On April 25, 1980, longtime Rockford congressman and powerful House leader John B. Anderson launched his independent campaign for the presidency. Today, April 26, marks the anniversary of his first full […]
Tag: 200 Years of Illinois
200 Years of Illinois: Sorry, Charlie
On April 19, 1928, Illinois held its last public hanging as bootlegger Charlie Birger went up the rope in Benton on a spring morning. (We’ve published a book that tells his story.) […]
200 Years of Illinois: Jack Benny’s “longest laugh”
March 28 marks the date of a historic moment in the history of comedy. On that date in 1948, Jack Benny’s popular radio show aired one of the great exchanges […]
200 Years of Illinois: Archaea, the third kind of life on earth
Today we turn over the 200 Years of Illinois feature to Steven Lenz and Nicholas Hopkins, authors of an essay (reprinted below) in the new UIP book The University of Illinois: Engine […]
200 Years of Illinois: Three state twister
This weekend marks the anniversary of the Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest tornado disaster in U.S. history. On March 18, 1925, an F5 twister formed near Ellington, Missouri in the early […]
200 Years of Illinois: The long and writhing road
Clear LaRue Road. Today marks the day officials close the storied roadway to assist of one of Illinois’s majestic natural wonders: the spring snake migration in Shawnee National Forest. The limestone bluffs […]
200 Years of Illinois: Death of a science fiction master
On February 25, 2009, science fiction master Philip José Farmer—author of the Riverworld series and the Hugo-winning To Your Scattered Bodies Go—departed our reality at age 91. When it happened I wondered, How […]
200 Years of Illinois: Cheap Trick is big in Japan
February 7, 2017, marks the approximate, not to say the exact, date of a landmark in Illinois rock and roll. On this day (more or less) in 1979, the Rockford band […]
200 Years of Illinois: Town of Steel
On January 21, 1972, DC Comics declared the largely misnamed Metropolis, Illinois the official home town of Superman. Metropolis had already adopted the Son of Krypton, and as we all […]
200 Years of Illinois: Raggedy Riches
On Christmas Eve, 1880, an Arcola painter-illustrator and his wife welcomed John Gruelle to the family. John sank roots into the professional illustration trade himself at age 25 when he […]
200 Years of Illinois: The Cavaness Murders
On December 13, 1984, a remarkable murder took place outside of St. Louis. Dale Cavaness, a physician in Eldorado, Illinois, killed his ne’er-do-well son Sean with two gunshots to the […]
200 Years of Illinois: Henry Bacon, and that’s no baloney
Reverent. Classical. (Well, neoclassical.) Uncontroversial in design, though the subject has a few fringe detractors. The Lincoln Memorial began to take shape in 1915. By then, architects and others had […]