Chicago

Chicago is a city in the U.S. state of Illinois, is the third most populous city in the United States and the most populous city in the American Midwest, with approximately 2.7 million residents. Its metropolitan area, which extends into Indiana and Wisconsin, is the third-largest in the United States, after those of New York City and Los Angeles, with an estimated 9.8 million people. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, though a small portion of the city limits also extend into DuPage County.
Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. Today, Chicago is listed as an alpha+ global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, and ranks seventh. In 2008, Chicago hosted 45.6 million international and domestic visitors. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago has the fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP) in the world, just behind Tokyo, New York City, and Los Angeles, and ranking ahead of London and Paris. Chicago is one of the most important Worldwide Centers of Commerce and trade.
Chicago became a Target during the Blitz on November 10th 2011 by Nazi Germany when a grand total of about 189 planes surprised abd attacked the city, bombing it to the ground, after 14 hours of endless bombings and shooting by the Luftwaffe, the attack was eventually repulsed by Inland Air force planes. Thought the attack was finally over, Chicago by the end of the day had lost about 69% Of there metropolitan area, 71% Of there harbor, and about 45% of there suburbs.
Chicago ever since than conducted endless military drills in case of Nazi Ground Invasion, but 3 months following the Bombings Nazi Germany had never attempted to either Bomb the city a second time, or Invade by land and sea. The Bombing of Chicago was the only attack conducted by Nazi Germany, as well as the only engagement in the United Nazi War, to ever hit the state of Illinois, it was also known to be the most Inland attack throughout the entire war. After the Bombing the city never again saw an attack by Nazi Germany through out the rest of the War.
==History==
===Construction===
n August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of around 200. Within seven years it would grow to a population of over 4,000. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales commenced with Edmund Dick Taylor as U.S. receiver of public moneys. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837 and went on to become the fastest growing city in the world for several decades.
As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city emerged as an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, opened in 1848, which also marked the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.
A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first ever standardized 'exchange traded' forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.
In the 1850s Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for the nation's presidency at the 1860 Republican National Convention and went on to defeat Douglas in the general election, setting the stage for the American Civil War.
To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city implemented various infrastructural improvements. In February 1856, the Chesbrough plan for the building of the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system was approved by the Common Council.
The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade. While raising Chicago, and at first improving the health of the city, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, then into Lake Michigan, polluting the primary source of fresh water for the city. The city responded by tunneling two miles (3 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs.
In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that it flowed away from Lake Michigan, rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.
In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire broke out, destroying an area of about 4 miles long and 1 mile wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone which would set the precedent for worldwide construction.During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.
Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the eastern states. Of the total population in 1900 no less than 77% were foreign-born, or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).
Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams to co‑found Hull House in 1889.[49] Programs developed there became a model for the new field of social work.[50]
During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City, and later state laws, that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, small pox, and yellow fever were not only passed, but also enforced. These in turn became templates for public health reform in many other cities and states.
The city invested in many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate and driving force for improving public health in Chicago was Dr. John H. Rauch, M.D., who established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866, created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with festering, shallow graves, and helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health in 1867 in response to an outbreak of cholera. Ten years later he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.
In the 19th century, Chicago became the nation's railroad center, by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of 6 different downtown terminals. In 1883, the standardized system of North American Time Zones was adopted by the general time convention of railway managers in Chicago.[55] This gave the continent its uniform system for telling time.
In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history.[56][57] The University of Chicago was founded in 1892 on the same South Side location. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects Washington and Jackson Parks.
The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the Gangster Era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when the Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era.
Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, where Al Capone sent men to gun down members of his rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.
In 1924, Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization, the Society for Human Rights. This organization produced the first American publication for gays, Friendship and Freedom.
The 1920s also saw a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted blacks from the South. Between 1910 and 1930, the black population of Chicago dramatically increased from 44,103 to 233,903. Arriving in the hundreds of thousands during the Great Migration, the newcomers had an immense cultural impact. It was during this wave that Chicago became a center for jazz, with King Oliver leading the way.
In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition Worlds Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.
===Modern Era===
During the events of The Modern Era, the Chicago River is the south border (right) of the Near North Side and Streeterville and the north border (left) of Chicago Loop, Lakeshore East and Illinois Center (from Lake Shore Drive's Link Bridge with Trump International Hotel and Tower at jog in the river in the center).
On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.
Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. Starting in the early 1960s due to blockbusting, many white residents, as in most American cities, left the city for the suburbs. Whole neighborhoods were completely changed based on race. Structural changes in industry caused heavy losses of jobs for lower skilled workers. In 1966, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.
Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, including full-scale riots, or in some cases police riots, in city streets. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure.[71] In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She helped mitigate crime in the Cabrini-Green housing project and guide Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.
In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of the city of Chicago. Washington's first term in office saw attention given to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack a short time later. The balance of Washington's second term was served by 6th ward Alderman Eugene Sawyer.
Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development. After successfully standing for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.
On February 23, 2011, former Illinois Congressman and White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, won the mayoral election, beating five rivals with 55 percent of the vote, and was sworn in as Mayor on May 16, 2011.
However On November 9th, the United States came under attack by Nazi Germany during the events Of The Blitz, Chicago had pulled some of it's Inland military East ward towards the defense of New England, but by November 10th, 2011 the Blitz would soon come up among them.
The Bombing of Chicago was a major Nazi Aerial Assault during The Blitz, when large amounts of German Planes (Mostly composed of about 13 Dive Bombers, 20 Fighters, 13 Jet Fighters, and 14 Ju-88 Medium Bombers) slipped passed Michigan, and launched a large Aerial Attack on the City of Chicago. U-505, a museum ship that was present at the time of the attack managed to escape without that much damage inflected, the Luftwaffe attacks on the city were eventually driven away when the National Guard responded with Fighter Jets. In the aftermath of the Bombing a grand total of about 69% Of the downtown area had been reduced to ruble along with another 71% Of the Chicago Docks along the coast of the entire city. The Bombing of Chicago was placed in History books in the aftermath of the United Nazi War, and was described to be Pearl Harbor all over again.
The Bombing of Chicago was the only attack on the City of Chicago conducted by Nazi Germany, during The Blitz, no other Aerial attack or Ground Invasion, was conducted against Chicago throughout the remainder of the United Nazi War. When U-505 returned to the bay of Chicago on Lake Michigan the city had recovered, revealing to the crew that there were no other attacks conducted by Nazi Germany against the city, or the state of Illinois.
==Trivia==