Illinois History Minutes

It’s June 9, and movies talked on this day in 1922 at the University of Illinois ---- when electrical engineering professor Joseph Tykociner showed off his new sound-on-film technology

It’s June 8, the day that architect Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867. While he grew up in Wisconsin, Wright’s career as an architect began in Illinois.

It’s June 7 and a politician who tried to get slavery legalized in Illinois was born on this day in 1794. Elias Kent Kane, the namesake of Kane County, was a delegate to Illinois’ first constitutional convention in 1818. There, the future senator was part of a faction that lobbied unsuccessfully for language permitting slavery in the new state.

It’s June 6, and writer George Fitch was born this week in the town of Galva in 1877. Fitch was a columnist for several newspapers and magazines and served in the Illinois House. He’s best remembered for short stories he wrote about Old Siwash, a fictional college campus based on his alma mater, Knox College in Galesburg.

It’s June 3, and we’re one day away from the birthday of Robert Earl Hughes, who lived most of his life in the little town of Fishhook in Pike County --- although he was born in Missouri in 1926. The Guinness Book of World Records lists Hughes as the heaviest person on record able to walk unassisted, with a confirmed weight of one thousand forty-one pounds.

It’s June Second, and on this day in 1863, a military detachment from Camp Douglas in Chicago seized the offices of the Chicago Times, a Democratic newspaper bitterly opposed to President Lincoln and his handling of the Civil War. General Ambrose Burnside gave the order.

It’s June 1, the day that politician William Michael McKinley was born in 1879. He’s not the William McKinley who became president. William M. McKinley was a Chicago Democrat who became Speaker of the Illinois House for a term in 1913. He played a key role in passing a women’s suffrage bill making Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi where women could cast a ballot for president.

It’s May 31st.Lloyd Quarterman, born on this day in 1918, was one of just a half-dozen Black researchers to work on the Manhattan Project that produced the first nuclear weapons during World War Two.

Today is Memorial Day, a day for mourning those who were killed while serving in the U. S. armed forces.

It’s May 27th, the day that Wild Bill Hickok was born on a farm near what is now Table Grove in LaSalle County in 1837.