ILIllinois Fun Facts

Chicago reversed a river. Until 1900 the Chicago River carried the city's sewage straight into Lake Michigan, which was also its drinking supply. Engineers cut a canal to the Des Plaines River and flipped the current so the river now runs away from the lake and toward the Mississippi, one of the largest earthmoving jobs ever attempted by a city.

Facts most people get wrong

• Chicago is not the windiest US city. The nickname came from boastful local politicians and boosters in the 1800s, sharpened during the fight to host the 1893 World's Fair. Chicago does not crack the top ten for average wind speed.
• Chicago is not Illinois. The city holds about 2.7 million people, the state about 12.8 million, and the capital, Springfield, has fewer than 115,000 residents.
• Lincoln was not born in Illinois. He was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky in 1809, grew up in Indiana, and arrived in Illinois at age 21 in 1830. Land of Lincoln refers to his career, not his birth.
• Deep dish is not what Chicago eats. The everyday local pizza is thin crust tavern style, cut into squares. Deep dish dates to the 1940s and is ordered mostly by visitors.
• The Sears Tower has been Willis Tower since 2009, and it lost the world's tallest title in 1998 after 25 years. Nobody in Chicago uses the new name.
• Route 66 did not start somewhere vague in the Midwest. It began at Adams Street and Michigan Avenue in Chicago and ran 2,448 miles to Santa Monica.

Records and firsts

• The first building carried on a steel frame, the Home Insurance Building, went up in Chicago in 1885 at ten stories, which is why the skyscraper is an Illinois invention.
• The Ferris wheel debuted at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. built it 264 feet tall, and it could carry 2,160 riders at once.
• The first self sustaining nuclear chain reaction happened on December 2, 1942 under the west stands of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.
• Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines on April 15, 1955, the store that turned a California drive-in into a global chain.
• Illinois grows more pumpkins than any other state, and most of the canned pumpkin sold in America is processed in Morton.
• Illinois became the 21st state on December 3, 1818.

Geography that surprises

• Illinois stretches about 390 miles north to south, far enough that Cairo, at the southern tip, sits farther south than Richmond, Virginia.
• The lowest point in the state, roughly 279 feet, is at Cairo where the Ohio meets the Mississippi. The highest, Charles Mound at 1,235 feet, sits on private farmland near the Wisconsin line and is open to visitors only a few weekends a year.
• Illinois has 63 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and a water boundary with Michigan out in the lake, so it borders a state it does not touch by land.
• Five states share a land border: Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana. The Mississippi, Ohio and Wabash rivers draw most of that outline.

Where the name comes from

Illinois is a French spelling of the name the French applied to the Illinois or Illiniwek confederation they met in the upper Mississippi valley. Linguists trace the word back through Ojibwe to a Miami Illinois term meaning roughly he speaks the ordinary way.

The final s is silent because the spelling is French, not English, and that trips up newcomers on day one. The same French layer left Des Plaines, Bourbonnais and Joliet on the map, though local pronunciation has drifted a long way from Paris.

Quick stats

• Population: over 10 million
• Area rank: #25 of 50
• Admitted: 1818
• Capital: Springfield
• Largest city: Chicago
• Time zone: Central
• Nickname: Prairie State
• Electoral votes: 19

Bordering states

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