Page Toppers

• Back Home in Illinois
• I Wish I Was in Peoria
  (song by Lu Watters)
• Land of Lincoln
• My Kind of Town
  (song by Frank Sinatra)
• Sidewalks of Chicago
  (song by Merle Haggard)
• South Side of Chicago
  (song by Vic Damone)
• Sweet Home Chicago
  (song by the Blues Brothers)
• Windy City Blues
  (song by Marshall Tucker Band)

Symbols

• Nicknames: Prairie State; Corn State; Garden of the West
• Slogan: Land of Lincoln
• Motto: State Sovereignty, National Union
• Song: Illinois (words by Charles H. Chamberlin, music by Archibald Johnston)
• Folk Dance: Square Dance
• Animal: White-tailed Deer
• Bird: Cardinal
• Fish: Bluegill
• Insect: Monarch Butterfly
• Tree: White Oak
• Flower: Native Violet
• Prairie Grass: Big Bluestem
• Fossil: The Tully Monster (Tullimonstrum gregarium)
• Mineral: Fluorite
• Snack Food: Popcorn
• Pro Sports Teams: Chicago Bulls (men's basketball), Chicago Bears (football), Chicago White Sox (baseball), Chicago Cubs (baseball), Chicago Blackhawks (hockey), Chicago Fire (soccer)

Facts About Illinois

• Capital: Springfield
• Residents: Illinoisians, Illinoisans, Illinoians
• State Name Origin: from an Algonquin word meaning "tribe of superior men"
• Admitted to Statehood: 3 Dec 1818
• Order of Admission: 21st state
• Length: 390 miles
• Width: 210 miles
• Area: 57,914 square miles
• Size Rank: 25
• Number of Counties: 102
• Streams and Rivers: 87,110 miles
• Geographic Center: 28 miles NE of Springfield at Chestnut in Logan Co.
• Mean Elevation: 600 feet
• Highest Point: Charles Mound, 1,235 feet
• Lowest Point: Mississippi River, 279 feet
• Official Language: English (as of 1969)
• Agricultural Products: food products, corn, soybeans, hogs
• Commercial Products: industrial machinery, metal products, electronic equipment, oil, coal
• Average Annual Rainfall: 33.3 inches
• Average Winter Low Temperature: 10 degrees
• Record Low Temperature: -36 degrees (5 Jan 1999 Congerville)
• Average Summer High Temperature: 87 degrees
• Record High Temperature: 117 degrees (14 Jul 1954 East St. Louis)
• More information about Illinois

Chicago

• Chicago Express
• Chicago is an October sort of city even in spring. (Nelson Algren 1984)
• Chicago is My Kind of Town
• Chicago on Parade
• Chicago seems a big city instead of merely a large place. (A. J. Liebling)
• City of a Century
• How Chicago got started:
  A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go West.'
  (Richard Jeni)
• I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America. (Sarah Bernhardt)
• I have struck a city -- a real city -- and they call it Chicago...Having seen it, I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages. (Rudyard Kipling)
• I'll Meet You in Chicago at the Fair
• In Old Chicago
• It's a Way They Have in Chicago
• I've reported murders, scandals, marriages, premieres and national political conventions. I've been amused, intrigued, outraged, enthralled and exasperated by Chicago. And I've come to love this American giant, viewing it as the most misunderstood, most underrated city in the world. (Irv Kupcinet, 1941)
• It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago-she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. (Mark Twain)
• My first day in Chicago, September 4, 1983. I set foot in this city, and just walking down the street, it was like roots, like the motherland. I knew I belonged here. (Oprah Winfrey)
• That astonishing Chicago...a city where they are always rubbing the lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. (Mark Twain)

Items of Interest

• Kaskaskia Island is the only part of Illinois that is west of the Mississippi River.
• The world's first metal-frame skyscraper was built in Chicago in 1885. It was 10 stories high.
• The Sears Tower, Chicago is the tallest building on the North American continent.
• Illinois was the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery.
• Des Plaines is home to the first McDonald's.
• The Chicago Water Tower and Pumping Station was the only buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire.
• The ice cream "sundae" was named in Evanston. The town fathers, prompted by the churches, passed an ordinance prohibiting the sale of ice cream sodas on Sunday. Drug store operators circumvented the law by serving ice cream with the syrup but without the soda. Objections then was made to naming a dish after the Sabbath so the spelling was eventually changed to "sundae".
• The first round silo was constructed on a farm in Spring Grove.
• Illinois sells the highest number of personalized license plates of any other state.
• In 1905, president of the Chicago Cubs filed charges against a fan in the bleachers for catching a fly ball and keeping it.
• The trains that pass through Chicago's underground freight tunnels daily would extend over ten miles total in length.
• The Chicago Public Library is the world's largest public library with a collection of more than 2 million books.
• The Chicago Post Office at 433 West Van Buren is the only postal facility in the world you can drive a car through.
• The Chicago River is dyed green on Saint Patrick's Day.
• The world's largest cookie and cracker factory, where Nabisco made 16 billion Oreos in 1995, is in Chicago.

Illinois From A - Z

This is a great ABC list about Illinois

Notable Natives

Some of these people were born here, others just lived a part of their life in the state.

• Franklin Pierce Adams - author - Chicago)
• Jane Addams - social worker (Cedarville)
• Gillian Anderson - actress (Chicago)
• Mary Astor - actress (Quincy)
• Jack Benny - comedian (Chicago)
• Black Hawk Sauk - native American leader
• Harry A. Blackmun - supreme court justice (Nashville)
• Ray Bradbury - author (Waukegan)
• William Jennings Bryan - orator, politician (Salem)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - author (Chicago)
• Gower Champion - choreographer (Geneva)
• John Chancellor - television commentator (Chicago)
• Raymond Chandler - writer (Chicago)
• Jimmy Connors - tennis champion (East St. Louis)
• Cindy Crawford - model (DeKalb)
• Richard J. Daley - mayor (Chicago)
• Miles Davis (1926-1991) - jazz trumpeter, musician (Alton)
• Walt Disney (1901- ) - cartoonist, founder of Walt Disney World and Disneyland theme parks (Chicago)
• Walt Disney - film animator, producer (Chicago)
• John Dos Passos - author (Chicago)
• James T. Farrell - author (Chicago)
• Harrison Ford - actor (Chicago)
• Betty Friedan - feminist (Peoria)
• Jennie Garth - actress (Urbana)
• Benny Goodman - musician (Chicago)
• James Gould Cozzens - author (Chicago)
• John Gunther - author (Chicago)
• George E. Hale - astronomer (Chicago)
• Dorothy Hamill - ice skater (Chicago)
• John M. Harlan - supreme court justice (Chicago)
• Ernest Hemingway - author (Oak Park)
• Charlton Heston - actor (Evanston)
• Wild Bill Hickok - scout (Troy Grove)
• William Holden - actor (O'Fallon)
• Rock Hudson - actor (Winnetka)
• Burl Ives - singer (Hunt City)
• James Jones - author (Robinson)
• Quincy Jones - composer (Chicago)
• Walter Kerr - drama critic (Evanston)
• Abraham Lincoln - U.S. president, attorney in Springfield, IL legislator (buried near Springfield)
• Archibald MacLeish - poet (Glencoe)
• David Mamet - playwright (Chicago)
• Robert A. Millikan - physicist (Morrison)
• Sherrill Milnes - baritone (Downers Grove)
• Bill Murray - actor, comedian (Wilmette)
• John G. Neihardt - poet (Sharpsburg)
• Bob Newhart - actor, comedian (Chicago)
• Frank Norris - author (Chicago)
• William S. Paley - broadcast executive (Chicago)
• Drew Pearson - columnist (Evanston)
• Richard Pryor - comedian, actor (Peoria)
• Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004) - 40th U.S. president, actor (Tampico)
• Carl Sandburg - poet (Galesburg)
• Sam Shepard - playwright (Fort Sheridan)
• William L. Shirer - author, historian (Chicago)
• McLean Stevenson - actor (Bloomington)
• Preston Sturges - director (Chicago)
• Gloria Swanson - actress (Chicago)
• Clyde W. Tombaugh - astronomer (Streator)
• Carl Van Doren - writer, educator (Hope)
• Melvin Van Peebles - playwright (Chicago)
• Irving Wallace - author (Chicago)
• Alfred Wallenstein - conductor (Chicago)
• Raquel Welch - actress (Chicago)
• Florenz Ziegfield - theatrical producer (Chicago)

You know you are from Illinois if...

• When you say "the city" - you mean Chicago.
• You think ethanol makes your truck "run a lot better."
• You know what's knee-high by the Fourth of July. Stores don't have bags; they have sacks.
• All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, or animal.
• You think of the major four food groups as beef, pork, soddie, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows.
• You know what "cow tipping" and "snipe hunting" is.
• You spent a good deal of your high school nights hanging out at DQ.
• "Vacation" means going to Six Flags.
• You don't pronounce the "S" in Illinois like the rest of the world.
• Whenever anyone mentions going out for steak, the first place you think of is Ponderosa.
• You know more than one person with a septic tank.
• You pronounce the invisible "R" in the word wash.
• Down south to you means Kentucky
• You have no problem spelling or pronouncing "Des Plaines"
• You think Chicago is a completely different state from Illinois.
• You know the answer to the question, "Is this Heaven?"
• You know where all the Yoders live
• Detassling was your first job
• You've ever been on a "Geode Hunt"
• Your idea of a really great tenderloin is when the meat is twice as big as the bun and accompanied only by ketchup and a dill pickle slice
• You learn your pickup will run without a muffler
• When asked how your trip was to any foreign, exotic place, you say, "It was different."
• You consider being called a "Pork Queen" an honor
• People from other states love to hear you say "Illinois" and other words with "Os" in them.
• Your dream vacation is a trip to Rock Home Gardens
• You drink "pop."
• You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Illinois.