 1912, and much of the account was devoted to the prominent people aboard.
They included Charles M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway and a Rock Island, Ill., native; Francis Millet, an artist who was the decorations director for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893; and William T. Stead, English journalist and reformer who wrote 'If Christ Came to Chicago.'
A Titanic survivor lived and died in Chicago's Chinatown — and inspired one of the 1997 movie's iconic scenes
The Tribune reported several passengers as Chicagoans: Ida Hippach and her 15-year-old daughter, Jean, and Ervin Lewy, a jeweler. The Hippaches survived; Lewy did not. (Fate at other times was unkind to the Hippaches. In 1903, two young sons, Robert and Archie, died in the horrific Iroquois Theater fire. Two years after the Titanic disaster, the third son died in an automobile accident. And in 1915, Jean was the passenger in a car crash that killed an 8-year-old boy.)
The agony of not knowing was heartbreakingly illustrated by the plight of Oscar Johnson, of St. Charles. A brief on page 2 of April 17's newspaper reported how his wife, two children and his two sisters were not among those saved. But the following day, under the headline, 'Merchant faints from joy,' the Tribune reported that the 32-year-old businessman 'fell over in a dead faint which lasted half an hour' when he received word that all five were rescued.
1977: A highly anticipated exhibit of items from King Tutankhamun's tomb opened at the Field Museum. Unlike his possessions, King Tut didn't make the trip to Chicago — his mummy remained in the Valley of the Kings outside Luxor, Egypt. A discotheque employee and his sister were first in line at 5 a.m.
For the next four months, visitors waited outside in the rain, heat and wind to enter the museum. Only a power outage on the Fourth of July kept visitors away. More than 1.3 million people — at a rate of more than 1,000 per hour — viewed the exhibit.
2004: In the finale to the first edition of the NBC reality show 'The Apprentice,' Donald Trump 'hired' Chicago businessman and Loyola University graduate Bill Rancic over Kwame Jackson during a segment that was telecast live.
As part of his prize, Rancic received a $250,000 salary and a job running one part of Trump's corporation. Trump offered him the chance to stay in Chicago and oversee the building of the new Trump International Hotel and Tower and Rancic took it.
'It's a coincidence that Bill comes from Chicago, and I have a big project going there,' Trump said. 'It just worked out. He's going to be outstanding.'
As for Rancic's choice of the Chicago building project over a job in California, he told the Tribune: 'Chicago is where I'm from, and to me it's the best city in the world.' Rancic stopped working for the future president before Trump Tower was completed in 2009.
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