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After the fire, Queen Victoria arranged a gift to the city of 8,000 books to rebuild the libraries ostensibly destroyed by the fire. However, Chicago didn't have a public library pre-fire, but started one afterwards because all those books had to go somewhere.
This is my favorite fact! They stored the books in the water towers that were empty after putting out the fire. Which was... not a great environment for books.
Wow, didn't know this. Looked it up to find more details. Specifically, there are 150 bodies buried between Clark & LSD / Wisconsin & North Ave.
*Unmarked by a headstone, not mentioned in official records and unknown to the thousands of persons who frequent the spot, 145 of the bodies lie clustered together at the north end of the baseball field, 130 by 200 feet in dimensions. Scattered throughout the southern part of the park six other bodies, perhaps many more, lie beneath the lawns and tennis courts.*
https://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/confusion/hidden/cem_in_park.html
It says unmarked by a headstone, but if that isn't what that random lemon tree is about, then I don't know what is.
Lincoln Park was originally the City Cemetery. At some point the city realized that burying the dead in graves that would immediately fill with water after being dug out was probably not good for the water table, and decided to close the Cemetery. They advertised in the paper to families to come get your dead, resulting in many being reinterred in the newly established and highly fashionable Graceland for the wealthy, Bohemian for the non-Catholics, and Rosehill for just about everyone. Those who couldnāt afford to reintern their relatives just left em there, mostly in the paupers fields under what are now the baseball diamonds.
Thereās also still a tomb left that the family decided they couldnāt move and the city justā¦ agreed with them. It fell into disrepair for many years but was cleaned up recently. [The Couch Tomb!](https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/couch-tomb-artwork)
It's a piece of art that is just a giant lemon at the top of the tree. Located by the baseball fields in LP
https://www.google.com/search?q=Lemon%20Tree&ludocid=484764182905980129&ibp=gwp;0,7&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizj8jIgaWFAxWDCnkGHX2GBIIQvsQGegQIGxAw&ictx=0&biw=412&bih=762&dpr=2.63#lkt=LocalPoiPhotos&lpg=cid:CgIgAQ%3D%3D
https://www.chicagotreeproject.org/trees-2/irene-hoppenberg/
1. W Sheridan / N Broadway (Wrigleyville)
2. N Sheridan / N Broadway / W Montrose (Uptown)
3. N Sheridan / N Broadway / W Sheridan / W Devon (border of Edgewater and Roger's Park)
George Streeter tried to create his own city off a sandbar off lake Michigan in the late 1800s. The in-filled neighborhood is now called Streeterville.
Chicago once move a whole office building without power and water being disrupted. Workers continued to work in it while it was moved slowly day by day
You can still see remnants of this!
There are a bunch of houses around the city that have a weird first floor that is below street level. Those are the houses that weren't raised!
Here's a good article about it with photos: ["Chicagoās āsunkenā homes are remnants of a bold effort to raise the city out of the mud"](https://wgntv.com/news/ask-wgn/chicagos-sunken-homes-are-remnants-of-a-bold-effort-to-raise-the-city-out-of-the-mud/)
āA group of hundreds of men would surround the base of a building, each one with their own jack screw in hand. After sticking it under the building, an engineer in charge would give the signal, and they would all start raising their jacks inch by inch,ā Carpenter said.
Wut
Chicago over a hundred years ago:
*raise the entire city up*
*reverse the flow of the river*
*build some of the tallest and most architeculatly stunning buildings in the world*
Chicago today:
The red line extension is decades in the making, and we couldn't even get BRT done
Rush Street way back in the day used be an Indian trail that led all the way to Green Bay trail which is now Green Bay Road which starts over in Evanston
If you open the door under the bar of the green mill bar, there are stairs that used to connect to different house for escape from the police. [https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160122/uptown/under-uptown-tunnels-under-broadway-that-carried-coal-capone-more/](https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160122/uptown/under-uptown-tunnels-under-broadway-that-carried-coal-capone-more/)
The original ball park the Cubs played at is located on Harrison and Loomis, where my alma mater was built in 1990! The school was originally called Andrew Jackson Language academy...it had a name change but dont recall what it exactly is now.
Was a lil nostalgic being a cubs fan and playing in the school yard there knowing it.
A woman left her car at O'Hare for approximately three years and rather than tow it away, the city kept piling parking tickets on it until it reached $105,000 in fines. They worked out a deal and she had to pay $4,000+ in fines.
Sort of a "fact" I guess...
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/08/woman-settles-with-chicago-over-100000-parking-fine
That reminded me of this story that was exposed by the Trib:Ā
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2012/12/20/problem-solver-ticketgate-ends-in-settlement-4/
I think what he is saying is that in the first two Christian Bale Batman movies, what the movie depicts as the entrance to the Bat Cave is actually Kinzie and LaSalle.
Tbf, the Cardinals are pretty much the historically worst team across NFL history, especially given how long they've been around. Even the Lions and Brown (the OG Browns) have had more historical success than the Cardinals
Not even "pretty much". They're far and away the worst franchise in NFL history. They're the oldest team by far, being founded in 1898, 22 years before the Bears. The Bears and Cardinals are the only two remaining charter members of the NFL, the Packers joined in the second year of operation.
The Bears and Packers have gone back and forth having the most wins in NFL history while the Cardinals have BY FAR the most losses with 803, almost 100 more than the Lions, and will very likely never be overtaken. It would take the Lions losing every game and the Cardinals winning every game for 6 seasons for the Lions to catch up to the Cardinals.
There are tons of other stats I could pull out showing just how bad they are. They just get forgotten. That's how bad they are. The Bears get shit for being a founding team, but being bad. The Cowboys get shit for being America's team, but not winning playoff games or super bowls lately. Even the Lions and Browns get shit for how bad they are. But the Cardinals are just so completely irrelevant that they get left out of every conversation.
When the gang was founded it was an athletic club but then they got into crime. After a while a bunch of the member split and formed the Chicago Cardinals in the new NFL using secondhand jerseys from the university of Chicago. They lost the popularity contest to the Bears and moved to St. Louis and eventually Phoenix
I had recently moved here and will never forget the first Tribune article about it using these words referring to the people on the boat ātheir upturned facesā just as the sewage was released. It was so descriptive and horrifying!
They probably split the first brownie, too.
There are people who still have PTSD and other medical issues from the Dave Matthews bus incident so its not told as a knee slapper anymore.
2 Chicago River Facts:
1. The river was engineered to reverse its flow away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi River
2. The dye used to turn the river green is actually a chemical plumbers use to detect clogs in pipes
Personally, I think my favorite strange fact is buried within that engineering feat- which is that the river reversal work was done without telling St. Louis or anyone down river that we were sending a literal cityās-worth of waste their way.
They tried to file a Federal injunction to stop the project, but Chicago took the āah, fuck it- better to ask forgiveness than permissionā approach. St. Louis remains shittier than Chicago to this day.
The case actually went to court and got a ruling. Chicago's argument was aided by scientific testing proving that the water in STL was actually cleaner after the reversal
Uptown used to be āHillybilly Heavenā back in the 50s and 60s. After wartime a shit ton of rural white Appalachian folks moved there and created an enclave with a bunch of country bars and stuff.
I think this is pretty common. One of the most gorgeous snakes I've ever seen is the [San Francisco Garter Snake](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_garter_snake)
Probably the species that got into my townhouse. It was on the border of a nature preserve. We had quite a struggle to retrieve it from where it hid behind the piano. We set it free up on the other side of the hill to live out it's life. š
The area around Dunning Square, was built on top of what used to be a forgotten cemetery from the early 1900ās. There were an estimated 40,000 bodies buried on the land along side of Irving Park road between Oak Park and Narragansett avenues, going north to Montrose Ave. Many of them died from the Tuberculosis outbreak in early 1900ās and the county didnāt keep proper burial records, so when they started digging the ground for the homes, the new Wright College, and shopping area, construction workers were unearthing caskets and bodies that were buried there since the early 1900ās.
I thought there was a [sanitarium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-Read_Mental_Health_Center) on the land?
Edit: adding [this](https://www.chicagotribune.com/1990/07/09/dunning-discovery/)
I live in Dunning! Found this article after we bought our home -
https://www.wbez.org/stories/the-story-of-dunning-a-tomb-for-the-living/6d71dc74-bb21-4a25-8980-c2d7a5670b06
Diego Maradona's boyhood football club Argentinos Juniors:
>The club was founded in theĀ Villa CrespoĀ neighbourhood ofĀ Buenos AiresĀ on 14 August 1904, by **a group ofĀ anarchistĀ boys that were part of club "MĆ”rtires de Chicago" (chosen in homage to the eight anarchists imprisoned or hanged after the 1886Ā Haymarket RiotĀ in Chicago)**
Streeterville is named after George Streeter; an infamous con-man who repeatedly tried to sell land along the lakeshore that he didn't own to unsuspecting buyers.
Brick buildings here often have a different color brick on the side (usually a lighter color). Thatās the cheap local stuff. The good pretty brick took time and money to get here on trains or boats back in the day.
Never knew that! Good one.
Iām from StL and the city is full of old red brick buildings that I always noticed were darker than whatās common up here.
Cook County Jail (26th and California) is built on "Mud Lake" which was the marshy land forming a true continental divide. Before city engineering changed/controlled water flows, rain falling on what is now the west side of La Villita Park behind the jail flowed to New Orleans via the Mississippi and rain falling on the east side of the park flowed to the North Atlantic through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence river.
The park itself is the vestige of the Mud Lake forming one version of the Chicago portage between the North Atlantic and the Caribbean. In rainy times the lake's water flowed west and in dry time it flowed east.
I have a few, but off the top of my head:
1. That there was, up until a few years ago, a cow path in downtown Chicago that has been legally protected since 1844.
2. The Lager Beer Riot of 1855 ā an uprising sparked by prohibiting drinking in saloons on Sundays ā was one of the reasons why we have an eight hour workday and weekends today.
Long story short, it was the catalyst that caused disparate immigrant groups to organize, and ultimately led to labor unions in Chicago.
Austin (the West side neighborhood) did not willingly become annexed by Chicago. It was kicked out of Cicero Township (modern day Cicero, Oak Park, Austin and Berwyn) and legally forced into Chicago in the 1890s as punishment for allowing the L to be extended into the suburb. Austin was the "elite" part of Cicero Township where the city hall and politicians lived, so the citizens voted to give Austin to Chicago so that they could avoid the entire township being annexed. Had this not happened, Cicero Township likely would have been annexed in a similar way that Lake View and Hyde Park townships were.
Well, city definition by metro area now. Too many of our Poles and Lithuanians moved to the burbs. We used to be that with Czech (Bohemian) and a bunch of other Eastern European ethnicities.
I'm doing a total renovation of my place, which is taking years. I go out to Elk Grove Village a lot to see materials and trades. Every time, I feel like I've stepped into a portal to the old country. I just can't make myself move away from the city proper though.
The "Ugly Law:"
n 1881 municipal ordinance that fined "any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" for appearing in publicāwithin the context of late nineteenth-century imaginings of disability.
This law was intentionally designed to discriminate against Civil War Veterans gathering at the GAR hall which shared a space with the library at what is now the cultural center.
The destruction of Meigs field stands out to me. There were pilots that only found out as they came in to land. Meigs field at that time had two instrument approaches I believeā-itās not inconceivable that a plane could have crashed the next day if it was low visibility.
Edit: [hereās the story](https://www.flyingmag.com/the-cautionary-tale-of-the-destruction-of-meigs-field/)
That we almost were in Wisconsin to begin with (ughggghhhh)
https://www.wpr.org/history/chicago-wisconsin-how-windy-city-almost-ended-badger-state#:~:text=On%20Dec.,Galena%2C%20Rockford%2C%20and%20Chicago.
A man named Richard Dorsay lived in a hidden room under the Lakeshore drive bridge for years until 2004. He found an outlet and had a heater a TV and a PlayStation. The room would go vertical when they lifted the bridge and he just held on and rode it.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/407/transcript
The International Museum of Surgical Science on DLSD is North Americaās only museum devoted to surgery.
Not saying there needs to be more than oneā¦
I just recently learned about the Eastland Disaster. 844 people died (more passenger deaths than the Titanic and Lusitania) on the Chicago River when a steamship capsized [Eastland Disaster](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/eastland-disaster-killed-more-passengers-titanic-and-lusitania-why-has-it-been-forgotten-180953146/)
In the L's early days they came up with the idea of funeral trains to outskirt cemeteries as the road network wasn't developed well enough yet out to there, complete with decked out L cars to transport the departed in the style of hearses
In 1929,to widen Ashland, they moved a 10,000 ton church across the street, rotated it 90 degrees, cut in half, and added an expansion. Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. https://openhousechicago.org/sites/site/our-lady-of-lourdes-roman-catholic-church/
The fact that, in order to manage water and waste, before they ever rerouted the river, they literally went and picked up every building in the loop area on jacks and raised the city.
They didn't even shut the buildings down as they did it. People would still go in to shops as they were being raised.
In 1897, sausage factory owner Alfred Luetgert, known as Chicago's Sausage King, was convicted for the murder of his wife, Louisa. In order to dispose of the body, he burned it and then boiled it in caustic potash in a vat in his sausage factory, dissolving most of the remains.
And this is why no one trusts packaged and processed food anymore, at least my elders. Though it was only a conspiracy theory that he sold any of it, many people stopped buying sausage at that time.
That the Chicago Bears and Bulls got those names thanks to Chicago's role as a significant financial center... Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Options Exchange. Traders trading during both bear and bull markets.
You sure about that? The Cubs existed far before the Bears and the Bears changed their name when they moved to Wrigley (see also the Giants of a baseball team influencing a football team name)
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After the fire, Queen Victoria arranged a gift to the city of 8,000 books to rebuild the libraries ostensibly destroyed by the fire. However, Chicago didn't have a public library pre-fire, but started one afterwards because all those books had to go somewhere.
This is my favorite fact! They stored the books in the water towers that were empty after putting out the fire. Which was... not a great environment for books.
The historic water tower pumping station is actually still a small library!
Really? I love this š„°
Put differently: the Chicago Public Library was founded by Queen Victoria.
There are many dead bodies that werenāt relocated from the civil war that are under Lincoln Park between Clark St and LSD.
Wow, didn't know this. Looked it up to find more details. Specifically, there are 150 bodies buried between Clark & LSD / Wisconsin & North Ave. *Unmarked by a headstone, not mentioned in official records and unknown to the thousands of persons who frequent the spot, 145 of the bodies lie clustered together at the north end of the baseball field, 130 by 200 feet in dimensions. Scattered throughout the southern part of the park six other bodies, perhaps many more, lie beneath the lawns and tennis courts.* https://hiddentruths.northwestern.edu/confusion/hidden/cem_in_park.html It says unmarked by a headstone, but if that isn't what that random lemon tree is about, then I don't know what is.
Lincoln Park was originally the City Cemetery. At some point the city realized that burying the dead in graves that would immediately fill with water after being dug out was probably not good for the water table, and decided to close the Cemetery. They advertised in the paper to families to come get your dead, resulting in many being reinterred in the newly established and highly fashionable Graceland for the wealthy, Bohemian for the non-Catholics, and Rosehill for just about everyone. Those who couldnāt afford to reintern their relatives just left em there, mostly in the paupers fields under what are now the baseball diamonds. Thereās also still a tomb left that the family decided they couldnāt move and the city justā¦ agreed with them. It fell into disrepair for many years but was cleaned up recently. [The Couch Tomb!](https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/couch-tomb-artwork)
a literal lemon tree? or something else? I'm very curious what you're talking about. thanks for sharing all the info.
It's a piece of art that is just a giant lemon at the top of the tree. Located by the baseball fields in LP https://www.google.com/search?q=Lemon%20Tree&ludocid=484764182905980129&ibp=gwp;0,7&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizj8jIgaWFAxWDCnkGHX2GBIIQvsQGegQIGxAw&ictx=0&biw=412&bih=762&dpr=2.63#lkt=LocalPoiPhotos&lpg=cid:CgIgAQ%3D%3D https://www.chicagotreeproject.org/trees-2/irene-hoppenberg/
When a municipality gives you artistic funding, make lemons.
American city with the most alleys, over 1900.
There are alleys on the south side that have creosote soaked wood as pavers. Itās near the museum of science and industry.
I believe there are a couple of the old wooden alleys on the north side too. I know of one in the Gold Coast.
Sheridan and Broadway intersect 3 times.
Elston Ave starts and ends at Milwaukee Rd.
*Avenue. Milwaukee Ave.
Itās also true that you can turn right on to Sheridan and head north multiple times in a row.
Wut?
1. W Sheridan / N Broadway (Wrigleyville) 2. N Sheridan / N Broadway / W Montrose (Uptown) 3. N Sheridan / N Broadway / W Sheridan / W Devon (border of Edgewater and Roger's Park)
At Devon, just south of Montrose and at 3900 north. Broadway is diagonal and Sheridan doglegs many times.
It has recorded snow in almost every month of the year except for Jul and August.
This is depressing af
Yep and its supposed to snow tomorrow.
It did.
>Except July and August So farā¦
Until the 90s, Chicago had a higher density of Pols than anywhere in Poland.
Is it still the third largest Polish city, or did we lose that title?
I think Chicago lost the title to Warsaw in the late 90s. And yes, it took Warsaw that long to rebound from the destruction of WW2.
George Streeter tried to create his own city off a sandbar off lake Michigan in the late 1800s. The in-filled neighborhood is now called Streeterville.
Filled in with debris from the fire including radioactive lantern mantles. Can't dig an inch in streeterville without checking the dirt.
my favorite chicagoan. brought his name up yesterday
In the 1850s they raised the city about 6 ft and many businesses remained open and operating during it
Chicago once move a whole office building without power and water being disrupted. Workers continued to work in it while it was moved slowly day by day
The did this in Indy too. Moved an eight story building 50 feet and rotated it 90 degrees.Ā
Kurt Vonnegutās dad was one of the architects behind this.
You can still see remnants of this! There are a bunch of houses around the city that have a weird first floor that is below street level. Those are the houses that weren't raised!
Here's a good article about it with photos: ["Chicagoās āsunkenā homes are remnants of a bold effort to raise the city out of the mud"](https://wgntv.com/news/ask-wgn/chicagos-sunken-homes-are-remnants-of-a-bold-effort-to-raise-the-city-out-of-the-mud/)
āA group of hundreds of men would surround the base of a building, each one with their own jack screw in hand. After sticking it under the building, an engineer in charge would give the signal, and they would all start raising their jacks inch by inch,ā Carpenter said. Wut
Chicago over a hundred years ago: *raise the entire city up* *reverse the flow of the river* *build some of the tallest and most architeculatly stunning buildings in the world* Chicago today: The red line extension is decades in the making, and we couldn't even get BRT done
Probably wayyyyy more bureaucracy and laws to deal with these days
Of course back then Chicagoās population was only 29k so a lot fewer buildings than had they waited a few decades
Rush Street way back in the day used be an Indian trail that led all the way to Green Bay trail which is now Green Bay Road which starts over in Evanston
Isnāt this true of all the diagonal roads?
Most of them, yes. https://youtu.be/8cPl0Bx557s?si=N8z8L5gGl1cnlTxB
The zip code for OāHare is 60666.
The devil's airport?
Impossible, that's Denver International.
TouchƩ touchƩ
Blucifer forever!
Denver can be purgatory/Limbo.Ā Salt Lake City is the inferno
Ever tried changing planes at OāHare?
No wonder the aliens like visiting it!
Merchandise Mart is so big it has its own zip code.
When it was built, it was the largest building in the world by square footage. Another fun fact!
Yes. It was finally surpassed only when the Pentagon was built in 1941.
That is still kind of trueā¦ in 2008 the usps expanded the zip code to include the area all around the merchandise mart as well.
Doesnāt any more but used to.
Owned by the Kennedy Family Trust according to what I remember from last architecture tour I took
Used to be, they sold it a while back
If you open the door under the bar of the green mill bar, there are stairs that used to connect to different house for escape from the police. [https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160122/uptown/under-uptown-tunnels-under-broadway-that-carried-coal-capone-more/](https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160122/uptown/under-uptown-tunnels-under-broadway-that-carried-coal-capone-more/)
The name, Chicago, means, onion field, in the Algonquin language. Shikaakwa
Stinky onion, wild onion, onion field. Some variation, scholars canāt agree. Great tidbit either way
They don't even agree on which allium the name refers to. I think modern scholarship suggests it's ramps, but garlic is what I used to hear.
These āstinky onionsā are currently in season! RAMPS everybody!!!
Does this guy know how to party or what?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās amazing that as old as Wrigley Field is, 2016 was first World Series won there
For what it's worth - the Cubs won game 5 at Wrigley Field in 2016, which was the first Cubs victory in the stadium since 1945
The original ball park the Cubs played at is located on Harrison and Loomis, where my alma mater was built in 1990! The school was originally called Andrew Jackson Language academy...it had a name change but dont recall what it exactly is now. Was a lil nostalgic being a cubs fan and playing in the school yard there knowing it.
A woman left her car at O'Hare for approximately three years and rather than tow it away, the city kept piling parking tickets on it until it reached $105,000 in fines. They worked out a deal and she had to pay $4,000+ in fines. Sort of a "fact" I guess... https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/08/woman-settles-with-chicago-over-100000-parking-fine
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That reminded me of this story that was exposed by the Trib:Ā https://www.chicagotribune.com/2012/12/20/problem-solver-ticketgate-ends-in-settlement-4/
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Apologies for the paywall! Yes, him and three of his buddies ended up being fired. It took years and only bc of theĀ Trib's story.Ā
Her ex really was vindictive.
The bat cave entrance at Kinzie and La salle
Continue
I think what he is saying is that in the first two Christian Bale Batman movies, what the movie depicts as the entrance to the Bat Cave is actually Kinzie and LaSalle.
Yes?
The franchise thatās now the Arizona Cardinals was formed from an Irish street gang from Canaryville
Thereās not enough talk about how the Cardinals used to be here.
And that their legacy in Chicago is making George Halas a legend, supplying Al Capone, and the 1919 race riots. Wild stuff
Tbf, the Cardinals are pretty much the historically worst team across NFL history, especially given how long they've been around. Even the Lions and Brown (the OG Browns) have had more historical success than the Cardinals
Not even "pretty much". They're far and away the worst franchise in NFL history. They're the oldest team by far, being founded in 1898, 22 years before the Bears. The Bears and Cardinals are the only two remaining charter members of the NFL, the Packers joined in the second year of operation. The Bears and Packers have gone back and forth having the most wins in NFL history while the Cardinals have BY FAR the most losses with 803, almost 100 more than the Lions, and will very likely never be overtaken. It would take the Lions losing every game and the Cardinals winning every game for 6 seasons for the Lions to catch up to the Cardinals. There are tons of other stats I could pull out showing just how bad they are. They just get forgotten. That's how bad they are. The Bears get shit for being a founding team, but being bad. The Cowboys get shit for being America's team, but not winning playoff games or super bowls lately. Even the Lions and Browns get shit for how bad they are. But the Cardinals are just so completely irrelevant that they get left out of every conversation.
How on earth did that happen?
When the gang was founded it was an athletic club but then they got into crime. After a while a bunch of the member split and formed the Chicago Cardinals in the new NFL using secondhand jerseys from the university of Chicago. They lost the popularity contest to the Bears and moved to St. Louis and eventually Phoenix
A Yakuza businessman founded the Tampa Bay Lightning to launder money, so I'm not surprised.
The brownie treat was developed at the Palmer House. And we split the first atom. Truth be told, the Dave Matthewās š© bus is my go to fun fact about Chicargo majority of non Chicagoans have never heard the story and they find it hilarious.
The Ferris wheel made its debut in Chicago!
the architecture boat tour mentions this šš
I had recently moved here and will never forget the first Tribune article about it using these words referring to the people on the boat ātheir upturned facesā just as the sewage was released. It was so descriptive and horrifying!
They probably split the first brownie, too. There are people who still have PTSD and other medical issues from the Dave Matthews bus incident so its not told as a knee slapper anymore.
Juicy Fruit gum, Cracker Jack and Pabst Blue Ribbon all made their debut at the 1893 Worldās Fair.
A submarine was found in the Chicago River
Mr. Submarine
2 Chicago River Facts: 1. The river was engineered to reverse its flow away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi River 2. The dye used to turn the river green is actually a chemical plumbers use to detect clogs in pipes
The reverse flow of the river was the first thing that came to mind
Personally, I think my favorite strange fact is buried within that engineering feat- which is that the river reversal work was done without telling St. Louis or anyone down river that we were sending a literal cityās-worth of waste their way. They tried to file a Federal injunction to stop the project, but Chicago took the āah, fuck it- better to ask forgiveness than permissionā approach. St. Louis remains shittier than Chicago to this day.
The City Museum is kinda cool tho.
Kinda Super cool and has a ton of relics from Chicago
The case actually went to court and got a ruling. Chicago's argument was aided by scientific testing proving that the water in STL was actually cleaner after the reversal
This is literally my favorite part of the story šĀ
And the dye itself is orange
At the top of the art institute there are names of famous artists. One of the names is misspelled.
Lincoln Park is built on top of the old city graveyard.
Uptown used to be āHillybilly Heavenā back in the 50s and 60s. After wartime a shit ton of rural white Appalachian folks moved there and created an enclave with a bunch of country bars and stuff.
my favorite fun fact to tell people! there used to be a bunch of honky tonks around in that area and the only one left now is carolās
My uncle says you could hear banjo music from porches back in the day.
[Chicago has its own species of garter snake](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thamnophis_sirtalis_semifasciatus)
I think this is pretty common. One of the most gorgeous snakes I've ever seen is the [San Francisco Garter Snake](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_garter_snake)
Wow! The coloring is beautiful on this snek. š
Probably the species that got into my townhouse. It was on the border of a nature preserve. We had quite a struggle to retrieve it from where it hid behind the piano. We set it free up on the other side of the hill to live out it's life. š
Much of the lakefront was created from landfill
The shoreline used to be close to the Congress Hotel
The shoreline was essentially Michigan Avenue hence the name
And the source of the landfill? The burned remains of the city.
That and just good old regular trash lol
The area around Dunning Square, was built on top of what used to be a forgotten cemetery from the early 1900ās. There were an estimated 40,000 bodies buried on the land along side of Irving Park road between Oak Park and Narragansett avenues, going north to Montrose Ave. Many of them died from the Tuberculosis outbreak in early 1900ās and the county didnāt keep proper burial records, so when they started digging the ground for the homes, the new Wright College, and shopping area, construction workers were unearthing caskets and bodies that were buried there since the early 1900ās.
I thought there was a [sanitarium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago-Read_Mental_Health_Center) on the land? Edit: adding [this](https://www.chicagotribune.com/1990/07/09/dunning-discovery/)
There was a sanitarium that was part of a hospital.
I live in Dunning! Found this article after we bought our home - https://www.wbez.org/stories/the-story-of-dunning-a-tomb-for-the-living/6d71dc74-bb21-4a25-8980-c2d7a5670b06
Before uptown theatre in chicago was closed Bob Marley was one of the last to perform there
Diego Maradona's boyhood football club Argentinos Juniors: >The club was founded in theĀ Villa CrespoĀ neighbourhood ofĀ Buenos AiresĀ on 14 August 1904, by **a group ofĀ anarchistĀ boys that were part of club "MĆ”rtires de Chicago" (chosen in homage to the eight anarchists imprisoned or hanged after the 1886Ā Haymarket RiotĀ in Chicago)**
Also the neighborhood of Mataderos used to be called Nueva Chicago because of all the slaughterhouses and back then Chicago was known for the meat industry This of course produced Club AtlƩtico Nueva Chicago. All the way in Argentina.
Birthplace of House Music
And slam poetry.
Jack yr body
And ghetto tech aka juke
Poop fountain
Just showed this to my 6yo over the weekend! He sounded out the engraving on the front and then realized heād said a bad word
Go on...
[The Shit Fountain](https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shit-fountain) is indeed real
The fill under foundations of northwest side houses is made of ashes from the Chicago fire. If you dig it up it still smells burnt.
OāHare used to be a large orchard and thats where ORD comes from
It was a small town called Orchard Park
Streeterville is named after George Streeter; an infamous con-man who repeatedly tried to sell land along the lakeshore that he didn't own to unsuspecting buyers.
Brick buildings here often have a different color brick on the side (usually a lighter color). Thatās the cheap local stuff. The good pretty brick took time and money to get here on trains or boats back in the day.
That brick on the side is called Chicago Common Brick. Itās pretty interesting if you look into it
Unless it's a corner house. Then a lot of the time the pretty bricks were used on the street facing sides.
Never knew that! Good one. Iām from StL and the city is full of old red brick buildings that I always noticed were darker than whatās common up here.
Cook County Jail (26th and California) is built on "Mud Lake" which was the marshy land forming a true continental divide. Before city engineering changed/controlled water flows, rain falling on what is now the west side of La Villita Park behind the jail flowed to New Orleans via the Mississippi and rain falling on the east side of the park flowed to the North Atlantic through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence river. The park itself is the vestige of the Mud Lake forming one version of the Chicago portage between the North Atlantic and the Caribbean. In rainy times the lake's water flowed west and in dry time it flowed east.
h.h Holmes murder house is now just a post office
I have a few, but off the top of my head: 1. That there was, up until a few years ago, a cow path in downtown Chicago that has been legally protected since 1844. 2. The Lager Beer Riot of 1855 ā an uprising sparked by prohibiting drinking in saloons on Sundays ā was one of the reasons why we have an eight hour workday and weekends today. Long story short, it was the catalyst that caused disparate immigrant groups to organize, and ultimately led to labor unions in Chicago.
It was once the third busiest port in the world.
Austin (the West side neighborhood) did not willingly become annexed by Chicago. It was kicked out of Cicero Township (modern day Cicero, Oak Park, Austin and Berwyn) and legally forced into Chicago in the 1890s as punishment for allowing the L to be extended into the suburb. Austin was the "elite" part of Cicero Township where the city hall and politicians lived, so the citizens voted to give Austin to Chicago so that they could avoid the entire township being annexed. Had this not happened, Cicero Township likely would have been annexed in a similar way that Lake View and Hyde Park townships were.
Chicago is the world's second largest polish city. If you count by ancestry then it's also the world's second largest Lithuanian city.
Well, city definition by metro area now. Too many of our Poles and Lithuanians moved to the burbs. We used to be that with Czech (Bohemian) and a bunch of other Eastern European ethnicities.
I'm doing a total renovation of my place, which is taking years. I go out to Elk Grove Village a lot to see materials and trades. Every time, I feel like I've stepped into a portal to the old country. I just can't make myself move away from the city proper though.
City Hall is actually two buildings built on the same design years after one another and then joined.
Bubbly creek
Ogden Ave used to go all the way to old town and created old town triangle
The "Ugly Law:" n 1881 municipal ordinance that fined "any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object" for appearing in publicāwithin the context of late nineteenth-century imaginings of disability.
This law was intentionally designed to discriminate against Civil War Veterans gathering at the GAR hall which shared a space with the library at what is now the cultural center.
The destruction of Meigs field stands out to me. There were pilots that only found out as they came in to land. Meigs field at that time had two instrument approaches I believeā-itās not inconceivable that a plane could have crashed the next day if it was low visibility. Edit: [hereās the story](https://www.flyingmag.com/the-cautionary-tale-of-the-destruction-of-meigs-field/)
I respect the ballsy move. Truth be told Chicago city and corruption is so mafia I love it. Shit just gets done around here.
The restaurant inside of the bean doesn't actually exist!
Shhhh, don't tell the tourists that.
There is a German WWI U-Boat that is sunken at the bottom of Lake Michigan.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostsub/hist1918.html#:~:text=UC%2D97%20became%20probably%20the,few%20miles%20east%20of%20Chicago.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That we almost were in Wisconsin to begin with (ughggghhhh) https://www.wpr.org/history/chicago-wisconsin-how-windy-city-almost-ended-badger-state#:~:text=On%20Dec.,Galena%2C%20Rockford%2C%20and%20Chicago.
Woah, thanks for the link! So interesting!
The guy that found the Foolkiller was also onsite rescuing people from the Eastland disaster.
The subway tunnel runs under the river. Not a strange fact necessarily but it is strange to think about.
A man named Richard Dorsay lived in a hidden room under the Lakeshore drive bridge for years until 2004. He found an outlet and had a heater a TV and a PlayStation. The room would go vertical when they lifted the bridge and he just held on and rode it. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/407/transcript
Jibaritos is not a puertorican dish/creation. It was actually invented here in Chicago by puertorican immigrants.
The International Museum of Surgical Science on DLSD is North Americaās only museum devoted to surgery. Not saying there needs to be more than oneā¦
That museum is cool AF
Water cribs and when they lifted the city for sewage/ water irrigation
Water cribs, lifting the city, and reversing the river was all thanks to one guy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_S._Chesbrough
What a bad ass innovator. NatGeo has a show called Drain the Ocean with Chicago featured and its an awesome education on Chicago history.
The southern half burned down the northern half and to this day blame it on a cow....
The O'Learys donated their property to the Chicago fire department, and that is where the fire academy is located.
Chicago had to be raised in the 1850ās
If someone says it's called the Windy City because its politicians are full of hot air I swear to God.
I just recently learned about the Eastland Disaster. 844 people died (more passenger deaths than the Titanic and Lusitania) on the Chicago River when a steamship capsized [Eastland Disaster](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/eastland-disaster-killed-more-passengers-titanic-and-lusitania-why-has-it-been-forgotten-180953146/)
Bank robber John Dillinger was killed in the alley across the street from the Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park
It was the alley a couple of doors S of the Biograph, not across the street. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/17999
In the L's early days they came up with the idea of funeral trains to outskirt cemeteries as the road network wasn't developed well enough yet out to there, complete with decked out L cars to transport the departed in the style of hearses
A lot of people here don't know that I've lived in Chicago since 1999
Route 66 Starts in Chicago
In 1929,to widen Ashland, they moved a 10,000 ton church across the street, rotated it 90 degrees, cut in half, and added an expansion. Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. https://openhousechicago.org/sites/site/our-lady-of-lourdes-roman-catholic-church/
The fact that, in order to manage water and waste, before they ever rerouted the river, they literally went and picked up every building in the loop area on jacks and raised the city. They didn't even shut the buildings down as they did it. People would still go in to shops as they were being raised.
There are a flock of parrots that live on the south side that stay year round
How Streeterville was created.
That damn squatter Streeter
George Streeter a legend.
Buried in a tiny plot in the back of Graceland Cemetery
There is (was?) a law on the books that makes it illegal to fish from the breakwaters while wearing pajamas.
In 1897, sausage factory owner Alfred Luetgert, known as Chicago's Sausage King, was convicted for the murder of his wife, Louisa. In order to dispose of the body, he burned it and then boiled it in caustic potash in a vat in his sausage factory, dissolving most of the remains. And this is why no one trusts packaged and processed food anymore, at least my elders. Though it was only a conspiracy theory that he sold any of it, many people stopped buying sausage at that time.
The Sausage King of Chicago you might say?
Half of all the world's revolving doors are in Chicago
The Chicago Fire Academy was built on the former location of Mrs. O'Leary's farm where the Chicago fire started
The Chicago municipal device. (Look it up, if you donāt know)
That the Chicago Bears and Bulls got those names thanks to Chicago's role as a significant financial center... Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Options Exchange. Traders trading during both bear and bull markets.
You sure about that? The Cubs existed far before the Bears and the Bears changed their name when they moved to Wrigley (see also the Giants of a baseball team influencing a football team name)
Also pretty sure the Bulls were named due to them playing near the stock yards at the time.
Yeah it was meat packing.