Today in Chicago History: Soldier Field dedicated during Army vs. Navy game before 110,000 fans

Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Nov. 27, according to the Tribune’s archives.

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

Thanksgiving weather in Chicago: The most extreme conditions since 1872

Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)

• High temperature: 67 degrees (1990)
• Low temperature: 2 degrees (1887)
• Precipitation: 2.93 inches (1990)
• Snowfall: 5.8 inches (1891)

1903: The “Car Barn Bandits” were captured by police. Gustave Marx, Harvey Van Dine and Peter Neidermeyer were Chicago’s first celebrity criminals. From July 8 to Nov. 27, 1903, they conducted a spectacular crime spree during which they “killed eight men, including two detectives, wounded five others and committed eight robberies” totaling roughly $2,400. One of those took place at a North Avenue saloon (today it’s a playground), where the trio killed two patrons in the course of robbing the bar of $8.

Marx was caught first — “You can’t do anything to me,” he protested upon being locked up. “I only shot a cop! Anybody’s got a right to shoot a cop!” — and he ratted out his comrades, revealing the location of their hideout in the Indiana dunes. Returned to Chicago for a trial, the three were “treated more like conquering heroes or visiting celebrities than like desperate criminals,” with the detectives who captured them extolling their marksmanship before crowds of reporters and onlookers.

The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers have played 210 times in the past 100 years. Here’s how the rivalry has unfolded.

1921: George Halas scored the final touchdown in the first meeting of the Chicago Bears, who were then known as the Chicago Staleys, and the Green Bay Packers. The Staleys won 20-0 at Wrigley Field.

From Halas to Hester: The 32 Chicago Bears inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame

1922: The Bears’ first player deal. The team bought future Hall of Fame tackle Ed Healey’s contract from the Rock Island Independents, nine days after the teams faced each other, for $100 (or about $2,000 in today’s dollars) — twice the going rate for a franchise that season.

1926: Navy was awarded the national championship despite its game against Army ending in a 21-21 tie before 110,000 fans at Soldier Field, which was dedicated that day. Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne missed his own team’s game to attend.

1928: Marjorie Stewart Joyner received a U.S. patent for a permanent waving machine.

The South Side beautician — who was among the first Black women in the U.S. to receive a patent — didn’t think there was anything spectacular about the permanent hair-waving machine she invented, when interviewed by the Tribune in 1989.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: Inventions and innovations by Black Chicagoans

“It all came to me in the kitchen when I was making a pot roast one day, looking at these long, thin rods that held the pot roast together and heated it up from the inside,” Joyner said. “I figured you could use them like hair rollers, then heat them up to cook a permanent curl into the hair.”

1937: Approximately 120,000 people turned out to watch Austin beat Leo 26-0 in the city prep football title game at Soldier Field.

1980: Dave Williams’ 95-yard kickoff return for a touchdown — on the first play of overtime — gave the Bears a 23-17 Thanksgiving Day win over the Detroit Lions.

Also in 1980: A record snowfall of 3 inches fell at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, making it the snowiest Thanksgiving in the city’s history.

2013: Vernita Gray and Patricia Ewert, longtime gay rights activists and a well-known Chicago couple, were wed in Illinois’ first legal same-sex marriage. They were given their marriage license more than six months before the state law legalizing gay marriage took effect because Gray had terminal cancer. She died in March 2014.

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