Portal:Illinois

Promotional picture from the 1924 Bears team.

The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL).

The Bears have won nine Professional American Football league championships (eight NFL Championships and Super Bowl XX), trailing only the Green Bay Packers, who have twelve. The Bears have the most enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame with 26 members.

The club was founded in Decatur, Illinois, in 1919 and moved to Chicago in 1921. The team played home games at Wrigley Field on Chicago's North Side through the 1970 season. With the exception of the 2002 season, they have played their home games at Chicago's Soldier Field every year since 1971. The stadium is located next to Lake Michigan and was recently remodeled in a modernization that has attempted to bring stadium amenities expected by today's fans to a historic Chicago building. The team has a fierce, longstanding rivalry with the Packers, whom they have played in over 170 games. (Read more...)

Portrait of Hay by John Singer Sargent, 1902

John Hay (October 8, 1838 – July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Hay's highest office was United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also an author and biographer and wrote poetry and other literature throughout much of his life.

Born in Indiana to an anti-slavery family that moved to Illinois when he was young, Hay showed great potential, and his family sent him to Brown University. After graduation in 1858, Hay read law in his uncle's office in Springfield, Illinois, adjacent to that of Lincoln. Hay worked for Lincoln's successful presidential campaign and became one of his private secretaries at the White House. Throughout the American Civil War, Hay was close to Lincoln and stood by his deathbed after the President was shot at Ford's Theatre. In addition to his other literary works, Hay co-authored with John George Nicolay a multi-volume biography of Lincoln that helped shape the assassinated president's historical image.

As Secretary of State, Hay was responsible for negotiating the Open Door Policy, which kept China open to trade with all countries on an equal basis, with international powers. By negotiating the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty with the United Kingdom, the (ultimately unratified) Hay–Herrán Treaty with Colombia, and finally the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the newly-independent Republic of Panama, Hay also cleared the way for the building of the Panama Canal. (Read more...)

• ... that a mock funeral was held outside company headquarters during the 1986–1987 John Deere strike in which 700 union workers ceremoniously burned a coffin and a Christmas tree covered in company hats?
• ... that landscape architect Harriet Pattison collaborated with her lover Louis Kahn on the design of Four Freedoms Park and the grounds of the Kimbell Art Museum?
• ... that according to campus legend, the English Building at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is haunted by the ghost of a female student who drowned in the building's pool?
• ... that 1980's Space Encounters video game was the first that Midway Games offered in their "mini myte" arcade game cabinet?
• ... that astronaut James McDivitt saw a UFO during his first spaceflight?
• 
  ... that distance education in Chicago Public Schools in 1937 took place via radio broadcasts (pictured) during school closures that were spurred by a polio outbreak?

• November 17, 2021:
  
  The John Deere strike (pictured) ends after more than a month when workers approve a third contract offer.
• November 14, 2021: The last department store in Illinois belonging to Hoffman Estates-based Sears closes in Woodfield Mall.
• November 4, 2021: J. B. Pritzker speaks alongside Governors David Ige, Kate Brown, and Jay Inslee at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
• October 26, 2021: Workers for Chicago-based McDonald's in ten cities go on strike to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment in the workplace.
• October 18, 2021: The Chicago Police Department reports that more than a third of its officers have failed to meet a deadline for reporting whether they have received a COVID-19 vaccine.
• October 17, 2021: The Chicago Sky win the 2021 WNBA Finals, defeating the Phoenix Mercury in four games to win the team's first-ever championship.
• October 14, 2021: 10,000 UAW workers go on strike (pictured) in Midwestern plants of Moline-based John Deere.
• October 12, 2021: The Chicago White Sox lose the American League Division Series to Houston in four games.
• October 11, 2021: David Card, former professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, is awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.