Here’s a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on Feb. 16, according to the Tribune’s archives.
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Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)
- High temperature: 58 degrees (1921)
- Low temperature: Minus 10 degrees (1885)
- Precipitation: 1.94 inches (1883)
- Snowfall: 6 inches (1997)
1936: A 13-story ski jump — the world’s highest man-made jump at the time — was constructed at Soldier Field for the U.S. Central Ski Association’s annual meet. More than 57,000 people showed up to watch the participants.
An unemployed road worker from Minnesota, Eugene Wilson, 22, won the tournament with a 68-foot jump.
“A snowstorm prevented the riders from making attempts on the steel slide, which was erected over the permanent stands in the south end of the arena,” the Tribune reported.
1951: Dorothy Mae Stevens, a 23-year-old whose frozen body had been found on Feb. 7, 1951, lying in a gangway at 3108 S. Vernon Ave., told the Tribune from her bed at Michael Reese hospital that she felt, “Wonderful.”
She was believed to be the first person to survive a body temperature of 64 degrees.
“I guess I have nine lives like a cat,” she told the Tribune.
Stevens had been trying to get home from a nearby bar when she was found in the gangway. “She was not dressed for subzero weather when found,” the Tribune reported. “She was hatless, wearing only a short spring coat, sweater, skirt, stockings, slip and galoshes.”
Stevens regained consciousness in the hospital after 12 hours.
The local media gave her a nickname — “the frozen woman” — and kept readers updated about the progress of her recovery. A headline on Feb. 10 read “Frozen woman wiggles toes and takes food.” She was reportedly “fed ice cream and malted milks” on Feb. 11.
Dozens of doctors, medical students, nurses and other hospital staff cared for Stevens. They initially hoped she’d recover completely, but several of her fingers and both of her legs below the knees had to be amputated.
Her doctor published a scientific article calling for research into the severe kind of frostbite Stevens experienced, and she left the hospital determined to help others. She spoke to church groups about her battles with alcoholism and depression.
Stevens died in 1974, of heart failure and pneumonia.
Her obituary in the Tribune reported that she “had no close relatives.” Married — and divorced or widowed — three times, she was living alone in a Stony Island Avenue apartment just before she died.
But the Tribune did give her a final moment of fame. The obituary recalled that her ordeal in a freezing Chicago winter was “listed in the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ as the coldest temperature ever survived by a human.”
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