Illinois Trivia & Tidbits - Page 16

Looking for Illinois trivia? Try our list Illinois little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

The state fossil is the oblong-shaped tully monster. More than 100 of the soft-bodied marine animals that lived 280 to 340 million years ago have been found in Illinois.

first appeared: 6/3/2001

Playwright, author, and movie star Sam Shepard was born Nov. 5, 1943, at Fort Sheridan, an army base near Highwood (pop. 5,196). Besides writing 45 plays, Shepard has appeared in 16 movies, including The Right Stuff.

first appeared: 5/27/2001

A cemetery of Confederate soldiers who were prisoners of war during the Civil War is located on Arsenal Island in the city of Rock Island (pop. 38,389).

first appeared: 5/20/2001

Charles Walgreen was born Oct. 8, 1873, near Galesburg (pop. 32,888). A registered pharmacist, he founded the drugstore chain in 1909 that bears his name.

first appeared: 5/13/2001

Lake Forest (pop. 19,751) is the home of Brunswick Corp., which in 1999 sold $3.5 billion of recreational equipment, including boats, outboard motors, exercise machines, and bowling equipment. The company began in 1845 when John Brunswick made billiard tables in Ohio.

first appeared: 5/6/2001

When the Department of Veterans Affairs replaced the Veterans Administration in 1988, Edward J. Derwinski—who was born in Chicago and served in Congress for 24 years—was named its first secretary by President George Bush.

first appeared: 4/29/2001

Visitors spent about $21 million in Illinois in 1999, ranking it fifth in the nation in revenue derived from travelers.

first appeared: 4/22/2001

Bryant Cottage, where Abraham Lincoln met with incumbent U.S. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas and agreed on July 29, 1858, to a series of seven public debates, is in Bement (pop. 1,745), not Danville. Thanks to Roberta Wilson of Fillmore, Ill., and Elsie Spriggs of Carthage, Mo., for catching our mistake.

first appeared: 4/15/2001

The College of Du Page in Glen Ellyn (pop. 26,789) had the fourth-highest enrollment—29,888 students—among the nation’s community colleges during the 1999-2000 school year.

first appeared: 4/8/2001

Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest south of Harrisburg (pop. 9,468) contains 300-million-year-old rock formations with names such as Camel Rock and Noah’s Ark.

first appeared: 4/1/2001

With 4 million visitors a year, Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago is the most visited zoo in the United States and the nation’s oldest. It opened in 1868 with a pair of swans and now has more than 1,000 animals.

first appeared: 3/25/2001

In 1949, Theodara Smafield of Rockford won the first Pillsbury Bakeoff by getting bread dough to rise by wrapping it in a tea towel that was submerged in warm water. She called the method the no-knead water rising twist.

first appeared: 3/18/2001

On Memorial Day 2001, Streamwood (pop. 35,746) will unveil a memorial to the 4,000 dogs used by American military forces during the Vietnam War. The memorial, with statues of a German shepherd and its handler, was initiated by teenager Jennifer Pfannkuche and VFW Post 5151.

first appeared: 3/11/2001

Patricia Roberts Harris, the first African-American woman to hold a cabinet position when she became President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977, was born in Mattoon (pop. 18,124) on May 31, 1924.

first appeared: 3/4/2001

Astronaut Scott Altman was born in Lincoln (pop. 15,297) on Aug. 15, 1959. As a naval aviator, he has amassed 4,000 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft and piloted the space shuttle twice, April 17-May 3, 1998, and Sept. 8-20, 2000.

first appeared: 2/25/2001

A natural formation known as Cave in Rock once was used by pirates who preyed upon Ohio River travelers. The site is now a state park near the village of Cave in Rock (pop. 387).

first appeared: 2/18/2001

In 1874, Joseph Glidden invented double-strand barbed-wire in De Kalb (pop. 39,329), making it practical for the first time to separate open ranges into areas for grazing and raising crops.

first appeared: 2/11/2001

—Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet, who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, The Spanish Prisoner, and Speed the Plow, was born in Flossmoor (pop. 9,464) in 1947.

first appeared: 2/4/2001

—Speed skater Bonnie Blair, winner of five Olympic gold medals, moved to Champaign with her family in 1966 when she was 2 years old.

first appeared: 1/28/2001

Lincoln (pop. 15,257) has the distinction of being the only town named for Abraham Lincoln before he was elected president in 1860.

first appeared: 1/21/2001

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