It Happened in Chicago

by Cohn, Scotti

• ISBN13: 9780762750566
• ISBN10: 0762750561
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-08-04
• Publisher: Globe Pequot

Summary

Twenty to thirty episodes from the history of Chicago, including memorable events such as the great fire and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, but also featuring lesser- known tales.

Author Biography

Scotti Cohn is a writer and freelance editor who was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois. She has written five other books for Globe Pequot Press, including Liberty's Children, Disasters and Heroic Rescues of North Carolina, and It Happened in North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Late 1600s/early 1700s: An event involving local Native American tribes before the area was settled heavily by Europeans/whites

1673: Discovery by whites

1779: Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, an African American from Sainte-Domingue (Haiti), builds the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank

1812 : Massacre at Fort Dearborn

1855: Raising the elevation in Chicago approximately 10 feet

1860: Abraham Lincoln Nominated in National Political Convention in Chicago

1871, October 8-10: Great Chicago Fire

1875: Mary Todd Lincoln, living in Chicago, is committed to a mental asylum by her son Robert

1886 : The Haymarket Riot

1889: Hull House was opened by Miss Jane Addams

1889: Frank Lloyd Wright (later to become one of the world's most prominent and influential architects) builds his first house, a personal residence in the Oak Park neighborhood of Chicago. In all, twenty-seven Wright designs survived in Chicago into the 1990s

1891: Daniel Hale Williams helped found Provident Hospital in Chicago as the nation's first interracial hospital

1893: The World's Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago

1895 - The first automobile race in the United States is held along the Chicago lakefront/

1897 - St. James at Sag Bridge (cemetery) -- two musicians (William Looney, John Kelly) heard galloping, rumbling carriage; tall woman in white standing in road; horses "snow white, covered with fine netting" and carriage "dark vehicle, no driver"

1897 Louise Luetgert disappeared

1900: Flow of Chicago River Reversed

1900 Battle for Streeterville

1915 : Eastland Disaster

1915: Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in Chicago by Essanay Studios

1919: The World Series resulted in the most famous scandal in baseball history

1924: Leopold and Loeb crime of the century

1925: Red Grange plays his first game as a pro football player (for the Bears) in Chicago

1929: St. Valentine's Day Massacre

1933: A Century of Progress Chicago International Exposition

1942: December 2: First Controlled Atomic Reaction

1944 Mother of man convicted of killing police officer in 1932 offers $5,000 reward for information on real killer(s) -- inspires movie Call Northside 777, filmed in Chicago in 1947

1945 "Billy Goat" Sianis tries to bring his pet goat to a Cubs game but is turned away. Myth says that Sianis cursed the Cubs, saying they would never win a World Series until the goat was allowed in Wrigley Field

1946 -- Dr. Willis Potts of Children's Memorial Hospital (Chicago) agrees to perform an experimental heart procedure on a newborn with "blue baby" syndrome

1955: A team led by Mercy's pioneer neurosurgeon Dr. Harold Voris completes the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the head

1967: The rock band Chicago is formed in Chicago

1968: The 1968 National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party

1979 "Disco Demolition Night" at Comiskey Park

1984 Oprah Winfrey is hired to host WLS-TV Channel 7 morning show "A.M. Chicago."

1990 -- John Hughes writes and produces and Chris Columbus directs the slapstick kid comedy Home Alone

1992 The "Great Chicago Flood

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