Talk:Great Chicago Fire

message: Does this deserve a reference here? The name clearly directly comes from the football team, but the Great Fire is the ultimate link (both ahve been alluded to in the show's scripts)--MartinUK (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: The TV drama series [[Chicago Fire]]

message: The number of casualties given in this article is lower than in the article about the incident itself. CalJW 06:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Iroqouis Theatre Fire

message: Why are references to SF writer Patrick O'Leary being redirected here?  I see mention of "O'Leary" but not a single "Patrick".
:At one time there was an article on Patrick O'Leary, who was married to Catherine O'Leary, but someone deleted that article and made it redirect to this page.Shsilver 14:36, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirection 

message: Any serious researcher concerned with the likely start of the Chicago Fire needs to read Chicago Tribune reporter Anthony DeBartolo's 2 feature stories on the subject. There's good evidence that the fire started when a craps game, often held in the O'Leary barn, got out of hand. The stories concern a man named Louis M. Cohn who admitted to being there. You'll find DeBartolo's research here: www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html
:Just because DiBartolo has some evidence which has convinced you, doesn't mean it is definite and other versions of the origin should be included, along with caveats about them.  You have claimed only Cohn has confessed, which is patently false (his confession, if it exists, is lost and Sullivan also confessed).  Please stop blanking the information in this article. Shsilver 13:31, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm aware you're the reporter and, in general, I respect your work.  I'm sorry I misspelled your name and please note that Wikipedia does have a policy regarding personal attacks (I could just as easily claim that your misspelling of the word visible has some importance, which, of course, it doesn't).  Furthermore, Wikipedia is not a place for either original research (which you provide in your articles which you've linked to multiple times in multiple places).  If you look through the history of the page, you'll note that nowhere do I claim that Sullivan started the fire, merely that he is considered as a possible source.  And yes, I have read Bales's work. Once you brought up Cohn, again, if you look at the history, you'll see that I incorporated that claim in with other possible culprits (Sullivan, the silly cow story) and even added a stub-article about Cohn to wikipedia.  Wikipedia is also not a place for advocacy, your forthcoming book, newspaper or historical journal articles are the place for that.  Finally, you can sign your posts on a talk page with four tildes.Shsilver 13:27, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

text: And your reason for continuously pulling down information about the Chicago City Council's activities, which did happen, even if you personally disagree with their conclusions?  Similarly, you have a long history of removing all references to Sullivan's possible involvement, even though there is argument for it (despite your own views).  Finally,  since you refer to Mr. Bales as an amateur historian, I presume we should include the same appelation for you.Shsilver 16:51, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: NPOV and all that, is it a workable solution to cover both sides and cite sources? --Kizor 00:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: *Smacks head* Apologies for re-adding the city council reference. Repeatedly. Lacking access to the resolution, I fact-checked from some secondary sources that apparently were faulty. Should've cited, now that I think about it... Incidentally, --~~~~ can be used to sign comments on talk pages like this one has been. There's a bit less reason without a registered username, but it at least lets others easily know who's speaking. --Kizor 00:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins of the Fire 

message: Pål Jensen (talk) 08:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: How about setting a redirect page at Great Fire of Chicago? When I looked for the article originally, I typed that in and it came back with no results. 24.50.211.226 16:03, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  GilliamJF 18:31, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirect Suggestion

message: These sentences seem a bit odd:
:"The fire department was alerted when the fire was still small. When the blaze got bigger, the guard realized that there actually was a new fire and sent firefighters, but in the wrong direction."
This implies, but does not state, that firefighters were initially not sent.
It also implies there were other fires at the same time, but that is not mentioned elsewhere in this article.
I don't know the actual facts, so I can't improve the wording.  Benthatsme (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spread of the blaze 

message: A number of comments are obviously spam (tip: do a search for 'aids')
Which template does one use to flag the article as containing individual nonsense sentences while not condemning the article as a whole? I read the vandalism guide, but it only suggested reverting and warning the user. I have neither time nor interest to do this, and want to flag the article for others to take action only.
For lack of a clear instruction I included the test2 tag. It's probably not the appropriate one, but there you go for not providing immediately accessible guidelines for infrequent Wiki contributors like me...  ;-) 213.112.249.100 21:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism? 

message: Can anyone find a larger sample of this image?  It would really be neat to see the exact borders of the fire area, but this map is so small it's kinda hard to tell. DirectorStratton 20:56, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image Request 

message: I'm deleting this.  The exact quote supporting this section is from Irving Cutler's book, The Jews of Chicago (1996), on p.28: "That night happened to be the Jewish holiday of Simchat torah, the festival of the rejoicing of the law, a celebration of merriment in which the congragants dance in their synagogues with the Torah scrolls.  This is probably one of the reasons that some of the scrolls were saved from the fire."  Cutler is a fine historian of the city, but the holiday explanation is plainly speculation on his part, and likely not the case.  The main reason is that even in orthodox synagogues today, the Simchat Torah service will usually end before 10PM, as it does at the orthodox synagogue I attend.  In 1871, most synagogues were not strictly orthodox, so they likely would have ended earlier.  The fire started at about 9PM, so by the time the fire advanced to where the synagogues were, the services would have been over and the happy congregants home.  The fire didn't get across the river until midnight.  So a more probable reason why any torahs were saved is that the rabbi or another syngagoue official lived close enough to the synagogue to get in and grab the torahs before the fire destroyed the building.  Many people tried to save physical property in the path of the fire, some successful, others not.  There's no real need to highlight this, especially when there's no clear reference to contemporary testimony to support it.  Icebox93 (talk) 22:03, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jews and the Fire 

message: Please stop trying to add St. Ignatius College Preparatory School to the list of existing buildings that survived the fire.  Yes, St. Ignatius predates the fire, but as noted above, it was not actually threatened by the fire. Kevin Forsyth (talk) 11:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: St. Ignatius Prep

message: Old St. Pat's, at the northwest corner of Adams and Des Plaines, was built before the fire, but was not threatened by it.  Hence it should not be listed as a "survivor" of the fire. See  for a detailed map and chronology of the fire. Kevin Forsyth (talk) 05:06, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Old St. Patrick's Church

message: I have removed the "In popular culture" section.  As stated in the essay on pop culture sections:
:"In popular culture" sections should be carefully maintained and contain sourced examples demonstrating a subject's cultural significance.
:Passing references to the article subject are discouraged.
:Not one of these examples is sourced. The most direct example, In Old Chicago, is redundant to a "See also" link below (and contradicts the date of the film). The rest are, at best, passing references or minor examples of fictional alternate histories. While the fire has great historical significance (particularly for Chicagoans), its relatively minor cultural impact is already covered elsewhere in the article (e.g. the star on the municipal flag, the sculpture at DeKoven Street). Kevin Forsyth (talk) 16:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I deleted some items from In popular culture, added a reference for one, and marked many with citation needed. All those television episodes need a citation, otherwise they are simply original research. If no sources can be found to support those items, they should be deleted.  --Prairieplant (talk) 10:29, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  In popular culture 

message: Reading Eagle, Saturday, Dec 26, 1936, pg 5, Last of Chicago’s O’Leary Family Dies, Chicago, Dec. 26 (AP)--- Mrs. Catherine O’Leary Ledwell, 70, last member of the O’Leary family, whose cow some say started the Chicago fire, died of heart disease last night at her home.
Mrs. Ledwell always denied the legend that the O’Leary cow kicked over a lamp in their barn and touched off the great blaze of 1871. 
She declared they first learned of the fire at 8 o’clock (2000 hrs) when Denis Sullivan, the one-legged draymen from next door,” discovered it in the barn.
“That’s the first we knew of the fire.” She always said.  “No one had been up.  I know mother didn’t milk the cow after 5 o’clock.” (1700 hrs)
Mrs. Ledwell theorized that young bloods of the neighborhood who sometimes drank beer in the loft of the O’Leary barn had left a cigar butt smouldering in the hay.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by RogerB34 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statement of  Catherine O'Leary 

message: I had to enlarge the map two or three times to be able to find the red dot indicating Mrs. O'Leary's barn -  and then I had to scroll through the map to find it.  How about adding an arrow that is large enough to be seen on the Wikipedia page at normalmagnification?Kdammers (talk) 06:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 4 external links on Great Chicago Fire. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090504194842/http://www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/S/SiteChicagoFire.html to http://www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/S/SiteChicagoFire.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051124132959/http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html to http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20051124132959/http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html to http://www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050711004730/http://www.chicagohs.org/fire/intro/gcf-index.html to http://www.chicagohs.org/fire/intro/gcf-index.html
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Great Chicago Fire began on October 8, 1871. It happened on DeKoven Street at 9:00pm. It started in the O'Leary's barn. Nearly one-third of the city was destroyed. The fire lasted for three days. Some of the areas that were destroyed in this great fire were the O'Leary's house, a courthouse, a Tribune building, the Chamber of Commerce building, Bruno Goll's drugstore, Claire Innes neighborhood, and Horace White's house. the fire spread throughout the north and eat of Chicago.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.75.192.4 (talk) April 24, 2018
::O'Leary's house (cottage) was spared. Pål Jensen (talk) 11:13, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chicago Fire of 1871 

message: The "red dot" showing the location of O'Leary's barn on a map is nearly impossible to see. Would it be possible to do something like this example.→
107.15.157.44 (talk) 06:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map 

message: A couple of years ago I read an article about the Great Chicago Fire and how it was started. I'm not sure it was true or have been able to verify. It stated that a comet broke up into 3 pieces, one landed in Chicago, the second landed in Holland Michigan and the third in Wisconsin. True? Not sure but all three fires started on the same date or within a day of two. 2600:6C4E:1B00:3400:1C74:61C:8AE8:BA12 (talk) 18:12, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This is covered in Great_Chicago_Fire#Precise_start. It's unlikely a comet started the three fires you mention. Jessintime (talk) 18:17, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Chicago Fire, Great Michigan Fire and the Wisconsin Fire.