Facts about Chicago
The Chicago Bears football team is one of two charter NFL teams still in existence.
Chicago has a large Romanian-American community with more than 100,000, as well as a large Assyrian population.
After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed a third of the city, including the entire central business district, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth.
Chicago offers 100 miles of on-street bike lanes, 10,000 bike racks, and a state-of-the-art central bicycle commuter station in Millennium Park.
One of the world's top research universities is located in Chicago: the University of Chicago in Hyde Park on the city's South Side.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect through Chicago to the Mississippi River.
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) handles public transportation in Chicago and a few adjacent suburbs.
Loyola University Chicago is the largest Jesuit Catholic university in the country.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Chicago has a total area of 234.0 square miles (606.1 kmІ).
Chicago is served by Midway International Airport on the south side and O'Hare International Airport, one of the world's busiest airports, on the far northwest side.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) controls over 600 public elementary and high schools in Chicago.
Chicago also has a large Irish-American population on its South Side.
The city borders Lake Michigan, and two rivers—the Chicago River in downtown and the Calumet River in the industrial far South Side—flow entirely or partially through Chicago.
After adopting crime-fighting techniques recommended by the Los Angeles and New York City Police Departments in 2004, Chicago recorded the lowest number of total homicides since 1965.
Chicago also hosts 12 Fortune Global 500 companies and 17 Financial Times 500 companies.
Saul Alinsky, a native Chicagoan, pioneered a new face of political activism through his powerful grassroots social movement.
After initial success in Chicago, Alinsky organized community-action groups in various cities throughout the nation.
The city is also a major convention destination; Chicago is third in the United States, behind Las Vegas and Orlando, as far as the number of conventions hosted annually.
On December 2 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world’s first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project.
Other museums and galleries in Chicago are the Chicago History Museum, DuSable Museum of African-American History, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago operates the city's Roman Catholic schools.
Chicago can be divided by the river and its branches into four main sections.
New projects during the younger Daley’s administration have made Chicago larger, more environmentally friendly, and more accessible.
Chicago's homicide tally remained steady from 2005 through 2007, with 449, 452, and 435, respectively, and the overall crime rate in 2006 continued the downward trend that has taken place since the early 1990s.
Chicago has the largest population of Swedish Americans of any city in the United States.
At the same time, Chicago made positive national contributions based upon its response to disasters.
Future skyline plans entail the supertall Waterview Tower, Chicago Spire, and Trump International Hotel and Tower.
Columbia College Chicago is known for its performing arts and communications programs.
During Chicago's rebuilding period, the world's first skyscraper was constructed in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.
Chicago is the third-largest media market in North America (after New York City and Los Angeles).
By the close of the nineteenth century, Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world and the largest of the cities that had not existed at the dawn of the century.
The first settler in Chicago, Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area’s first trading post.
A canal connects the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River, which runs to the west of the city.
Chicago is home to several other modern and jazz dance troupes, such as the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
Classical music offerings include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, recognized as one of the finest in the world, which performs at Symphony Center.
In 1986, Eigsti's company was reorganized and a joint venture, American Sunmelon, was entered into with SunWorld International and in the ensuing eleven years, seedless watermelon became a staple in supermarkets around the world.
Chicago State University and Northeastern Illinois University are other state universities in Chicago.
Chicago faces the common problems of cities with large immigrant and minority populations: Overcrowded schools in need of repairs, lack of adequate affordable housing, drug use, gangs.
The sound "Chicago" is the result of a French mis-transcription of the original sound.
During the mid-eighteenth century the Chicago area was inhabited primarily by Potawatomis, who took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox people.
Chicago is a midwestern city, located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan.
Located at the site of a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837.
The Chicago White Sox, of the American League, play in U.S. Cellular Field on the city's South Side.
The Joffrey Ballet and Chicago Festival Ballet perform in various venues, including the Harris Theater in Millenium Park.
The old stockyards neighborhood of Chicago was the birthplace of America's twentieth century phenomenon known as "Community Organizing."
The Illinois Institute of Art Chicago is known for its applied arts programs.
A flourishing independent rock music culture brought forth Chicago indie music.
The 1920s was a decade of prosperity that witnessed the building of large numbers of public high schools with gymnasiums.
Large swaths of Chicago's residential areas away from the lake are characterized by bungalows built either during the early twentieth century or after World War II.
Chicago is a major financial center with the second largest central business district in the U.S.
Chicago is the largest city in the state of Illinois and the largest in the Midwest.
Chicago is one of the largest hubs of passenger rail service in the nation.
Renowned Chicago theater companies include the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Goodman Theatre, and the Victory Gardens Theater.
Upscale shopping along the Magnificent Mile, thousands of restaurants, as well as Chicago's eminent architecture, continue to draw tourists.
Interspersed are 31 beaches in Chicago, the Lincoln Park Zoo, several bird sanctuaries, McCormick Place Convention Center, Navy Pier, Soldier Field, the Museum Campus, and the Jardine Water Purification Plant.
On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of 350, and within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000.
The majority of African Americans are located on Chicago’s South and West Sides.
In 1987, then U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett described the Chicago Public Schools as the "worst in the nation.
Several medical products and services companies are headquartered in the Chicago area, including Baxter International, Abbott Laboratories, and the Healthcare Financial Services division of General Electric.
Like many urban U.S. school districts, Chicago Public Schools suffered many problems throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, including overcrowding, under-funding, mismanagement, and a high dropout rate.
In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park.
Chicago has one of the largest concentrations of Italian Americans in the United States, with 500,000 living in the metropolitan area.
The city is the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (the Seventh District of the Federal Reserve).
The University of Illinois at Chicago is the city's largest university and features the nation's largest medical school.
Each of the big four television networks directly owns and operates stations in Chicago.
Chicago is also well known as the inspiration of some of Carl Sandburg's most notable literary achievements.
The Boeing Company, for example, relocated its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001.
The Chicago Stock Yards put Chicago on the map and made it a major business city.
Chicago in its first century was one of the fastest growing cities in the world.
Chicago has the third-largest South Asian population in the United States.
The government of the City of Chicago is divided into executive and legislative branches.
The Chicago metropolitan area has the second largest African American population, behind only New York City.
More than half the population of the state of Illinois lives in the Chicago metropolitan area.
Chicago is home to two Major League Baseball teams: The Chicago Cubs of the National League play on the North Side in Wrigley Field.
Chicago is the center of the Palestinian and Jordanian immigrant communities in the United States.
Chicago was once the capital of the railroad industry and until the 1960s the world's largest meatpacking facilities were at the Union Stock Yards.
Chicago attracted 44.17 million people in 2006 from around the nation and worlds.
The political environment in Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s allowed organized crime to flourish.
The name Chicago is the French rendering of the Miami-Illinois name shikaakwa, meaning “wild leek.” It was initially applied to the river and later came to denote the site of the present city.
The world-class School of the Art Institute of Chicago is well-known for fine arts programs.
The Museum Campus joins the southern section of Grant Park, which includes the renowned Art Institute of Chicago.
Chicago was named the fourth most important business center in the world in the MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index.
Many Amtrak long distance services originate from Chicago's Union Station, providing connections to New York, Seattle, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
The city also has a large community college system known as the City Colleges of Chicago.
The Oriental Institute, part of the University of Chicago, has an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern archaeological artifacts.
The snowiest winter ever recorded in Chicago was 1929–1930, with 114.2 inches of snow in total.
Chicago has the third largest gross metropolitan product in the nation—approximately $442 billion according to 2007 estimates.
Concern for social problems among Chicago’s lower classes led Jane Addams to be a co-founder of Hull House in 1889, the first of what were called settlement houses.
Washington Park is being considered as the primary site of the Olympic Stadium for the 2016 Summer Olympics if Chicago wins the bid.
The city is also a major convention destination; Chicago is third in the United States, behind Las Vegas and Orlando, as far as the number of conventions hosted annually.
Chicago and the surrounding areas also house many major brokerage firms and insurance companies, such as Allstate Corporation.
The Illinois Institute of Art Chicago is known for its applied arts programs.
The first settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable who built a farm at the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s. He left Chicago in 1800. In 1968, Point du Sable was honored at Pioneer Court as the city's founder and featured as a symbol.
Some of the many things Chicago is famous for are: Chicago-style hot dogs, Chicago-style (deep dish) pizza, Maxwell Street Polish Sausage, jazz music, and 1920s gangsters like Al Capone. Chicago is also known for interesting architecture like the Sears Tower, many museums, and many loyal sports fans.
The name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the Miami-Illinois word Shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir.
It's both at once.” Since Chicago had previously used its lake breezes to promote itself as a summertime vacation spot, Popik and others conclude that the “Windy City” name may have started as a reference to weather and then taken on a double meaning as the city's profile rose in the late-19th century.Mar 2, 2016
My List of City Nicknames:CityNicknameChicago, IllinoisBig TownChicagoCity of Big ShouldersChicago, IllinoisHog Butcher for the WorldChicagoSlaughterhouse to the World227 more rows
“If you had always assumed that Chicago earned its nickname as the Windy City from the chilly gusts coming off Lake Michigan, you would be wrong. The city is windy, according to most local legends, because of the hot air bellowing from politicians.”Dec 22, 2008
The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City". The earliest known reference to the "Windy City" was actually to Green Bay in 1856. The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati.
Chi. ... Word History: The name Chicago is first recorded in 1688 in a French document, where it appears as Chigagou, an Algonquian word meaning "onion field." In explanation of this name, the document states that wild onion or garlic grew profusely in the area.