Chicago is by far the largest city of the U.S. state of Illinois. It is located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, near the southern end of the lake.
Rarely has there been a more natural location for a city. With Lake Michigan as a waterway, Chicago is the focal point of America's Midwest. Trains arrive from all directions as ships arrive on the lake, so that goods, raw materials and, livestock are manufactured or processed and then transferred from one to another. It soon grew into America's largest city, after New York, and is still the country's largest city after New York and Los Angeles.The advantages that those two cities have is their more direct ocean ports, but no other city has Chicago's central location to the agricultural heartland, combined with it's access to the Great Lakes as a waterway. There is also a canal, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, that gave ships on the Mississippi River access to Chicago. Although that canal is now more likely to be in the news for the danger of allowing Asian Carp into the Great Lakes.
That central location was reflected in the late Twentieth Century in that Chicago's main airport, O'Hare, was for decades the busiest airport in the world. The passengers on it's flights were not all destined for Chicago but the city's location made it's airport ideal as the main hub for changing flights.
Downtown Chicago, referred to as "The Loop", is centered around the Chicago River. The construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal reversed the direction of the river so that it now brings water in from Lake Michigan, rather than flowing outward into the lake.
One of the symbols of the city is the famous sign on the Chicago Theater. The following scenes begin there.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
The Art Deco style stone building in the first of the following views is the Merchandise Mart. This was once the largest building in the world and was later owned by the Kennedy Family.
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Chicago's version of Coney Island is Navy Pier. The black building in the skyline that is shaped like an elongated, but unfinished, Pyramid, with dual antennas on the top, is the John Hancock Building.
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Just north of The Loop, along North Michigan Avenue, is the Magnificent Mile, and some more views of the tall buildings.
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Further north from downtown is the neighborhood known as Gold Coast.
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Chicago's version of Central Park is Grant Park. 1968 was a year of turmoil in the U.S. There was racial riots in the cities, violent protests against the Vietnam War and the rise of the counterculture, centered around the Hippies. The Democrat National Convention was held in Chicago.
The Democrat Party, one of America's two major political parties, was generally preferred by the counterculture and the anti-war movement. But the party was in as much turmoil as the country as a whole. President Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat, and was eligible to run for reelection in 1968, but he announced that he did not want the nomination. This opened the way for Robert ( Bobby ) Kennedy, brother of the popular president John F. Kennedy who had been assassinated, to seek the nomination. But he had also been assassinated, earlier in 1968, as had Martin Luther King, which had inflamed the racial tension.
As the Democrat National Convention was going on, to decide on a candidate for the upcoming election, there was a massive counterculture and anti-war rally in Grant Park. The Chicago Police were, to put it mildly, not gentle in dealing with the protesters. Some people claim that the rally's display of disturbing disorder was what cost the Democrats the 1968 election. Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson's vice-president, got the Democrat nomination but lost to Republican Richard Nixon on election day.
Not long after this, one of the greatest bands of the rock music era emerged. It was named for the Chicago Transit Authority, the corporation that operates Chicago's buses and trains. How often does a transit authority get a band named for it? Later, the name of the band was shortened to simply "Chicago".
A little bit earlier, there had been another prominent band that had been named for the fountain in Grant Park. It is called Buckingham Fountain, and the band was "The Buckinghams". Their peak year was 1967. The following scenes begin at Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park.
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Many major companies have their headquarters in Chicago. Boeing relocated there, much to the disappointment of Seattle. The first of the following views are of the "Hamburger University", where McDonald's trains it's franchisees at it's main headquarters.
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In October of 1871, much of the city was destroyed in the Chicago Fire. The closely-packed buildings of what is now the central part of the city were made mostly of wood. The weather recently had been very dry. This was before the days when most people would have electricity. Lanterns operated on oil or kerosene. Most cooking was done with an open flame. One evening, the inevitable happened.
The legend is that a Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocked over a lantern that started the fire. But a legend is all that it is. Mrs. O'Leary has since been completely exonerated.
Artifacts from the fire are occasionally still being found. I recall reading that some digging was being done when a mysterious mass of metal was found. Closer examination revealed that it was a clump of nails that had been melted together by the heat in 1871.
Anyway, it is known where the fire started and it was decided that it would be a good location for the training academy of the Chicago Fire Dept. The first of the following scenes begin there. The stepped black building, with the dual antennas on top, is the Willis Tower, formerly the Sears Tower. Like a pyramid remaining from a once-great civilization, this serves as a reminder of what an important company Sears once was.
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The sculpture in the center of the first of the following views marks the spot, at the University of Chicago, where the first controlled nuclear reaction took place, in 1942. This first nuclear reactor was massive, and extremely crude, but it worked and demonstrated a chain reaction.
It had to be so massive because, as of yet, there was no enrichment of uranium, separating out the fissionable isotope 235 atoms, so that only one of every about 140 uranium atoms was actually fissionable. Many thousands of blocks of graphite, which is actually the "lead" in pencils, were assembled as the moderator, to slow down neutrons.
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Finally, in the northern part of the city, one of the most historic and best-known sports stadiums in America is Wrigley Field. This is the area around there.
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