100 Fun Facts About Illinois

In which year did Illinois become a U.S. state?

It came in as the 21st state, and its northern border was pushed up to include the future site of Chicago partly with a canal route in mind.

Which phrase is Illinois's official state slogan?

The slogan was made official in 1955 and has appeared on Illinois license plates ever since.

Illinois's official motto pairs 'National Union' with which phrase?

The motto dates to 1818, and the order of the two phrases on the state seal was quietly a Civil War-era political fight.

The name Illinois comes from a Miami-Illinois verb meaning what?

The old 'tribe of superior men' gloss was popular for decades before linguists traced the word to irenwe·wa.

Which village, Illinois's first state capital, now sits west of the Mississippi with a Missouri ZIP code?

An 1881 flood shifted the Mississippi into a new channel east of the town, and the 2020 census counted only a couple dozen residents.

Springfield became the capital in 1839, replacing which town that had held the job for two decades?

The town was also the western end of the National Road, the first federal highway from the East Coast.

Which legislator led the Sangamon County delegation that got the capital moved to Springfield in 1837?

The tall Sangamon delegation was nicknamed the 'Long Nine' because their combined height was said to top 54 feet.

In 1876 two Chicago criminals were caught trying to do what at Lincoln's tomb in Springfield?

The plot led caretakers to hide the coffin under debris and later bury it inside the tomb; a bronze bust outside now has a shiny nose from visitors rubbing it for luck.

The 1908 Springfield race riot directly led to the founding of which organization?

The violence in Lincoln's hometown shocked northern reformers, who issued a call that produced the new organization the following year.

Which open-faced sandwich of toast, meat, French fries and cheese sauce originated in Springfield?

A smaller version is called a ponyshoe, and Springfield also claims the corn dog under the name Cozy Dog.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is said to have started in a barn belonging to which family?

The cow story was a newspaper invention, and the City Council formally exonerated Catherine O'Leary in 1997.

Roughly how many people were killed by the Great Chicago Fire?

The same October week saw the far deadlier Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin, which killed well over a thousand people but got far less press.

Under what name did Chicago's 110-story Willis skyscraper open in 1973?

It was the world's tallest building for nearly 25 years, and the retractable glass boxes on its 103rd-floor Skydeck are called The Ledge.

In which year was the flow of the Chicago River fully reversed away from Lake Michigan?

The point was to stop sewage flowing into the lake that supplied the city's drinking water; it now drains toward the Mississippi.

For which holiday is the Chicago River dyed green each year?

The tradition began after plumbers noticed the fluorescein dye they used to trace leaks turned the water bright green.

The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago marked the 400th anniversary of what?

The fair drew 27.5 million visitors and its white plaster facades earned it the nickname the White City.

Which ride made its debut at the 1893 Chicago fair?

Its 36 cars each held 40 people, and the wheel was later dynamited for scrap in 1906 after a stint at the St. Louis fair.

Who designed Chicago's Home Insurance Building, often called the world's first skyscraper?

It rose ten stories in 1885 on a steel skeleton and was demolished in 1931 to make way for the Field Building.

Deep-dish pizza was invented in 1943 at which Chicago restaurant?

The style puts the chunky tomato sauce on top of the cheese, and 'stuffed' pizza with a second dough layer came along in the 1970s.

The name Chicago comes from a Miami-Illinois word for what?

The plant, a wild relative of onion and garlic, grew thickly along the riverbanks; the 'Windy City' nickname came much later.

The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in 1942 took place under the stands of what?

Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1 was, in his words, a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers; a Henry Moore sculpture marks the spot.

Fermilab near Batavia is famous for physics and for a herd of which animal roaming its grounds?

Its Tevatron collider announced the discovery of the top quark in 1995 and ran until 2011.

Which is the official state bird of Illinois?

Chosen in 1929, it is shared with six other states, making it the most popular state bird in the country.

Thanks to an elementary school project, which food became Illinois's official state snack in 2004?

Fitting for a state that is one of the country's top corn producers and later named sweet corn its state vegetable.

What is Illinois's state fossil, from the Mazon Creek beds, nicknamed after its 1955 discoverer?

Scientists still argue whether the soft-bodied creature was a vertebrate, and its picture rides around on Illinois U-Haul trucks.

Which Illinois town claims that 99 percent of the world's canned pumpkin is produced there?

It is home to a Libby's cannery and throws a four-day Pumpkin Festival every September.

What is the name of Cahokia's ten-story central platform, the largest man-made earthwork north of Mexico?

The ten-story platform got its name from Trappist monks who farmed on it in the early 1800s; UNESCO listed the site in 1982.

Black Hawk, whose 1832 war was fought in Illinois and Wisconsin, was a leader of which nation?

A 23-year-old militia volunteer named Lincoln was elected captain of his company during the war but never saw combat.

Ronald Reagan was born in 1911 in an apartment in which small Illinois town?

The family later settled in Dixon, where his first job was lifeguarding on the Rock River at Lowell Park.

Before his presidency, Barack Obama served as an Illinois state senator beginning in which year?

He had earlier worked as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

The name of Nauvoo, the Mississippi city built by Joseph Smith's followers, comes from which language?

By 1844 its population had swollen to about 12,000, rivaling Chicago, before most residents left for the Salt Lake Valley.

In 1849, followers of French philosopher Étienne Cabet moved to Nauvoo to build what kind of community?

The Icarians peaked at about 500 members before disbanding in 1856, leaving behind a French-flavored wine tradition in town.

How many Civil War generals did Galena claim as residents?

Grant had arrived only in 1860 to clerk in his family's leather shop and left as commander of all Union armies.

To which Mississippi River city did John Deere move his steel plow business in 1848?

Deere was a Vermont blacksmith who found that polished steel scoured the sticky prairie soil where cast iron clogged.

The Twinkie, invented in 1930 in Schiller Park, originally had which flavor of cream filling?

Baker James Dewar borrowed idle shortcake machines for the job and named the cake after a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes.

Route 66 began in Chicago and, after 2,448 miles, ended in which California city?

Established in 1926 and nicknamed the Mother Road by Steinbeck, it was decommissioned in 1985.

The Cubs' 2016 World Series win ended a championship drought of how many years?

The team is one of only two charter National League franchises still around from 1876; the other is the Atlanta Braves.

The curse supposedly placed on the Cubs by tavern owner William Sianis in 1945 involved which animal?

Sianis and his pet were reportedly turned away from Game 4 of the 1945 World Series because of the smell.

In which year did Wrigley Field finally host its first night game under lights?

The Cubs had played 5,687 consecutive day games there, and the first lit game was rained out after a few innings.

How many White Sox players did Landis ban for life after the 1919 World Series scandal?

All of them had been acquitted in court; 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson stayed on the ineligible list until MLB lifted the ban posthumously in 2025.

The Chicago Bears began in 1920 as a company team for a starch maker in which Illinois city?

The Staleys moved to Chicago in 1921 under George Halas; the Bears now hold the NFL record for most Hall of Famers.

How many games did the Bulls win in their record-setting 1995–96 regular season?

The mark stood for twenty years until Golden State won 73, and it came in the first of the Bulls' second three-peat.

The Blackhawks take their name from a nickname for what?

Founder Frederic McLaughlin had served in the 86th Infantry Division, itself named for a 19th-century Native American leader.

What is Illinois's highest natural point, on private farmland and rising just 1,235 feet, called?

It sits in the Driftless Area of the state's northwest corner, which the glaciers that flattened the rest of Illinois never reached.

The Illinois River, about 273 miles long, joins the Mississippi near which town?

It is formed near Joliet where the Kankakee meets the Des Plaines, and invasive Asian carp have crowded out much of its game fish.

The University of Illinois's NCSA created Mosaic in 1993. What was it?

The same campus's Morrow Plots are the oldest continually used experimental farm fields in the U.S., so old that the library next door was built underground to keep from shading them.

O'Hare Airport is named for Edward 'Butch' O'Hare, who was the U.S. Navy's first what in World War II?

He was also a Medal of Honor recipient; his father, a lawyer for Al Capone, had turned informant against the gangster.

Metropolis, Illinois has a 15-foot bronze statue of which hero outside its courthouse?

The local newspaper is The Metropolis Planet, and fans gather every June for a celebration that has run since 1979.

A 170-foot water tower trademarked 'The World's Largest Catsup Bottle' stands in which Illinois city?

Built in 1949 for the Brooks catsup plant, it made the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's in April 1955 in which Chicago suburb?

It was the chain's ninth restaurant overall; Kroc later bought out the McDonald brothers and also owned the San Diego Padres.

Cloud Gate, Anish Kapoor's mirrored sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park, goes by which nickname?

The Bean got its nickname from the public while it was still being built, a name its sculptor called stupid. Its 168 welded steel plates show no visible seams.

Which chain known for frozen treats opened its very first store in Joliet, Illinois, in June 1940?

Dairy Queen grew out of a trial sale in Kankakee, where shop owner Sherb Noble sold more than 1,600 servings of the new dessert in two hours. Noble then opened the Joliet store himself.

Which Christmas comedy used a real brick house in Winnetka, Illinois, for its exterior scenes?

Home Alone shot its exteriors at the Winnetka house, while the flooded-basement scene was filmed in the empty swimming pool of a nearby high school.

Which touring basketball team with a New York name was formed on Chicago's South Side in 1926?

Harlem Globetrotters was a name picked by promoter Abe Saperstein because Harlem was then seen as the centre of Black American culture. The team's first players came from Chicago's Wendell Phillips High School.

Robert Wadlow, honoured with a life-size statue in Alton, Illinois, holds the all-time record as what?

Tallest person in recorded history, Wadlow stood 8 feet 11 inches when he died at 22. His elementary school had to build a desk to fit him.

Which Christmas character was created in 1939 for a free booklet from Chicago retailer Montgomery Ward?

Rudolph first appeared in a booklet written by store employee Robert L. May, and Montgomery Ward handed out 2.4 million copies of the story in its first year.

Joseph Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois, used a coffee mill to shape his 1874 design for which invention?

Barbed wire made Glidden's name: he twisted another strand around the barbs to hold them in place and called the patented design The Winner.

Which chocolate treat was reputedly created at Chicago's Palmer House hotel for the 1893 World's Fair?

Brownie lore credits socialite Bertha Palmer, who asked the hotel's pastry chef for a sweet smaller than a slice of cake that fitted a boxed lunch. It came with walnuts and an apricot glaze.

A 1968 ruling keeps which fast-food chain 20 miles from a family restaurant in Mattoon, Illinois?

Burger King was already the name of the Hoots family's Mattoon restaurant, registered in Illinois in 1959. The national chain got the rest of the country but not that circle.

Which seeds top the bun of a Chicago-style hot dog loaded with mustard, relish and sport peppers?

Poppy seed buns reached the Chicago dog through the city's Jewish bakeries. Tradition is just as firm about what stays off: many vendors refuse to offer ketchup.

Which Chicago Bears running back, nicknamed Sweetness, broke Jim Brown's career rushing record in 1984?

Walter Payton finished with 16,726 rushing yards, and the NFL's Man of the Year Award for community service now carries his name.

Which Chicago production company, its name a piece of wordplay, did Oprah Winfrey found in 1986?

Harpo Productions is Oprah spelled backwards, and Harpo was also the name of her on-screen husband in the 1985 film The Color Purple.

Which Chicago improv theatre, opened in 1959, launched Bill Murray, Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert?

The Second City took its self-mocking name from the title of a series of New Yorker articles about Chicago by A. J. Liebling.

Which name is given to the Tyrannosaurus rex at Chicago's Field Museum, sold at auction for $8.3 million?

Sue is named after Sue Hendrickson, the fossil hunter who found the bones in South Dakota in 1990 while the rest of her group had gone into town to repair a truck.

Which Grant Wood painting has belonged to the Art Institute of Chicago since winning a prize there in 1930?

American Gothic took only the bronze medal and $300 in a competition at the museum, where one judge dismissed it as a comic valentine. The man was modelled by the artist's dentist.

Which Bill Murray comedy, set in a small Pennsylvania town, was shot almost entirely in Woodstock, Illinois?

Groundhog Day's makers scouted more than 60 towns before settling on Woodstock, where a private house played the inn in which the weatherman wakes every morning.

Which 1980 comedy opens with John Belushi's character being paroled from Joliet Prison?

The Blues Brothers bought 60 used police cars at $400 each for its big chases, and most of them were destroyed by the end of filming.

Which music festival, begun by Perry Farrell as a 1991 farewell tour, settled in Chicago in 2005?

Lollapalooza was conceived as a send-off for Farrell's band Jane's Addiction. It toured for years before being retooled as a festival with a fixed lakefront base.

Which Chicago crime boss was jailed on tax charges two years after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre?

Al Capone was convicted on five of twenty-two tax counts and sentenced to eleven years in federal prison. The evidence included his own admissions of income, made in failed talks to settle his tax bill.

Chester, Illinois, hometown of cartoonist E. C. Segar, has a six-foot bronze statue of which character?

Popeye stands in a park named for Segar, who is said to have based several characters on people he knew in Chester. Statues of Olive Oyl and Wimpy have since joined him around town.

Which famous film computer says it became operational at a laboratory in Urbana, Illinois?

HAL 9000 dates his own activation to 12 January 1992 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. His calm voice belonged to Douglas Rain, cast after the first choice sounded too American.

Which sport began at Chicago's Farragut Boat Club in 1887 with a rolled-up boxing glove for a ball?

Softball began as horseplay among fans waiting on a football score: a Yale man threw the glove at a Harvard supporter, who swung at it with a stick. It was first called indoor baseball.

Which name for Chicago's downtown business district matches the circuit of elevated train tracks around it?

The Loop may be older than the elevated tracks: one account traces the name to cable car lines that circled the same blocks from 1882.

Which bank robber was shot dead by federal agents outside Chicago's Biograph Theater in July 1934?

John Dillinger was given up by a brothel owner who traded the tip for help against her deportation and wore an orange dress so agents could spot her. She was deported anyway.

Which real Illinois team do Geena Davis and Madonna play for in the baseball film A League of Their Own?

Rockford Peaches teams won four league championships in real life, though not the 1943 final the film puts them in: the real club never played in it.

Which Chicago sandwich of thin-sliced roast meat on French bread may be dunked whole in its cooking juices?

Italian beef goes back to the city's Italian-American immigrants, and by one account it was invented in the 1920s to serve at weddings. The crusty roll is what survives the dunking.

Which Upton Sinclair novel grew out of seven weeks of research in Chicago's Union Stock Yards?

The Jungle so alarmed its readers that public pressure produced the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.

Which international sporting movement held its very first games at Chicago's Soldier Field in July 1968?

Special Olympics drew about 1,000 athletes from the U.S. and Canada to that first meeting, and a 30-foot sculpture in a plaza beside the stadium now marks where it happened.

Which Nobel Prize-winning novelist was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb just west of Chicago?

Ernest Hemingway edited his Oak Park high school's newspaper, then spent six months as a reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross.

Which pioneer of Prairie School architecture set up a studio in his Oak Park, Illinois, home in 1898?

Frank Lloyd Wright settled in Oak Park in 1889 and reshaped the look of the village, where his Unity Temple and his own studio are now visitor attractions.

Which animation pioneer was born in 1901 on Tripp Avenue in Chicago's Hermosa neighbourhood?

Walt Disney was raised largely in Missouri, but returned to Chicago as a teenager in 1917 when his father bought stock in a jelly producer there.

Which Chicago newspaper ran the mistaken 1948 front page declaring Thomas Dewey the winner over Harry Truman?

Tribune printers had been on strike for about a year, which forced an earlier press deadline, so the first edition went out before most of the results were in.

Olney, Illinois, holds a count every October of its famous albino population of which animal?

Squirrels with white fur, by local tradition, began as a saloon's window display in Olney and were set free when Illinois outlawed keeping wildlife in confinement.

Which Illinois city, ringed by levees, sits where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi?

Cairo was named after the Egyptian capital because the meeting of the two rivers recalled the Nile Delta. It also has the lowest elevation of any place in Illinois.

Galena, Illinois, takes its name from the main ore of which metal, the basis of its early mining boom?

Lead in its natural sulfide form is the mineral galena, and French explorers had noted deposits of it in the Upper Mississippi Valley as early as 1658.

Which co-founder of Chicago's Hull House became the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Jane Addams shared the 1931 prize and is recognised as the founder of the social work profession in the United States. Hull House served poor, largely immigrant families.

Which Illinois River state park takes its name from a legend of a besieged band of Illiniwek?

Starved Rock, the legend says, is the butte where Ottawa and Potawatomi warriors trapped the Illiniwek around 1769, in revenge for the killing of the Ottawa leader Pontiac.

Which Illinois city is show-business shorthand for mainstream taste, in a saying often traced to vaudeville?

Peoria appears in films, books and adverts as the stand-in for the heartland, and the famous question about it is often wrongly credited to Groucho Marx.

Which Illinois town beside Bloomington took its name from the teacher-training university located there?

Normal was laid out as North Bloomington in 1854 and renamed for Illinois State Normal University. A normal school was a college that trained teachers.

Which dance music genre was pioneered in Chicago clubs by DJ Frankie Knuckles, known to fans as its godfather?

House is said to take its name from the Warehouse, the Chicago club where Knuckles was the resident DJ and the dancers were mostly Black gay men.

In which Illinois town was Latter Day Saint founder Joseph Smith killed by a mob that stormed the jail in 1844?

Carthage Jail was holding Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum when an armed mob stormed its upper room. The church he founded bought the building in 1903 and runs it as a historic site.

Which passenger ship rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River in 1915, killing 844 people?

Eastland may have been made even more top-heavy by lifeboats added under a law passed after the Titanic sank. She had been chartered to take Western Electric workers to a picnic.

Which particle, the most massive elementary particle observed, was discovered at Fermilab near Batavia in 1995?

Top quark measurements proved useful well beyond the discovery: the particle is so massive that its properties let physicists estimate the mass of the Higgs boson indirectly.

Which Chicago label, home to Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, had its famous studio at 2120 South Michigan Avenue?

Chess drew the Rolling Stones to its studio on their first U.S. tour in 1964, and they named an instrumental they cut there after the address.

Which trader of Black African descent is regarded as the first permanent settler of what became Chicago?

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable settled near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s and sold his holding in 1800 for 6,000 livres. The city now honours him as its founder.

Which Chicago district was built as a model company town for workers making railroad sleeping cars?

Pullman's founder cut wages after the Panic of 1893 but kept rents in the company-owned homes unchanged, and the 1894 strike that followed still carries the town's name.

The oldest surviving house of worship of which religion stands beside Lake Michigan in Wilmette, Illinois?

Baháʼí Faith followers began their first temple in Ashgabat, in what is now Turkmenistan, but Wilmette's is the oldest still standing. It was not dedicated until 1953.

Which river forms the southern part of the border between Illinois and Indiana before joining the Ohio?

Wabash floods have shifted the channel several times, leaving cutoffs that lie wholly in one state, so both states generally treat the middle of the river as the border.

What is the name of the deadliest twister in American history, which tore across southern Illinois in 1925?

Tri-State Tornado is a name earned by its track of about 219 miles, which ran from southeastern Missouri across southern Illinois and into Indiana.

Which Galesburg-born poet won Pulitzer Prizes for both his poetry and a biography of a president?

Carl Sandburg was born in a three-room cottage to parents of Swedish ancestry and spent his mid-teens working as a porter in a Galesburg hotel barbershop.