November 2 Illinois History Minute

The comic strip “Little Orphan Annie” made its first appearance in the Chicago Tribune on this day in 1924, three months after it premiered in the Tribune’s sister newspaper, the New York Daily News. Kankakee-born cartoonist Harold Grey created the strip, which later inspired the musical “Annie”.

Methanogens (meh-THAN-o-jens) are methane-producing microscopic organisms found in the stomachs of cows, sheep and other farm animals. They play a role in global climate change.  On this day in 1977, Carl Woese (Woze) and other scientists at the University of Illinois announced that a study of methanogens’ genetic and biochemical makeup showed they were not bacteria as previously thought, or a type of plant or animal. Instead, methanogens are part of a newly identified domain of life, now called Archaea (ar-KAY-uh).