When the leaves start to fall and the temperature turns crisp, Chicago area residents of decades past did the same thing we do now: Head outdoors.

On September 17, 1973, Illinois became the first state to make Martin Luther King Day a legal holiday with the signage of a bill by Gov. Dan Walker. The first observance for the new holiday came in January 1974, on King's birthday.

In 1871, Chicago’s one-of-a-kind water link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River helped make the city the country’s busiest port. In 2021, according to the U.S. Army Corps, 9 million tons of maritime cargo moved through the Calumet River and its harbor.

Like his predecessors Edward VII and the Duke of Windsor, Prince Charles of Wales arrived in Chicago as a young, single man on Oct. 18, 1977. It was the first stop on his 10-city, nine-day visit to the United States — and the first visit to Chicago by a member of the British monarchy in more than 50 years. “There were squeals and sighs and even tears just about everywhere Charles went during his daylong tour of Chicago,” columnist Dorothy Collin reported in the Oct. 20, 1977, Tribune. And then in 1986, an invitation to play in a polo match brought Prince Charles back to Illinois. The prince had been invited by Michael Butler, manager of Oak Brook Polo Club, and his sister, Jorie, for a match against a local team. “How else could a prince end a daylong stay in Chicago but with a rousing game of polo?” the Tribune asked.

Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, opened in 1973, though construction was not completed until 1974. The skyscraper was the world’s tallest building until 1998, when it was surpassed by a building in Malaysia. The 110-story tower has seen many changes in residents over the years, and in 2009 a new glass ledge was introduced on the building's 103rd floor.

From coast to coast, newspapers in 1908 recognized the circulation benefits of the grisly tale of Belle Gunness. She was proclaimed “the La Porte Ghoul,” a “Female Bluebeard,” and “Hell’s Princess.” The story started when a fire consumed Gunness’s La Porte, Indiana home on April 28, 1908. The site soon became a macabre carnival as bodies were found in the wreckage, those of Gunness' three children and a headless body of woman, thought to be Gunness herself. As authorities searched the surrounding farm for her missing head, other bodies were found. It was soon revealed that Gunness had lured men to her farm, taken their money and then went missing. A thousand curiosity-seekers were joined by the relatives of missing men, as word spread of evidence that Gunness was both a murder victim and a murderer.

Famous soprano Rosa Raisa and Chicago were an item for almost four decades, as she appeared in hundreds of performances in Chicago and on tour. Raisa, and her opera singing husband, Giacomo Rimini, had celebrity status in the city and were photographed often. Upon Raisa’s retirement from the Chicago’s opera company in the late 1930s, she and her husband operated a school for opera singers in the Congress Hotel, where they lived.

Have you heard of “The Golden Gloves Story” from 1950?

There’s a tale behind the obscure title, one that illustrates how the Chicago Tribune used to operate and what they promoted, relentlessly. Longtime Tribune sports editor Arch Ward was a key figure behind the creation of both the Golden Gloves and the Major League Baseball All-Star game. And in the late ‘40s, a plan was hatched to shoot a feature film, fictional but soberly respectful of the real-life Golden Gloves tournament and its belief in good, clean combat.

The screenplay concerns a promising Chicago Golden Gloves fighter, played by Dewey Martin, suspected of murder but meantime smitten with the dental receptionist daughter (Kay Westfall) of boxing referee Joe Riley. Joe’s an amiable straight arrow, played by the movie’s marquee attraction, James Dunn, who won a supporting actor Oscar for “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (1945).

Seventy-six minutes long, director Felix Feist’s scrappy independent movie, more heart than finesse (but that’s true of a lot of boxers, too), was photographed on location in Chicago, with the Tribune’s Arch Ward portraying himself. As does WGN’s Jack Brickhouse, and a variety of sports writers.