Has it been 40 years?

Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley died 20 December 1976:

Daley was 74 years old, in his 21st year as Mayor of Chicago.  He’d been having chest pains over the weekend, and had made an appointment with his doctor. That’s where he was now.

The doctor had examined Daley. You have to be admitted to the hospital immediately, he’d told Daley.  The mayor had phoned one of his sons.  Then, while the doctor was busy making hospital arrangements, the mayor had collapsed.

At 3:50 p.m., the mayor was dead.

So, apparently, 40 years ago right at this moment.

Then we got Michael "Snow Melts" Bilandic for a couple of years, then Jane Byrne, then Harold Washington, then Eugene Sawyer, then...Richard M. Daley.