Chicago... City of the Century...

Love Chicago? You’ve got to love this (for all you trivia lovers)!

There is literally a gazillion trivia on the internet, about our dear Chicago. I have picked out some of the lesser known ones. Hope this provides some interesting reading material for you people (Don’t about others, but I certainly didn’t know some of this stuff, despite claiming myself to be a die-hard Chicago fan)…

• 1772 : – Humble beginnings of Chicago; started off as a settlement called Eschikagou on the north bank of the Chicago River by a Haiti man named Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable.
• 1833 : – 12th of August - The town of Chicago was incorporated with a population of 350.
• 1861 : – The entire Chicago Police Department was fired by John Wentworth (then mayor). The city went without any police protection for twelve hours until some new officers were sworn in to take their place.
• 1891 : – Chicago’s elevated railway “The El”, went into operation to begin the “Loop” that circles the downtown.
• 1891 : – The 16-sotry Monadnock Building at 53 W. Jackson Boulevard was the city’s first skyscraper.
• 1901 : – Walt Disney was born in December, in “The Disney family house” located at 2156 N. Tripp Ave. Disney lived there until he was 4 (before moving to a farm in Missouri), and then returned to Chicago in 1917 to settle on the Near West Side.
• 1925 : – The Tribune Tower was completed. The building's large gothic entrance contains pieces of stone from other famous buildings: Westminster Abbey, Cologne Cathedral, the Alamo, the Taj Mahal, the Great Pyramid, and the Arc de Triomphe.
• 1927 : – Originally called the Chicago Municipal Airport, Midway Airport opened. It was renamed in 1949 to honor the Battle of Midway in WW II. Midway was the world's busiest airport until 1959.
• 1927 : – Kate Sturges Buckingham donated $750,000 to the city for construction of Buckingham Fountain as a memorial to her brother Clarence. The largest fountain in the world, it shoots a water jet 135 feet high.
• 1937 : – Chicago became the home of the 1st US blood bank.
• 1949 : – O’Hare Airport comes into being. (I simply love that airport!) By 1961, O'Hare Field surpassed Chicago's Midway to become the world's busiest air travel facility.
• 1953 : – At 6052 S. Harper Street, Hugh Hefner started the publication of "Playboy." (How about that people!)
• 1955 : – The first McDonald's franchise restaurant, owned by Ray Kroc, opened in the suburb of DesPlaines. (I’ve seen this one, from the outside it looks like any other McD’s. It was only after my friend informed about it’s history did I come to know!)
• 1964 : – Marina City apartments and offices were completed on the Chicago River. The 60-story round twin towers were designed by Bertrand Goldberg. The first 18 floors are parking! (I have probably spent countless hours just plain staring at this beauty from across the River standing on the Wacker Drive. It is an astounding view, and as far as I can remember every single visitor that I’ve ever had from out of town was captivated by this place. Prospective visitors to Chicago, you don’t want to miss this one!)
• 1969 : – The 100-floor John Hancock Center was built.
• 1969 : – Rail service in the Dan Ryan Expressway median commences. This marks another transit innovation made in Chicago - the first expressway/freeway median rail service ever - now commonly used in cities all over the world. (After probably having traveled on it a gazillion times, I still am as awestruck and amazed as I was the first time I used it.)
• 1971 : – 9th Sept. - The Woodfield Mall regional shopping center, one of the world's largest, with 2 million square feet of selling space, opened for business. The name "Woodfield" was an amalgam that combined the names of Gen. Robert E. Wood, chairman of Sears Roebuck & Co. at the time the mall was built; and Marshall Field & Co. Sears and Fields were two of the mall's original department stores.
• 1971 : – Sears Tower opened with 3.6 million square feet of rentable space. The $200 million 110-story structure rises 1,455 feet into the sky.
• 1992 : – 13th April - , the "Great Chicago Flood" occurred when 124 million gallons of Chicago River water poured through a crack in the forty-seven-mile network of freight tunnels under the central business district. After filling the tunnels, the river water rose into the basements of many downtown buildings, knocking out electric power and natural-gas service.
• 1997 : – 7th October - the Chicago City Council approved a resolution which absolved Mrs. O'Leary's cow of all blame for the Great Chicago Fire. (Oh come on people!)

Some more trivia (this is non-chronological stuff):

• The 4 stars on the Chicago flag represent Fort Dearborn, the Chicago Fire, the World's Columbian Exposition, and the Century of Progress Exposition.
• Chicago is home to the world's largest population of Poles outside of Warsaw.
• The Chicago Public Library is the world's largest public library with a collection of more than 2 million books.
• The world's largest cookie and cracker factory, where Nabisco made 16 billion Oreo cookies in 1995, is located in Chicago.
• The central water filtration plant, located on the lakefront north of Navy Pier, is the largest in the world.
• The Chicago Post Office at 433 West Van Buren is the only postal facility in the world you can drive a car through.
• The Chicago River is always dyed green on St. Patrick's Day.
• Illinois State Motto: State Sovereignty, National Union
• The ice cream "sundae" was named in Evanston. The piety of the town resented the dissipating influences of the soda fountain on Sunday and the good town fathers, yielding to this churchly influence, passed an ordinance prohibiting the retailing of ice cream sodas on Sunday. Ingenious confectioners and drug store operators obeying the law, served ice cream with the syrup of your choice without the soda. Objections then was made to christening a dish after the Sabbath. So the spelling of "sunday" was changed. It became an established dish and an established word and finally the "sundae". (yum!!!)
• The Illinois state dance is square dancing.
• Illinois boasts the highest number of personalized license plates, more than any other state.
• Chicago's Mercantile Exchange building was built entirely without an internal steel skeleton; it depends on its thick walls to keep itself up.
• New York Sun editor Charles Dana, tired of hearing Chicagoans boast of the world's Columbian Exposition, dubbed Chicago the "Windy City." (Apparently that’s how the name “Windy City” came into being!)

PHEW! I think that is enough trivia for now.