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Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on July 14, according to the Tribune’s archives.

Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.

Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)

• High temperature: 100 degrees (1995)
• Low temperature: 52 degrees (1926)
• Precipitation: 1.75 inches (1913)
• Snowfall: None

1885: Entrepreneur Sarah E. Goode was the first Black woman to receive a U.S. patent in Illinois. Born into slavery in 1850, Goode was freed at the end of the Civil War in 1865 and moved to Chicago.

As the owner of a furniture store, she observed that many residents of the rapidly growing metropolis had a modicum of space in their cramped apartments. Goode designed what she called a folding cabinet bed. When folded, the assembly, which included compartments for stationary and writing paraphernalia, could be used as a writing desk.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: Inventions and innovations by Black Chicagoans

1912: Fourteen people died when a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad mail train slammed into the rear of a passenger train stopped for a signal in Western Springs. The crash was blamed on a brake operator in the first train who failed to place a warning torpedo (a small explosive) on the tracks behind his train to alert the mail train he knew was following by about nine minutes. The accident was one of several that highlighted the need for railroads to install signals at shorter intervals on high-speed (around 40 mph), heavily traveled mainlines.

1966: Armed with a gun and a knife, Richard Speck broke into a town house in the 2300 block of East 100th Street on the South Side that served as housing for student nurses who worked at South Chicago Community Hospital. They were Nina Jo Schmale, Patricia Ann Matusek, Pamela Lee Wilkening, Mary Ann Jordan, Suzanne Bridget Farris, Valentina Pasion, Merlita Gargullo and Gloria Jean Davy.

Corazon Amurao Atienza managed to crawl under a bed and hide while Speck methodically stabbed and strangled eight of her roommates after telling them he would not hurt them, that he just needed money to get to New Orleans.

Rare photos, interviews honor 8 nurses slain by Richard Speck in 1966

Speck was captured two days later when an emergency room doctor at Cook County Hospital thought a patient he was treating for self-inflicted gashes looked familiar. The doctor had just had a dinner break and had seen the front page of a newspaper featuring the killer’s face. As he was sponging blood off the patient’s arm, he saw that the man had a tattoo that said “Born to Raise Hell” that matched the description from the newspaper.

Though originally convicted then sentenced to die in the electric chair for the murders, Speck was resentenced to eight consecutive terms of 50 to 150 years each after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty of Illinois and other states was unconstitutional.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: 10 infamous people condemned to Stateville prison

Speck died of a heart attack at a Joliet hospital on Dec. 5, 1991 — the day before his 50th birthday.

2024: Sanfurd Burris’ Maverick broke the 22-year-old time record in the Chicago Yacht Club Race to Mackinac, finishing the course of 289 nautical miles up Lake Michigan in 22 hours, 24 minutes and 23 seconds. That was 1 hour, 6 minutes and 11 seconds faster than the old record set by Roy P. Disney’s Pyewacket (named for the cat in the film “Bell, Book and Candle”) in 2002.

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