Today in Chicago History: Barack Obama announces candidacy for president
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
High temperature: 63 degrees (1876)
Low temperature: Minus 18 degrees (1899)
Precipitation: 0.96 inches (1960)
Snowfall: 9.7 inches (1981)
1916: A few hundred of the city's most prominent people gathered at the stately University Club at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Monroe Street for a dinner welcoming the new Catholic archbishop, George Mundelein.
Vintage Chicago Tribune: What to know about Mundelein, a century after his elevation as Chicago's first cardinal
All were marked for assassination by an anarchist cook named Jean Crones, who spiked the soup stock with arsenic. When dinner was served, some of the highest flyers of Chicago were laid low, falling to the floor, groaning in agony and vomiting. But none died.
1869: The Woman Suffrage Convention — the first of its kind in Chicago — was held at Library Hall.
Vintage editorial: A celebration of women's suffrage: 'It has been a long fight and a hard one'
1980: Northwestern, coached by 27-year-old Mary DiStanislao, won its second straight Big Ten women's basketball tournament, beating Minnesota 86-72 in the title game at Wisconsin.
1985: Michael Jordan made his NBA All-Star Game debut. Controversy arose with talk of a 'freeze out' supposedly led by Isiah Thomas to keep the ball away from the popular rookie. Thomas later denied this was intentional. Jordan shot 2 for 9, scoring seven points in 22 minutes.
2007: U.S. Sen. Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, which was the site of Abraham Lincoln's June 16, 1858, 'House Divided' speech.
Obama urged Americans who hear 'destiny calling' to join him 'in the unfinished business of perfecting our union.' About 15,000 people braved frigid temperatures to watch Obama speak before he departed to campaign in Iowa.
He defeated Republican candidate John McCain in the Nov. 4, 2008, election and became the nation's 44th president.
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