If you were alive in the early '80s, you remember the Tylenol poisonings. Here's the part of that st

Written: June 23, 2026

If you were alive in the early '80s, you remember the Tylenol poisonings.
Here's the part of that story people forget: it might have stayed mostly a local Chicagoland panic -- except something new had just happened in America.
Cable television.
In the early days of cable, there weren't a ton of ready-made channels to fill the lineup, so cable operators started carrying a few major local stations nationally: WOR out of New York, WTBS out of Atlanta, and WGN out of Chicago.
WGN's higher-ups were not exactly thrilled about suddenly becoming "Chicago, broadcasting to America." They even fought parts of it in court. But the people actually on the air saw it differently. They treated it like a responsibility.
If WGN was going national, then WGN was going to report Chicago as it really was.
And at that moment, Chicago had something horrifying happening: some maniac was poisoning Tylenol bottles.
So this local nightmare became part of the national nervous system.
And yes, kids, as insane as it sounds now: pill bottles did not always have safety seals. You could just open them. No foil. No plastic wrap. No tamper ring. Nothing.
That changed because of this case.