Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Sept. 23, according to the Tribune’s archives.

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Gale Sayers, the Chicago Bears’ Hall of Fame running back, dies at 77: ‘He was poetry in motion. His like will never be seen again.’

Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)

High temperature: 95 degrees (2017)
Low temperature: 29 degrees (1995)
Precipitation: 2.09 inches (1961)
Snowfall: None

1881: Dr. Thomas Neill Cream, nicknamed “The Lambeth Poisoner”, was found guilty in the July 14, 1881, strychnine poisoning death of Daniel Stott, of Belvidere. Cream had been having an affair with Stott’s wife, Julia. After his release, Cream moved to London, where he was connected to the poisoning deaths of at least four women.

Rhud Metzner, of Chicago, won the new Illinois Athletic Club marathon on Sept. 23, 1905, in three hours and 15 minutes. Eighteen runners started the 25-mile race and seven finished it. (Chicago Tribune)

1905: Chicago hosted its first marathon. Fifteen runners started the 25-mile race in Evanston, but only seven crossed the finish line in Washington Park. Along the route, they kicked up dust on Sheridan Road, and were forced to wait for a passing train at Devon Avenue and at Rush Street during a bridge lift for a passing steamship.

A “bone-head base-running stunt” by Fred Merkle of the New York Giants forced a game against the Chicago Cubs on Sept. 23, 1908, to end in a 1-1 tie. (Chicago Tribune)

1908: The word “bonehead” gained popularity in American English because of the Chicago Cubs. But a Chicago player wasn’t the bonehead — opponent Fred Merkle was.

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In 1908, the Cubs and New York Giants were knotted in the standings and tied in a late-season game. A Giants batter appeared to drive in the winning run from third. But Merkle, on first base, went to the clubhouse without touching second base, and the Cubs recovered the ball and got a belated force-out at second. Because of “Merkle’s boner,” the game ended in a tie and was replayed later, leading to a Cubs victory that gave them the pennant — and made their World Series victory possible.

Ziggy the elephant is coaxed from his indoor location at Brookfield Zoo by his former zoo keeper, George Lewis, third from left, as Ziggy takes his first outdoor walk in 29 years on Sept. 23, 1970. (Chicago Today)

1970: Ziggy, a 6-ton Asian elephant, got his long-deserved taste of freedom. Named for theatrical producer Florenz Ziegfeld, Ziggy was sold from one circus to another before he was moved to Brookfield Zoo in 1936.

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A scary incident on April 26, 1941, however, led the zoo to chain him to a wall inside the Pachyderm House for 29 years. That’s when the elephant threw down his keeper George “Slim” Lewis and tried to gore him. Lewis stunned Ziggy with a punch to the eye, jumped into the enclosure’s moat and escaped. The zoo’s management wanted to put Ziggy down, but Lewis begged that the sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, indoors.

An appeal by then-Tribune reporter Michael Sneed in 1969, started a movement — and a collection — to free the 52-year-old pachyderm. More than $15,000 in donations (or more than $132,000 in today’s dollars) was raised to build an outdoor enclosure for Ziggy to roam.

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1979: “The most assaultive, disruptive, and violent inmates in the facility” took four guards and four other inmates hostage for more than three hours at Stateville penitentiary near Joliet. They held homemade knives to the hostages’ throats while handcuffing them to chairs in the prison’s orientation building. All hostages were released after Warden Marvin Reed negotiated with the men for more than an hour.

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