Famous Chicagoans

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the 1st First Lady elected to the U.S. Senate. Clinton was born in Chicago, but currently represents the state of New York.

Walt Disney, creator of the cartoon character Mickey Mouse, was born in Chicago on December 5, 1901.

Tempestt Bledsoe, actress famous for her role as Vanessa on the sitcom "The Cosby Show," was born in Chicago.

Harrison Ford, popular actor and also People Magazine's 1998 "Sexiest Man Alive," is a native Chicagoan.

Other famous Chicagoans:
Dorothy Hamill, figure skater
Quincy Jones, musician
Pat Sajak, game-show host
Shel Silverstein, author
John and Joan Cusack, actors
Michael Ian Black, actor/writer/director/producer

Did You Know?

• The world's longest street is Chicago's Western Avenue.
• The Chicago Post Office at 433 W. Van Buren is the only postal facility in the world which you can drive a car through.
• The term "Jazz" was coined in Chicago in 1914. The city's native musicians included band leader Benny Goodman and drummer Gene Krupa.
• Chicago is home to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is one of the last free zoos.
• Chicago is the favorite road city for big-league baseball players, according to Sports Illustrated magazine's 2003 Player Survey.
• Chicago is home to the Harold Washington Library, the world's largest public library.
• Hugh Hefner started the publication of "Playboy" at 6052 S. Harper St. in Chicago in 1953.
  

First time for everything

• The Adler Planetarium in Chicago was the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere.
• The University of Chicago became the site of the world's first atomic reaction.
• The first Ferris wheel made its debut in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
• In 1994, the first game and the opening ceremonies of the first World Cup Soccer championship ever to be hosted in the U.S. were held in Chicago.

Other Chicago Firsts and Inventions:
Steel frame skyscraper, 1885
Softball, 1887
Elevated railway, 1892
Zipper, 1896
Daytime TV soap operas, 1949
McDonald's Restaurant, 1955
Electric iron and cooking range
Grain reaper
Reactor to produce electricity from atomic energy
bifocal contact lens
winding watch

Food Tidbits

• Nabisco, the world's largest cookie and cracker factory, is located in Chicago (7300 S. Kedzie Avenue).
• The world's largest ice cream cone factory, Keebler, is also located in Chicago (10839 S. Langley Avenue).
• Brach and Brock, located at 401 N. Cicero Avenue in Chicago, is the world's largest candy factory.
• The Taste of Chicago is the world's largest free outdoor food festival. It attracted over 3.5 million people in 2003.

Famous Buildings

The first of Marshall Field's Clocks was installed at the corner of Washington and State Streets on November 26, 1897. The cast bronze clock rests some 17.5 feet above the sidewalk and weighs a hefty 7.75 tons.

Tribune Tower, home of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, has exterior walls that are embedded with authentic pieces of famous buildings including Westminster Abbey, the Alamo, Hamlet's castle, the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, Fort Sumter and the Arc de Triomphe.

Under instructions from William Wrigley, architects designed the Wrigley Building to look like a "luscious birthday cake." It also became the first air-conditioned office building in 1946.

Chicago's McCormick Place has the largest amount of exhibit space of any convention center in the country at 2.2 million square feet.

Chicago by the numbers
54 museums
More than 200 theatres
Approximately 15,000 restaurants in the metropolitan area and 5,500 in the central business district
Three of the world's tallest buildings including: The Sears Tower - 1,450 feet The Amoco Building - 1,136 feet The John Hancock Building - 1,127 feet
77 neighborhoods
31 miles of lakefront
550 parks
15 miles of bathing beaches
More than 200 annual parades

Larger Than Life

• The William Wrigley, Jr. Company is the world's largest gum manufacturer, producing more than 20 million packages a day.
• In 1997 The Field Museum purchased Sue, the largest, most complete and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex ever discovered.
• The Wild Reef Exhibit at the John G. Shedd Aquarium is one of the largest and most diverse shark habitats in North America. The aquarium is the largest indoor aquarium in the world.
• The Art Institute of Chicago holds the largest collections of Impressionist paintings in the world outside of the Louvre in Paris.
• The largest Latino cultural institution in the nation is Chicago's Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum.

Movies filmed in Chicago
A League of Their Own
Bad Boys
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Home Alone I, II, III
Miracle on 34th St.
Ocean's 11
Stir of Echoes
The Fugitive
The Negotiator
When Harry Met Sally

sources:
Chicago Historical Society, 2003
The Great Chicago Trivia and Fact Book, 1996
John G. Shedd Aquarium
www.ci.chi.il.us/PlanAndDevelop/ChgoFacts/Fun.html, 2003
www.corsinet.com/chicago/chicagot.html, 2003
www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Arena/4336/cityfact.htm, 2003
www.soccerhall.org, 2003