Today in Chicago History: ‘Big' Jim Colosimo gunned down inside his cafe
Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on May 11, according to the Tribune's archives.
Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.
Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
Flashback: Chicago's place at the forefront of labor history1894: About 2,000 Pullman Co. factory workers on the city's Southeast Side began a protracted and bloody strike.
When the 1893 depression caused business to plummet, George Pullman sharply reduced wages to cut costs. Yet he held firm on rents, which paymasters subtracted from employees' shrinking paychecks.
Desperate, Pullman workers appealed to the American Railway Union, which was holding its national convention in Chicago. The union voted to support the Pullman strike, instructing its members not to handle any trains containing Pullman cars.
By July, sympathy strikes were underway in 23 states. Episodes of violence led President Grover Cleveland to order federal troops to intervene, however, and the strike collapsed.
1920: 'Big Jim' Colosimo, father of the Chicago Outfit, was shot and killed by a person who had been hiding in a cloakroom inside Colosimo's Cafe on South Wabash Avenue. His murder was never solved.
1924: Cardinal George W. Mundelein, recently elevated at the Vatican by Pope Pius XI as prince of the Roman Catholic church, returned to Chicago on Mother's Day.
Flashback: Mercy Hospital's major milestones1933: A special lead-protected wing was opened on the grounds of Mercy Hospital that housed an 800,000-volt X-ray machine — the most powerful in the world at the time — for treatment of cancer patients. It was the first facility in the Midwest to have the equipment.
1987: The speed limit on the Illinois Tollway and rural interstates was increased to 65 mph from 55 mph.
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