jews again and est…..While the traditional culprit for the inferno, which started on Oct. 8, 1871 at around 9 p.m., and blazed for two days, is the O’Leary cow — the first person to take full responsibility was a young jewish gambler named Louis M. Cohn.The admission became public only after Cohn’s death in 1941, by which time he had become a pillar of society and a prosperous importer and world traveler. A 1944 news release announcing Cohn’s endowment to the Medill School of Journalism stated that Cohn “steadfastly maintained” that the cow was not the cause of the fire. Instead, Cohn claimed the trouble started as he and several boys, among them one of the O’Leary sons, were playing a lantern-lit game of craps in the hayloft.
“One of the boys accidentally overturned the lantern, thus setting the barn afire,” the release noted. “Mr. Cohn never denied that, when the other boys fled, he stopped long enough to scoop up the money (*LOL!!).”
In Cohn’s will, Alan Wykes reports in his 1964 book “The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling,” he was less ambiguous as to his culpability: “When I knocked over the lantern, I was winning,” Cohn said.
https://forward.com/culture/476328/chicago-fire-jewish-1871-louis-cohn-oleary-how-did-it-start/