Official name	City of Chicago
Settlement type	City
Nickname	The Windy City, The Second City, Chi-Town, Hog Butcher for the World, City of Big Shoulders, The City That Works, White City, and others found at List of nicknames for Chicago
Motto	(''City in a Garden''), Make Big Plans (Make No Small Plans), I Will
Named for	("Wild onion")
Website	cityofchicago.org
Image seal	Chicago city seal.png
Map caption	Location in the Chicago metropolitan area and Illinois
Pushpin map	USA2
Pushpin map caption	Location in the United States
Coordinates display	inline,title
Coordinates region	US-IL
Unit pref	Imperial
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision type2	Counties
Subdivision name	USA
Subdivision name1
Subdivision name2	Cook, DuPage
Government type	Mayor–council
Leader title	Mayor
Leader name	Rahm Emanuel (D)
Leader title1	City Council
Leader name1
Leader title2	State House
Leader name2
Leader title3	State Senate
Leader name3
Leader title4	U.S. House
Leader name4
Area magnitude	1 E+8
Area total sq mi	234.0
Area total km2	606.1
Area land sq mi	227.2
Area water sq mi	6.9
Area water percent	3.0
Area urban sq mi	2122.8
Area metro sq mi	10874
Population as of	2010 Census
Population total	2,695,598
Population rank	3rd US
Population urban	8711000
Population metro	9461105
Population density sq mi	11864.4
Population density km2	4447.4
Population demonym	Chicagoan
Timezone	CST
Utc offset	−6
Timezone dst	CDT
Utc offset dst	−5
Area code	312, 773, 872
Elevation ft	597
Latns	N
Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Longew	W
Established title	Settled
Established date	1770s
Established title2	Incorporated
Established date2	March 4, 1837
Footnotes	}}

Chicago ( or , local pronunciation ) is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the USA, after New York City and Los Angeles. Its metropolitan area, sometimes called "Chicagoland," is the 27th most populous urban agglomeration in the world, the largest in the Great Lakes Megalopolis, and the third largest in the United States, home to an estimated 9.5 million people spread across the US states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California.

Chicago was incorporated as a town in 1833, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. Today, the city retains its status as a major hub for industry, telecommunications and infrastructure, with O'Hare International Airport being the second busiest airport in the world in terms of traffic movements. , the city hosted 45.6 million domestic and overseas visitors. As of 2010, Chicago's metropolitan area has the 4th largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) amongst world metropolitan areas.

The city is a center for services, business and finance and is listed as one of the world's top ten Global Financial Centers. The World Cities Study Group at Loughborough University rated Chicago as an "alpha world city". In a 2010 survey collaboration between Foreign Policy and A.T Kearney ranking cities, Chicago ranked 6th, just after Paris and Hong Kong. The ranking assesses five dimensions: value of capital markets, diversity of human capital, international information resources, international cultural resources, and political influence. Chicago has been ranked by ''Forbes'' as the world's 5th most economically powerful city. Chicago is a stronghold of the Democratic Party and has been home to many influential politicians, including the current President of the United States, Barack Obama.

The city's notoriety expressed in popular culture is found in novels, plays, movies, songs, various types of journals (for example, sports, entertainment, business, trade, and academic), and the news media. Chicago has numerous nicknames, which reflect the impressions and opinions about historical and contemporary Chicago. The best known include: "Chi-town," "Windy City," "Second City,"|group="footnote"}} and the "City of Big Shoulders."|group="footnote"}} Chicago has also been called "the most American of big cities."

History

During the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples. The 1780s saw the arrival of the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who is believed to be of African and European (French) descent. In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over by some Native Americans in the Treaty of Greenville to the United States for a military post.

In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in the War of 1812 Battle of Fort Dearborn. The Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1804 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were eventually forcibly removed from their land following the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of around 200 at that time. Within seven years it would grow to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837.

The name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word ''shikaakwa'', translated as "wild onion" or "wild garlic," from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir written about the time. The wild garlic plants, ''Allium tricoccum,'' were described by LaSalle's comrade, naturalist-diarist Henri Joutel, in his journal of LaSalle's last expedition.

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 sectors became dominant among Midwestern cities, influencing the American economy, particularly in meatpacking, with the advent of the refrigerated rail car and the regional centrality of the city's Union Stock Yards.

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.

Chicago experienced some of the fastest population growth in the world, requiring infrastructure investments. In February 1856, the Chesbrough plan for the building of Chicago's and 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 out of its mud and sewage, and at first improving the health of the city, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, thence into Lake Michigan, polluting the primary source of fresh water for the city. Chicago responded by tunneling two miles (3 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage was largely resolved when the city undertook a major engineering feat. The city reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that water flowed from Lake Michigan into the river, instead of the water flowing from the river into the lake. It began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River which joins the Mississippi River. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed a third of the city, including the entire central business district, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction. Labor conflicts and unrest followed, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886. Concern for social problems among Chicago's lower classes led Jane Addams to be a co-founder of Hull House in 1889. Programs developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago and the state of Illinois together attained national stature as leaders in the movement to improve public health. City and 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 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 an important railroad center and in 1883 the standardized system of North American Time Zones was adopted by the general time convention of railway managers in Chicago. 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. 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.

20th and 21st centuries

The 1920s brought notoriety to Chicago as gangsters, including the notorious Al Capone, battled each other and law enforcement on the city streets during the Prohibition era. Chicago had over 1,000 gangs in the 1920s.

The 1920s also saw a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the South. Between 1910 and 1930, the black population of Chicago 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 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.

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.

Mayor Richard J. Daley 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, James Bevel, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Albert Raby led the Chicago Open Housing 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. When Richard J. Daley died, Michael Anthony Bilandic served as mayor for three years. Bilandic's subsequent loss in a primary election has been attributed to the city's inability to properly plow city streets during a heavy snowstorm. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She popularized the city as a movie location and tourist destination.

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first African American to be elected to the office of mayor, in one of the closest mayoral elections in Chicago. After Washington won the Democratic primary, racial motivations caused a few Democratic alderman and ward committeemen to back the Republican candidate Bernard Epton, who ran on the race-baiting slogan ''Before it's too late''. Washington's term in office saw new attention given to poor and minority neighborhoods. Washington died in office of a heart attack in 1987, shortly after being elected to a second term. 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 reelection five times and becoming Chicago's longest serving Mayor, Richard M. Daley announced he would step down at the end of his final term in 2011.

On February 23, 2011, former White House chief of staff and congressman Rahm Emanuel won the municipal election to succeed Daley, beating five rivals with 55 percent of the vote. Emanuel was sworn in as Mayor on May 16, 2011.

Geography

Topography

Chicago is located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan. It sits on a continental divide at the site of the Chicago Portage, connecting the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes watersheds. The city lies beside freshwater Lake Michigan, and two rivers—the Chicago River in downtown and the Calumet River in the industrial far South Side—flow entirely or partially through Chicago. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connects the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River, which runs to the west of the city. Chicago's history and economy are closely tied to its proximity to Lake Michigan. While the Chicago River historically handled much of the region's waterborne cargo, today's huge lake freighters use the city's Lake Calumet Harbor on the South Side. The lake also provides another positive effect, moderating Chicago's climate; making waterfront neighborhoods slightly warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

When Chicago was founded in 1833, most of the early building began around the mouth of the Chicago River, as can be seen on a map of the city's original 58 blocks. The overall grade of the city's central, built-up areas, is relatively consistent with the natural flatness of its overall natural geography, generally exhibiting only slight differentiation otherwise. The average land elevation is above sea level. The lowest points are along the lake shore at , while the highest point, at , is a landfill located in the Hegewisch community area on the city's far south side.

The Chicago Loop is the central business district but Chicago is also a city of neighborhoods. Lake Shore Drive runs adjacent to a large portion of Chicago's lakefront. Some of the parks along the waterfront include Lincoln Park, Grant Park, Burnham Park and Jackson Park. 29 public beaches are also found along the shore. Landfill extends into portions of the lake providing space for Navy Pier, Northerly Island, the Museum Campus, and large portions of the McCormick Place Convention Center. Most of the city's high-rise commercial and residential buildings can be found close to the waterfront.

An informal name for the Chicago metropolitan area is ''Chicagoland'', used primarily by copywriters, advertising agencies, and traffic reporters. There is no precise definition for the term "Chicagoland," but it generally means the city and its suburbs together. The Chicago Tribune, which coined the term, includes the city of Chicago, the rest of Cook County, eight nearby Illinois counties: Lake, McHenry, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Grundy, Will and Kankakee, and three counties in Indiana: Lake, Porter and LaPorte. The Illinois Department of Tourism defines Chicagoland as Cook County ''without'' the city of Chicago, and only Lake, DuPage, Kane and Will counties. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce defines it as all of Cook and DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties.

Climate

The city lies within the humid continental climate zone, and experiences four distinct seasons. Summers are hot and humid, with a July daily average of . In a normal summer temperatures exceed on 21 days. Winters are cold, snowy, and windy, with some sunny days, and with a January average of . Temperatures often (43 days) stay below freezing for an entire day, and lows below occur on eight nights per year. Spring and fall are mild seasons with low humidity.

According to the National Weather Service, Chicago's highest official temperature reading of was recorded on June 1, 1934 and July 11, 1936, both at Midway Airport. The lowest temperature of was recorded on January 20, 1985, at O'Hare Airport. The city can experience extreme winter cold spells that may last for several consecutive days.

Cityscape

Architecture

The outcome of the Great Chicago Fire led to the largest building boom in the history of the nation. Perhaps the most outstanding of these events was the relocation of many of the nation's most prominent architects from New England to the city for construction of the 1893 Columbian Exposition.

In 1885, the first steel-framed high-rise building, the Home Insurance Building, rose in Chicago, ushering in the skyscraper era. Today, Chicago's skyline is among the world's tallest and most dense. The nation's two tallest buildings are both located in Chicago; Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), and Trump International Hotel and Tower. The Loop's historic buildings include the Chicago Board of Trade Building, the Fine Arts Building, 35 East Wacker, and the Chicago Building, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments by Mies van der Rohe, along with many others. The Merchandise Mart, once first on the list of largest buildings in the world, and still listed as 20th with its own ZIP code, stands near the junction of the North and South branches of the Chicago River. Presently, the four tallest buildings in the city are Willis Tower, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the Aon Center (previously the Standard Oil Building), and the John Hancock Center. Industrial districts, such as on the South Side, the areas along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, Chicago Southland, and Northwest Indiana are clustered. Chicago gave its name to the Chicago School and was home to the Prairie School, movements in architecture. Multiple kinds and scales of houses, townhouses, condominiums, and apartment buildings can be found in Chicago. Large swaths of Chicago's residential areas away from the lake are characterized by bungalows built from the early 20th century through the end of World War II. Chicago is also a prominent center of the Polish Cathedral style of church architecture. One of Chicago's suburbs, Oak Park, was home to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who had designed The Robie House located near the University of Chicago.

One of the city's most famous thoroughfares, Western Avenue, is one of the longest urban streets in the world. Other famous streets include Belmont Avenue, Pulaski Road, and Division Street. The City Beautiful movement inspired Chicago's Boulevards and Parkways.

Culture and contemporary life

The city's waterfront allure and nightlife has attracted residents and tourists alike. Over one-third of the city population is concentrated in the lakefront neighborhoods (from Rogers Park in the north to South Shore in the south). The city has many upscale dining establishments as well as many ethnic restaurant districts. These districts include the Mexican villages, such as Pilsen along 18th street, and ''La Villita'' along 26th Street, the Puerto Rican enclave ''Paseo Boricua'' in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, "Greektown" along South Halsted St, "Little Italy" along Taylor St, "Chinatown, Chicago" on the South Side, ''"Polish Patches"'' in Avondale and Belmont-Central, "Little Seoul" around Lawrence Avenue, a cluster of Vietnamese restaurants on Argyle Street, and South Asian (Indian/Pakistani) along Devon Avenue.

Downtown is the center of Chicago's financial, cultural, and commercial institutions and home to Grant Park and many of the city's skyscrapers. Many of the city's financial institutions (for example, CBOT, Chicago Fed) are located within a section of downtown called "The Loop", which is an eight block by five block square of city streets that are encircled by elevated rail tracks. The term "The Loop" is largely used to refer to the entire downtown area as well. The central area includes the Near North Side, the Near South Side, and the Near West Side, as well as the Loop. These areas contribute famous skyscrapers, abundant restaurants, shopping, museums, a stadium for the Chicago Bears, convention facilities, parkland, and beaches.

The North Side is the most densely populated section of the city outside of downtown and many high-rises line this side of the city along the lakefront. Lincoln Park is a park stretching for along the waterfront and containing the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Lincoln Park Conservatory. The River North neighborhood features the nation's largest concentration of contemporary art galleries outside of New York City. As a Polonia center, due to the city having a very large Polish population, Chicago celebrates every Labor Day weekend at the Taste of Polonia Festival in the Jefferson Park area. The Chicago Cubs play in the North Side's Wrigleyville district.

The South Side is home to the University of Chicago (UC), ranked one of the world's top ten universities; and the Museum of Science and Industry. Burnham Park stretches along the waterfront of the South Side. Two of the city's largest parks are also located on this side of the city: Jackson Park, bordering the waterfront, hosted the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and is home of the aforementioned museum; and slightly west sits Washington Park. The two parks themselves are connected by a wide strip of parkland called the Midway Plaisance, running adjacent to the UC. The South Side hosts one of the city's largest parades, the annual African American Bud Billiken Day parade. The American automaker Ford Motor Company has an assembly plant located on the South Side, and most of the facilities of the Port of Chicago are here. The Chicago White Sox play in the South Side's Armour Square neighborhood.

The West Side holds the Garfield Park Conservatory, one of the largest collections of tropical plants of any US city. Prominent Latino cultural attractions found here include Humboldt Park's Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Puerto Rican Day Parade, as well as the National Museum of Mexican Art and St. Adalbert's Church in Pilsen. The Near West Side holds the television production company of Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios and the University of Illinois at Chicago. The Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks play on Madison Street.

Entertainment, the arts, and performing arts

Chicago's theatre community spawned modern improvisational theatre. Two renowned comedy troupes emerged—The Second City and I.O. (formerly known as ImprovOlympic). Renowned Chicago theater companies include the Steppenwolf Theatre Company (on the city's north side), the Goodman Theatre, and the Victory Gardens Theater. Chicago offers Broadway-style entertainment at theaters such as Ford Center for the Performing Arts Oriental Theatre, Bank of America Theatre, Cadillac Palace Theatre, Auditorium Building of Roosevelt University, and Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place. Polish language productions for Chicago's large Polish speaking population can be seen at the historic Gateway Theatre in Jefferson Park. Since 1968, the Joseph Jefferson Awards are given annually to acknowledge excellence in theater in the Chicago area.

Classical music offerings include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, recognized as one of the best orchestras in the world, which performs at Symphony Center. Also performing regularly at Symphony Center is the Chicago Sinfonietta, a more diverse and multicultural counterpart to the CSO. In the summer, many outdoor concerts are given in Grant Park and Millennium Park. Ravinia Park, located north of Chicago, is also a favorite destination for many Chicagoans, with performances occasionally given in Chicago locations such as the Harris Theater. The Civic Opera House is home to the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The Lithuanian Opera Company of Chicago was founded by Lithuanian Chicagoans in 1956, and presents operas in Lithuanian. It celebrated fifty years of existence in 2006, and operates as a not-for-profit organization. It is noteworthy for performing the rarely staged Rossini's ''William Tell'' (1986) and Ponchielli's ''I Lituani'' (1981, 1983 and 1991), and also for contributing experienced chorus members to the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The opera ''Jūratė and Kastytis'' by Kazimieras Viktoras Banaitis was presented in Chicago in 1996.

The Joffrey Ballet and Chicago Festival Ballet perform in various venues, including the Harris Theater in Millennium Park. Chicago is home to several other modern and jazz dance troupes, such as the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

Other live music genre which are part of the city's cultural heritage include Chicago blues, Chicago soul, jazz, and gospel. The city is the birthplace of house music and is the site of an influential hip-hop scene. In the 1980s, the city was a center for industrial, punk and new wave. This influence continued into the alternative rock of the 1990s. The city has been an epicenter for rave culture since the 1980s. A flourishing independent rock music culture brought forth Chicago indie. Annual festivals feature various acts such as Lollapalooza, the Intonation Music Festival and Pitchfork Music Festival.

Chicago has a distinctive fine art tradition. For much of the twentieth century it nurtured a strong style of figurative surrealism, as in the works of Ivan Albright and Ed Paschke. In 1968 and 1969, members of the Chicago Imagists, such as Roger Brown, Leon Golub, Robert Lostutter, Jim Nutt, and Barbara Rossi produced bizarre representational paintings. Today Robert Guinan paints gritty realistic portraits of Chicago people which are popular in Paris, although he is little known in Chicago itself.

Chicago is home to a number of large, outdoor works by well known artists. These include the Chicago Picasso, ''Miró's Chicago'', ''Flamingo'' and ''Flying Dragon'' by Alexander Calder, ''Monument with Standing Beast'' by Jean Dubuffet, ''Batcolumn'' by Claes Oldenburg, ''Cloud Gate'' by Anish Kapoor, ''Crown Fountain'' by Jaume Plensa, and the ''Four Seasons'' mosaic by Marc Chagall.

Tourism

, Chicago attracted 32.4 million domestic leisure travelers, 11.7 million domestic business travelers and 1.3 million overseas visitors. These visitors contributed more than billion to Chicago's economy. Upscale shopping along the Magnificent Mile and State Street, thousands of restaurants, as well as Chicago's eminent architecture, continue to draw tourists. The city is the United States' third-largest convention destination. Most conventions are held at McCormick Place, just south of Soldier Field. The historic Chicago Cultural Center (1897), originally serving as the Chicago Public Library, now houses the city's Visitor Information Center, galleries and exhibit halls. The ceiling of its Preston Bradley Hall includes a Tiffany glass dome. Grant Park holds Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain (1927), and the Art Institute of Chicago. The park also hosts the annual Taste of Chicago festival. In Millennium Park, there is the reflective ''Cloud Gate'' sculpture. Also, an outdoor restaurant transforms into an ice rink in the winter season. Two tall glass sculptures make up the Crown Fountain. The fountain's two towers display visual effects from LED images of Chicagoans' faces, along with water spouting from their lips. Frank Gehry's detailed, stainless steel band shell, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, hosts the classical Grant Park Music Festival concert series. Behind the pavilion's stage is the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, an indoor venue for mid-sized performing arts companies, including the Chicago Opera Theater and Music of the Baroque.

Navy Pier, located just east of Streeterville, is long and houses retail stores, restaurants, museums, exhibition halls and auditoriums. Its tall Ferris wheel is one of the most visited landmarks in the Midwest, attracting about 8 million people annually.

In 1998, the city officially opened the Museum Campus, a lakefront park, surrounding three of the city's main museums, each of which is of national importance: the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum, the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium. The Museum Campus joins the southern section of Grant Park, which includes the renowned Art Institute of Chicago. Buckingham Fountain anchors the downtown park along the lakefront. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute has an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern archaeological artifacts. Other museums and galleries in Chicago include the Chicago History Museum, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the Polish Museum of America, the Museum of Broadcast Communications and the Museum of Science and Industry.

The top activity while visitors tour Chicago for leisure is entertainment, approximately 33% of all leisure travelers. Facilities such as McCormick Place and the Chicago Theatre contribute to this percentage.

Parks

When Chicago was incorporated in 1837, it chose the motto ''Urbs in Horto'', a Latin phrase which translates into English as "City in a Garden". Today, the Chicago Park District consists of 552 parks with over of municipal parkland. There are 33 sand Chicago beaches, a plethora of museums, two world-class conservatories, 16 historic lagoons, and 10 bird and wildlife gardens. Lincoln Park, the largest of the city's parks, covers and has over 20 million visitors each year, making it second only to Central Park in New York City in number of visitors. With berths for more than 5,000 boats, the Chicago Park District operates the nation's largest municipal harbor system; even larger than systems in cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, or Miami. In addition to ongoing beautification and renewal projects for the existing parks, a number of new parks have been added in recent years, such as the Ping Tom Memorial Park in Chinatown, DuSable Park on the Near North Side, and most notably, Millennium Park in a section of one of Chicago's oldest parks, Grant Park in the Chicago Loop.

The wealth of greenspace afforded by Chicago's parks is further augmented by the Cook County Forest Preserves, a network of open spaces containing forest, prairie, wetland, streams, and lakes that are set aside as natural areas which lie along the city's periphery, home to both the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe and the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield.

Cuisine

Chicago lays claim to a large number of regional specialties, all of which reflect the city's ethnic and working class roots. Included among these are its nationally renowned deep-dish pizza, This style is said to have originated at Pizzeria Uno. The Chicago-style thin crust is popular in the city as well.

The Chicago-style hot dog, typically a Vienna Beef dog loaded with an array of fixings that often includes neon green pickle relish, yellow mustard, pickled sport peppers, tomato wedges, dill pickle spear and topped off with celery salt all on a S. Rosen's poppy seed bun. Ketchup on a Chicago hot dog is frowned upon by enthusiasts of the Chicago-style dog, but may prefer to add giardiniera.

There are several distinctly Chicago sandwiches, among them the Italian beef sandwich, which is thinly sliced beef slowly simmered au jus and served on an Italian roll with sweet peppers or spicy giardiniera. A popular modification is the Combo – an Italian beef sandwich with the addition of an Italian sausage. Another is the Maxwell Street Polish, a grilled or deep-fried kielbasa – on a hot dog roll, topped with grilled onions, yellow mustard, and hot sport peppers.

Ethnically originated creations include chicken Vesuvio, with roasted bone-in chicken cooked in oil and garlic next to garlicky oven-roasted potato wedges and a sprinkling of green peas. Another is the Puerto Rican-influenced jibarito, a sandwich made with flattened, fried green plantains instead of bread. There is also the tamale with chile, Mother-in-law sandwich. Yet another is the Greek saganaki, an appetizer of cheese served flambé at the table.

The Taste of Chicago in Grant Park runs from the final week of June through Fourth of July weekend. Hundreds of local restaurants take part.

A number of well-known chefs have restaurants in Chicago, including Charlie Trotter, Rick Tramonto, Grant Achatz, and Rick Bayless. In 2003, Robb Report named Chicago the country's "most exceptional dining destination."

The city is home to 23 Michelin starred restaurants, with Alinea and L2O receiving three stars.

Chicago features a wide selection of vegetarian cuisine, with 22 fully vegetarian restaurants and many vegetarian-friendly establishments within the city.

Religion

Due to its cosmopolitan history, Chicago has a rich blend of religious heritage as displayed by the architecture and institutions throughout the city. Christianity is predominant among the city's population represented by the various denominations including Catholic, Protestant, Oriental and Orthodox churches. The city also includes adherents of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and the Bahá'í, among others. Because of this diversity, Chicago has a wealth of sacred architecture.

Through the city's size and notoriety, it has gained recognition as a religious center. The city played host to the first two Parliament of the World's Religions in 1893 and 1993. Chicago contains many theological institutions, which include seminaries and colleges such as the Moody Bible Institute and DePaul University. Chicago is the seat of numerous religious leaders from a host of bishops of a wide array of Christian denominations as well as other religions. In the northern suburb of Wilmette, Illinois, is the Bahá'í Temple, the only temple for the Bahá'í Faith in North America.

Numerous prominent religious leaders have visited the city, including the Lama and Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul II visited Chicago in 1979 as part of his first trip to the United States after being elected to the Papacy in 1978.

Sports

Chicago was named the ''Best Sports City'' in the United States by ''The Sporting News'' in 1993, 2006, 2010. The city is home to two Major League Baseball (MLB) teams: the Chicago Cubs of the National League (NL), who play in Wrigley Field on the North Side, and the Chicago White Sox of the American League (AL), who play in U.S. Cellular Field on the South Side. Chicago is the only city that has had more than one MLB franchise every year since the AL began in 1901. The Chicago Bears, one of the last two remaining charter members of the National Football League (NFL), have won nine NFL Championships, including Super Bowl XX. The other remaining charter franchise, the Chicago Cardinals, also started out in the city, but are now known as the Arizona Cardinals. The Bears play their home games at Soldier Field just off the coast of Lake Michigan. The Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA) are one of the most recognized basketball teams in the world. During the 1990s with Michael Jordan leading them, the Bulls took six NBA championships in eight seasons. The Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League (NHL), who began play in 1926, and are one of the "Original Six," teams of the National Hockey League (NHL), have won four Stanley Cups. The Blackhawks are the 2010 Stanley Cup champions, and hosted the 2009 NHL Winter Classic at Wrigley Field. Both the Bulls and Blackhawks play at the United Center on the Near West Side. The Chicago Rush has been a member of the Arena Football League since 2001 and won ArenaBowl XX. The team plays in suburban Rosemont. Chicago was also home to the Chicago Bruisers, and original member of the AFL. The Chicago Fire are members of Major League Soccer and reside at Toyota Park in suburban Bridgeview, after playing its first eight seasons at Soldier Field. The Fire have won one league title and four U.S. Open Cups since their founding in 1997.

While four of the five major franchises have won championships within recent time: The Bears (1985), The Bulls (91, '92, '93, '96, '97, and '98), The White Sox (2005), and The Blackhawks (2010), the Chicago Cubs are known for their drought of over 100 years without a championship (Currently 103 years as of the 2011 MLB Season). The last time the Cubs were in a world series was 1945. Local lore amongst Cubs fans often claims the Curse of the Billy goat is responsible for the drought.

The Chicago Marathon has been held each year since 1977 except for in 1987, when a half marathon was run in its place. The Chicago Marathon is one of five World Marathon Majors. In 1994, the United States hosted a successful FIFA World Cup with games played at Soldier Field on Chicago's downtown lakefront. After a months long process that saw the elimination of several American and international cities, Chicago was selected on April 14, 2007, to represent the United States internationally in the bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics. Chicago had previously hosted the 1959 Pan American Games and the 2006 Gay Games. Chicago was selected to host the 1904 Olympics, but they were transferred to St. Louis to coincide with the World's Fair. On June 4, 2008, the International Olympic Committee narrowed the field further and selected Chicago as one of four candidate cities for the 2016 games. On October 2, 2009, Rio de Janeiro was selected instead of Chicago.

Starting just off Navy Pier is Chicago Yacht Club's Race to Mackinac, a offshore sailboat race held each July that is the longest annual freshwater sailing distance race in the world. 2010 marks the 102nd running of the "Mac".

At the collegiate level, the greater Chicago area and has four national athletic conferences represented, the Big East Conference with DePaul University, and the Big Ten Conference with Northwestern University in Evanston are premier national conferences. Loyola University Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago play Division I sports as members of the Horizon League.

Literature

Chicago literature found its roots in the city's tradition of lucid, direct journalism, lending to a strong tradition of social realism. Consequently, most notable Chicago fiction focuses on the city itself, with social criticism keeping exultation in check. Writers such as Mike Royko, Studs Terkel, Stuart Dybek, Carl Sandburg, James T. Farrell, Upton Sinclair, Saul Bellow, John Guzlowski, Sandra Cisneros Nelson Algren and Finley Peter Dunne have all drawn the city's literary portrait in diverse ways, united by the fact that their observations brought the world's attention to focus on Chicago.

Media

The Chicago metropolitan area is the third-largest media market in North America, after New York City and Los Angeles. Each of the big four U.S. television networks, CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox, directly owns and operates a high-definition television station in Chicago (WBBM, WLS, WMAQ and WFLD, respectively). WGN-TV, which is owned by the Tribune Company, is carried with some programming differences, as "WGN America" on cable and satellite TV nationwide and in parts of the Caribbean. The city is also the home of several talk shows, including ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'' on WLS-TV, while Chicago Public Radio produces programs such as PRI's ''This American Life'' and NPR's ''Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!'' Chicago's PBS station can be seen on WTTW, producer of shows, such as ''Sneak Previews'', ''The Frugal Gourmet'', ''Lamb Chop's Play-Along'' and ''The McLaughlin Group'', just to name a few and WYCC.

There are two major daily newspapers published in Chicago, the ''Chicago Tribune'' and the ''Chicago Sun-Times'', with the former having the larger circulation. There are also several regional and special-interest newspapers and magazines, such as ''Chicago'', the ''Dziennik Związkowy (Polish Daily News)'', ''Draugas'' (the Lithuanian daily newspaper), the ''Chicago Reader'', the ''SouthtownStar'', the ''Chicago Defender'', the ''Daily Herald'', ''Newcity'', ''StreetWise'' and the ''Windy City Times''. The entertainment and cultural magazine ''Time Out Chicago'' is also published in the city.

Chicago is a filming-friendly location. Since the 1980s, many motion pictures have been filmed in the city, most notably ''The Blues Brothers'', ''Ferris Bueller's Day Off'', ''Home Alone'', ''The Fugitive'', ''Blade: Trinity'', ''I, Robot'', ''Wanted'', ''Batman Begins'', ''The Dark Knight'', and ''Transformers: Dark of the Moon''.

Chicago has also been the setting for many popular television shows. Chicago-based TV shows include the situation comedies ''Perfect Strangers'' and its spinoff ''Family Matters'' and ''The Bob Newhart Show''. The city served as the venue for the medical dramas ''ER'' and ''Chicago Hope'', as well as the science fiction drama series ''Early Edition''. Discovery Channel films two shows in Chicago: ''Cook County Jail'' and the Chicago version of ''Cash Cab''.

Chicago is also home to a number of national radio shows, including ''Beyond the Beltway'' with Bruce DuMont on Sunday evenings.

Economy

Chicago has the third largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—approximately US$506 billion according to 2007 estimates. The city has also been rated as having the most balanced economy in the United States, due to its high level of diversification. Chicago was named the fourth most important business center in the world in the MasterCard Worldwide Centers of Commerce Index. Additionally, the Chicago metropolitan area recorded the greatest number of new or expanded corporate facilities in the United States for six out of the seven years from 2001 to 2008. The Chicago metropolitan area has the third largest science and engineering work force of any metropolitan area in the nation. In 2009, Chicago placed 9th on the UBS list of the world's richest cities. Chicago was the base of commercial operations for industrialists John Crerar, John Whitfield Bunn, Richard Teller Crane, Marshall Field, John Farwell, Morris Selz, Julius Rosenwald and many other commercial visionaries who laid the foundation for Midwestern and global industry.

Chicago is a major world financial center, with the second largest central business district in the US. The city is the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (the Seventh District of the Federal Reserve). The city is also home to major financial and futures exchanges, including the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the "Merc"), which is owned, along with the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) by Chicago's CME Group. The CME Group, in addition, owns the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), the Commodities Exchange Inc. (COMEX) and the Dow Jones Indexes. Perhaps due to the influence of the Chicago school of economics, the city also has markets trading unusual contracts such as emissions (on the Chicago Climate Exchange) and equity style indices (on the U.S. Futures Exchange). Chase Bank has its commercial and retail banking headquarters in Chicago's Chase Tower.

The city and its surrounding metropolitan area are home to the second largest labor pool in the United States with approximately 4.25 million workers. In addition, the state of Illinois is home to 66 Fortune 1000 companies, including those in Chicago. The city of Chicago also hosts 12 Fortune Global 500 companies and 17 Financial Times 500 companies. The city claims one Dow 30 company: aerospace giant Boeing, which moved its headquarters from Seattle to the Chicago Loop in 2001. Two more Dow 30 companies, Kraft Foods and McDonalds are in Chicago suburbs, as are Sears Holdings Corporation and the technology spin-offs of Motorola. Chicago is also home to United Continental Holdings and its United Airlines.

Manufacturing, printing, publishing and food processing also play major roles in the city's economy. Several medical products and services companies are headquartered in the Chicago area, including Baxter International, Boeing, Abbott Laboratories, and the Healthcare Financial Services division of General Electric. Moreover, the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which helped move goods from the Great Lakes south on the Mississippi River, and of the railroads in the 19th century made the city a major transportation center in the United States. In the 1840s, Chicago became a major grain port, and in the 1850s and 1860s Chicago's pork and beef industry expanded. As the major meat companies grew in Chicago many, such as Armour and Company, created global enterprises. Though the meatpacking industry currently plays a lesser role in the city's economy, Chicago continues to be a major transportation and distribution center. Lured by a combination of large business customers, federal research dollars, and a large hiring pool fed by the area's universities, Chicago is also home to a growing number of web startup companies like CareerBuilder, Orbitz, 37signals, Groupon, and Feedburner.

Late in the 19th century, Chicago was part of the bicycle craze, as home to Western Wheel Company, which introduced stamping to the production process and significantly reduced costs, while early in the 20th century, the city was part of the automobile revolution, hosting the Brass Era car builder Bugmobile, which was founded there in 1907. Chicago was also home to the Schwinn Bicycle Company.

Chicago is a major world convention destination. The city's main convention center is McCormick Place. With its four interconnected buildings, it is the largest convention center in the nation and third largest in the world. Chicago also ranks third in the U.S. (behind Las Vegas and Orlando) in number of conventions hosted annually.

Demographics

During its first 100 years, Chicago was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. When founded in 1833, less than 200 people had settled on what was then the American frontier. By the time of its first census, seven years later, the population had reached over 4000. Within the span of forty years, the city's population grew from slightly under 30,000 in 1850 to over 1 million by 1890. By the close of the 19th century, Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world, and the largest of the cities that did not exist at the dawn of the century. Within sixty years of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the population went from about 300,000 to over 3 million, and reached its highest ever-recorded population of 3.6 million for the 1950 census.

As of the 2010 census, there were 2,695,598 people with 1,045,560 households residing within Chicago. More than half the population of the state of Illinois lives in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chicago is also one of the nation's most densely populated major cities. The racial composition of the city was:

45.0% White (31.7% non-Hispanic whites)

32.9% Black or African American

13.4% from some other race

5.5% Asian (1.6% Chinese, 1.1% Indian, 1.1% Filipino, 0.4% Korean, 0.3% Pakistani, 0.3% Vietnamese, 0.2% Japanese, 0.1% Thai)

2.7% from two or more races

0.5% American Indian

Chicago has a Hispanic or Latino population of 28.9%. (Its members may belong to any race; 21.4% Mexican, 3.8% Puerto Rican, 0.7% Guatemalan, 0.6% Ecuadorian, 0.3% Cuban, 0.3% Colombian, 0.2% Honduran, 0.2% Salvadoran, 0.2% Peruvian)

Based on Census data from 2000, the median income for a household in the city was $38,625, and the median income for a family was $42,724. Males had a median income of $35,907 versus $30,536 for females. About 16.6% of families and 19.6% of the population lived below the poverty line.

According to the 2008 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates for Total Ancestry Reported, for the city of Chicago, the majority of residents, or 64% of 2,986,974 people, reported their ancestry as "other groups". Of the 36% of residents that reported their ancestries in groups that were measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, the largest groups, based on the total population, were: Irish (6.6%); German (6.5%); Polish (5.8%); Italian (3.5%); Assyrian (3.5%); English (2.0%); Sub-Saharan African (1.2%); American (1.1%); Filipino (1.0%); Russian (0.97%); Swedish (0.91%); French (except Basque) (0.9%); Arab (0.7%); Greek (0.6%); Dutch (0.5%); Norwegian (0.5%); Scottish (0.5%); European (0.5%); West Indian (0.5%); Lithuanian (0.4%); Ukrainian (0.38%); Czech (0.4%); Hungarian (0.3%); Scotch-Irish (0.2%); Welsh (0.2%); Danish (0.2%); French Canadian (0.2%); Slovak (0.2%); British (0.1%); Swiss (0.1%); and Portuguese (0.1%). The city also has a large Assyrian population numbering between 80,000–120,000, and it is the location of the seat of the head of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Dinkha IV.

Law and government

Chicago is the county seat of Cook County. The government of the City of Chicago is divided into executive and legislative branches. The Mayor of Chicago is the chief executive, elected by general election for a term of four years, with no term limits. The mayor appoints commissioners and other officials who oversee the various departments. In addition to the mayor, Chicago's two other citywide elected officials are the clerk and the treasurer.

The City Council is the legislative branch and is made up of 50 aldermen, one elected from each ward in the city. The council enacts local ordinances and approves the city budget. Government priorities and activities are established in a budget ordinance usually adopted each November. The council takes official action through the passage of ordinances and resolutions.

During much of the last half of the 19th century, Chicago's politics were dominated by a growing Democratic Party organization dominated by ethnic ward-heelers. During the 1880s and 1890s, Chicago had a powerful radical tradition with large and highly organized socialist, anarchist and labor organizations. For much of the 20th century, Chicago has been among the largest and most reliable Democratic strongholds in the United States, with Chicago's Democratic vote the state of Illinois has been "solid blue" in presidential elections since 1992. The citizens of Chicago have not elected a Republican mayor since 1927, when William Thompson was voted into office. The strength of the party in the city is partly a consequence of Illinois state politics, where the Republicans have come to represent the rural and farm concerns while the Democrats support urban issues such as Chicago's public school funding. Chicago contains close to 25% of the state's population, and as such, eight of Illinois' 19 U.S. Representatives have part of Chicago in their districts.

Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's mastery of machine politics preserved the Chicago Democratic Machine long after the demise of similar machines in other large U.S. cities. During much of that time, the city administration found opposition mainly from a liberal "independent" faction of the Democratic Party. The independents finally gained control of city government in 1983 with the election of Harold Washington. From 1989 until May 16, 2011, Chicago was under the leadership of Richard M. Daley, the son of Richard J. Daley. Because of the dominance of the Democratic Party in Chicago, the Democratic primary vote held in the spring is generally more significant than the general elections in November for U S House and Illinois State seats. The aldermanic, mayoral, and other city offices are filled through nonpartisan elections with runoffs if needed. On May 16, 2011, Rahm Emanuel was sworn in as the 55th mayor of Chicago, ending a 22-year era led by Richard M. Daley.

City planning

Chicago has four main sections: Downtown (which contains the Loop), the North Side, the South Side, and the West Side. The three sides of the city are represented on the Flag of Chicago by three horizontal white strips. These sections can further be informally subdivided or grouped, for example as shown on the map (right). Further sectional references are the Northwest side and the Southwest side. In the late 1920s, sociologists at the University of Chicago subdivided the city into 77 distinct community areas, which can further be subdivided into over 200 neighborhoods.

The central commercial area often is portrayed, as in the map at right, to include parts of Near North Side and Near South Side, as well as the Loop. The North Side is the most densely populated residential section of the city and many high-rises are located on this side of the city along the lakefront. The South Side is the largest section of the city, encompassing roughly 60% of the city's land area. The South Side contains the University of Chicago and most of the facilities of the Port of Chicago.

Chicago's streets were laid out in a street grid that grew from the city's original townsite plat. Streets following the Public Land Survey System section lines later became arterial streets in outlying sections. As new additions to the city were platted, city ordinance required them to be laid out with eight streets to the mile in one direction and 16 in the other direction. The grid's regularity would provide an efficient means to develop new real estate property. A scattering of diagonal streets, many of them originally Indian trails, also cross the city. Many additional diagonal streets were recommended in the Plan of Chicago, but only the extension of Ogden Avenue was ever constructed.

Crime

Murders in the city peaked first in 1974, with 970 murders when the city's population was over three million people (resulting in a murder rate of around 29 per 100,000), and again in 1992 with 943 murders, resulting in a murder rate of 34 per 100,000. Chicago, along with other major US cities, experienced a significant reduction in violent crime rates through the 1990s, eventually recording 448 homicides in 2004, the lowest total since 1965 (15.65 per 100,000.) Chicago's homicide tally remained steady throughout 2005, 2006, and 2007 with 449, 452, and 435 respectively.

In 2008, murders rebounded to 510, 2nd highest in the country, breaking 500 for the first time since 2003. For 2009 the murder count was down about 10% for the year, to 458.

2010 saw Chicago's murder rate at its lowest levels since 1965. Overall, 435 homicides were recorded for the year, a 5% decrease from 2009.

Education

Schools and libraries

There are 675 public schools, 394 private schools, 83 colleges, and 88 libraries in Chicago. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is the governing body of the school district that contains over 600 public elementary and high schools citywide, including several selective-admission magnet schools. There are 9 selective enrollment high schools in the Chicago Public Schools. They are designed to meet the needs of Chicago’s most academically advanced students. The schools offer a rigorous curriculum with mainly honors and Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Northside College Preparatory High School is ranked number one in the city of Chicago. Walter Payton College Prep High School is ranked number two. The Chicago high school rankings are determined by the average test scores on state achievement tests. The oldest magnet school in the City of Chicago, Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, was opened in 1975, and was attended by the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. The district, with an enrollment exceeding 400,000 students (2005 stat.), ranks as the third largest in the US

Chicago's private schools are largely run by religious groups, with the two largest systems being the Catholic and Lutheran schools. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago operates the city's Catholic schools, including the Jesuit preparatory schools. Some of the more prominent Catholic schools are: De La Salle Institute, Gordon Technical High School, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, Brother Rice High School, St. Ignatius College Preparatory School, St. Scholastica Academy, Mount Carmel High School, Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School, Marist High School, St. Patrick High School and Resurrection High School. In addition to Chicago's network of 32 Lutheran schools, there are also several private schools run by other denominations and faiths, such as the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in West Ridge. Additionally, a number of private schools are run in a completely secular educational environment, such as the Latin School of Chicago, the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park, the Francis W. Parker School, the Chicago City Day School in Lake View, the Feltre School in River North and the Morgan Park Academy. Chicago is also home of the private Chicago Academy for the Arts, a high school focused on six different categories of the arts, such as Media Arts, Visual Arts, Music, Dance, Musical Theatre and Theatre.

The Chicago Public Library system operates 79 public libraries including the central library, two regional libraries, and numerous branches distributed throughout the city.

Colleges and universities

Since the 1850s, Chicago has been a world center of higher education and research with several universities that are in the city proper or in the immediate environs. These institutions consistently rank among the top "National Universities" in the United States, as determined by ''U.S. News & World Report''. Top Universities in Chicago are: University of Chicago; Northwestern University; DePaul University; Illinois Institute of Technology; and University of Illinois at Chicago. Other selective national universities include Loyola University Chicago;. Other notable schools include: Chicago State University; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Art - Chicago; East–West University; National-Louis University; North Park University; Northeastern Illinois University; Columbia College Chicago; Robert Morris University; Roosevelt University; Saint Xavier University; Dominican University; and Rush University.

William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago, was instrumental in the creation of the junior college concept, establishing nearby Joliet Junior College as the first in the nation in 1901. His legacy continues with the multiple community colleges in the Chicago proper, including the seven City Colleges of Chicago, Richard J. Daley College, Kennedy–King College, Malcolm X College, Olive–Harvey College, Harry S Truman College, Harold Washington College and Wilbur Wright College, in addition to the privately held MacCormac College.

Chicago proper also has a large concentration of graduate schools, seminaries and theological schools such as the Adler School of Professional Psychology, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, the Catholic Theological Union, Moody Bible Institute and the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Public health

Although Chicago as a whole is in compliance with federal laws regulating particulates many areas of the city have high concentrations of soot from diesel exhaust.

Transportation

Chicago is a major transportation hub in the United States. It is an important component in global distribution, as it is the third largest inter-modal port in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore.

Rail

Six of the seven Class I railroads meet in Chicago, with the exception being the Kansas City Southern Railway. As of 2002, severe freight train congestion caused trains to take as long to get through the Chicago region as it took to get there from the West Coast of the country (about 2 days). About one-third of the country's freight trains pass through the city, making it a major national bottleneck. Announced in 2003, the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) initiative is using about $1.5B in private railroad, state, local, and federal funding to improve rail infrastructure in the region to reduce freight rail congestion by about one third. This is also expected to have a positive impact on passenger rail and road congestion, as well as create new greenspace.

Chicago is one of the largest hubs of passenger rail service in the nation. Many Amtrak long distance services originate from Union Station. The services terminate in San Francisco, Washington D.C., New York City, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Portland, Seattle, Milwaukee, Quincy, St. Louis, Carbondale, Boston, Grand Rapids, Port Huron, Pontiac, Los Angeles, and San Antonio. An attempt was made in the early 20th century to link Chicago with New York City via the Chicago – New York Electric Air Line Railroad. Parts of this were built, but it was ultimately never completed.

Metra provides commuter rail service. It has 11 lines radiating north, west and south.

Expressways

Nine interstate highways run through Chicago and its suburbs. Segments that link to the city center are named after influential politicians, with three of them named after former U.S. Presidents (Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan) and one named after two-time Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson. When referring to the expressways, local citizens tend to use the names of the expressways rather than the interstate numbers, primarily because the names denote certain sections of the interstate(s).

The Kennedy Expressway and the Dan Ryan Expressway are the busiest state maintained routes in the City of Chicago and its suburbs.

Public transportation

The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) coordinates the operation of the three service boards: CTA, Metra, and Pace.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) handles public transportation in the city of Chicago and a few adjacent suburbs outside of the Chicago city limits. The CTA operates an extensive network of buses and a rapid transit elevated and subway system known as the 'L' (for "elevated"), with lines designated by colors. These rapid transit lines also serve both Midway and O'Hare Airports. The CTA's rail lines consist of the Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Brown, Purple, Pink, and Yellow lines. Both the Red and Blue lines offer 24 hour service which makes Chicago one of the few cities in the world (and one of only three cities in the United States of America) to offer rail service every day of the year for 24 hours around the clock. A new rapid transit line, the Circle Line, is also in the planning stages by the CTA.

Metra, the nation's second-most used passenger regional rail network, operates an 11-line commuter rail service in Chicago and its suburbs. The Metra Electric Line shares its trackage with Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District's South Shore Line, which provides commuter service between South Bend and Chicago. Pace provides bus and paratransit service in over 200 surrounding suburbs with some extensions into the city as well. A 2005 study found that one quarter of commuters used public transit.

Greyhound Lines provides inter-city bus service to and from the city, and Chicago is also the hub for the Midwest network of Megabus (North America).

Cycling

Chicago offers a wide array of bicycle transportation facilities and events, including several miles of on-street bike lanes, 10,000 bike racks, of bike route signage, a state-of-the-art central bicycle commuter station in Millennium Park and the annual Bike Chicago festival. The network has of on-street bike lanes and of off-street trails. Bicycles are permitted on CTA trains and their fleet of over 2,000 buses that have been equipped with racks that carry bikes. The successes of the Bike Program are due in large part to Mayor Daley's leadership and the incorporation of bicycling into the mandates and programs of the Chicago Department of Transportation, CTA, Chicago Park District and the Mayor's Office of Special Events, in partnership with the Active Transportation Alliance. The Chicago Park District maintains an multi-use path, popular with bicycle commuters, along Lake Michigan called the Lakefront Trail.

Walkability

A 2011 study by Walk Score ranked Chicago the fourth most walkable of fifty largest cities in the United States.

Air transportation

Chicago is served by Midway International Airport on the South Side and O'Hare International Airport, the world's third busiest airport, on the far Northwest Side. In 2005, O'Hare was the world's busiest airport by aircraft movements and the second busiest by total passenger traffic (due to government enforced flight caps). Both O'Hare and Midway are owned and operated by the City of Chicago. Gary/Chicago International Airport and Chicago Rockford International Airport, located in nearby Gary, Indiana and Rockford, Illinois, respectively, serve as alternate Chicago area airports. Chicago is the world headquarters for United Airlines, the world's second-largest airline by revenue-passenger-kilometers and the city is a hub for American Airlines.In 2010 United Airlines merged with Continental to create the world's largest airline, moving ahead of Delta, known as United Continental Holdings with world headquarters in Chicago. Midway is a hub for low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines.

Port

The Port of Chicago consists of several major port facilities within the city of Chicago operated by the Illinois International Port District (formerly known as the Chicago Regional Port District). The central element of the Port District, Calumet Harbor, is maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Facilities

Iroquois Landing Lakefront Terminal: at the mouth of the Calumet River, it includes of warehouses and facilities on Lake Michigan with over 780,000 square meters (8,390,000 square feet) of storage. Lake Calumet terminal: located at the union of the Grand Calumet River and Little Calumet River inland from Lake Michigan. Includes three transit sheds totaling over 29,000 square meters (315,000 square feet) adjacent to over 900 linear meters (3000 linear feet) of ship and barge berthing.

Grain (14 million bushels) and bulk liquid (800,000 barrels) storage facilities along Lake Calumet.

The Illinois International Port district also operates Foreign trade zone #22, which extends from Chicago's city limits.

Infrastructure

Utilities

Electricity for most of northern Illinois is provided by Commonwealth Edison, also known as ComEd. Their service territory borders Iroquois County to the south, the Wisconsin border to the north, the Iowa border to the west and the Indiana border to the east. In northern Illinois, ComEd (a division of Exelon) operates the greatest number of nuclear generating plants in any US state. Because of this, ComEd reports indicate that Chicago receives about 75% of its electricity from nuclear power. Recently, the city started the installation of wind turbines on government buildings with the aim to promote the use of renewable energy.

Natural Gas is provided by Peoples Gas, a subsidiary of Integrys Energy Group, which is headquartered in Chicago.

Domestic and industrial waste was once incinerated but it is now landfilled, mainly in the Calumet area. From 1995 to 2008, the city had a blue bag program to divert certain refuse from landfills. In the fall of 2007 the city began a pilot program for blue bin recycling similar to that of other cities due to low participation rates in the blue bag program. After completion of the pilot the city will determine whether to roll it out to all wards.

Health systems

Chicago is home to the Illinois Medical District, on the Near West Side. It includes Rush University Medical Center, the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, Jesse Brown VA Hospital, and John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, the largest trauma-center in the city.

The University of Chicago Medical Center was ranked the 14th best hospital in the country by ''U.S. News & World Report''. It is the only hospital in Illinois ever to be included in the magazine's "Honor Roll" of the best hospitals in the United States.

The Chicago campus of Northwestern University includes the Feinberg School of Medicine; Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which is ranked as the best hospital in the Chicago metropolitan area by ''U.S. News & World Report'' for 2010–11; the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, which is ranked the best U.S. rehabilitation hospital by ''U.S. News & World Report''; the new Prentice Women's Hospital; and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, which is currently under construction.

The University of Illinois College of Medicine at UIC is the largest medical school in the United States (2,600 students including those at campuses in Peoria, Rockford and Urbana–Champaign).

In addition, the Chicago Medical School and Loyola University Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine are located in the suburbs of North Chicago and Maywood, respectively. The Midwestern University Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine is in Downers Grove.

The American Medical Association, Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, American Osteopathic Association, American Dental Association, Academy of General Dentistry, American Dietetic Association, American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, American College of Surgeons, American Society for Clinical Pathology, American College of Healthcare Executives and the American Hospital Association, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association are all based in Chicago.

Telecommunications

Using only 3% of the total available bandwidth capacity and 13% of the available fiber pairs, Chicago area data centers move data for local, area, regional and international networks.

Sister cities

Chicago has 28 Sister Cities. Like Chicago, many of them are or were, the second city of their country, or they are the main city of a country that has had many immigrants settle in Chicago. Paris is a ''Partner City'', due to the one sister city policy of their respective French commune.

To celebrate the sister cities, Chicago hosts a yearly festival in Daley Plaza, which features cultural acts and food tastings from the other cities. In addition, the Chicago Sister Cities program hosts a number of delegation and formal exchanges. In some cases, these exchanges have led to further informal collaborations, such as the academic relationship between the Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University and the Institute of Gerontology of Ukraine (originally of the Soviet Union), that was originally established as part of the Chicago-Kiev sister cities program.

Partner City Paris (France) ''1996'' Sister Cities Warsaw (Poland) ''1960'' Milan (Italy) ''1973'' Osaka (Japan) ''1973'' Casablanca (Morocco) ''1982'' Shanghai (China) ''1985'' Shenyang (China) ''1985'' Gothenburg (Sweden) ''1987'' Accra (Ghana) ''1989'' Prague (Czech Republic) ''1990'' Kiev (Ukraine) ''1991'' Mexico City (Mexico) ''1991'' Toronto (Canada) ''1991'' Birmingham (United Kingdom) ''1993'' Vilnius (Lithuania) ''1993'' Hamburg (Germany) ''1994'' Petah Tikva (Israel) ''1994'' Athens (Greece) ''1997'' Durban (South Africa) ''1997'' Galway (Ireland) ''1997'' Moscow (Russia) ''1997'' Lucerne (Switzerland) ''1998'' Delhi (India) ''2001'' Amman (Jordan) ''2004'' São Paulo (Brazil) ''2004'' Belgrade (Serbia) ''2005'' Lahore (Pakistan) ''2007'' Busan (South Korea) ''2007'' Bogotá (Colombia) ''2009''

==Bibliography==

See also

List of cities with most skyscrapers

National Register of Historic Places listings in Central Chicago

National Register of Historic Places listings in North Side Chicago

National Register of Historic Places listings in South Side Chicago

National Register of Historic Places listings in West Side Chicago

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

City of Chicago official website

City of Chicago data portal

Explore Chicago: City of Chicago's official tourism website

Category:Cities in Illinois Category:Communities on U.S. Route 66 Category:County seats in Illinois Category:Irish-American culture Category:Polish American history Category:Italian-American culture Category:Port settlements in the United States Category:Populated places established in 1833 Category:Populated places in Cook County, Illinois Category:Populated places on the Great Lakes Category:Populated places in the United States with African American plurality populations Category:United States places with Orthodox Jewish communities Category:Populated places in DuPage County, Illinois

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fullname	State of Illinois
electoralvotes	21
flag	Flag of Illinois.svg
flaglink	Flag
seal	Seal of Illinois.svg
name	Illinois
nickname	Land of Lincoln; The Prairie State
motto	State sovereignty, national union
former	Illinois Territory
demonym	Illinoisan
officiallang	English
languages	English (80.8%)Spanish (10.9%)Polish (1.6%)Other (6.7%)
map	Map_of_USA_IL.svg
capital	Springfield
largestcity	Chicago
largestmetro	Chicago metropolitan area
governor	Pat Quinn (D)
lieutenant governor	Sheila Simon (D)
legislature	General Assembly
upperhouse	Senate
lowerhouse	House of Representatives
senators	Dick Durbin (D)Mark Kirk (R)
Representative	11 Republicans, 8 Democrats
postalabbreviation	IL, Ill.,
borderingstates	Indiana, Iowa, KentuckyMissouri, Wisconsin
arearank	25th
totalareaus	57,914
totalarea	149,998
landareaus	55,593
landarea	143,968
waterareaus	2,320
waterarea	5,981
pcwater	4.0/ Negligible
poprank	5th
2000pop (old)	12,831,970
| 2000pop	12,830,632 (2010)
densityrank	12th
2000densityus	223.4
2000density	86.27
medianhouseholdincome	$54,124
incomerank	17
admittanceorder	21st
admittancedate	December 3, 1818
timezone	Central: UTC-6/-5
latitude	36° 58′ N to 42° 30′ N
longitude	87° 30′ W to 91° 31′ W
widthus	210
width	340
lengthus	395
length	629
highestpoint	Charles Mound
highestelevus	1,235
highestelev	377
meanelevus	600
meanelev	182
lowestpoint	Mississippi River
lowestelevus	279
lowestelev	85
isocode	US-IL
website	www.illinois.gov }}

name	Illinois
Flag	Flag of Illinois.svg
Flagsize	100px
Seal	Seal of Illinois.svg
Sealsize	100px
amphibian	Eastern Tiger Salamander
bird	Northern Cardinal
butterfly	Monarch Butterfly
fish	Bluegill
flower	Violet
grass	Big Bluestem
insect
mammal	White-tailed deer
reptile	Painted Turtle
tree	White oak
dance	Square dance
food	Gold Rush Apple Popcorn
fossil	Tully Monster
mineral	Fluorite
poem	The Death Poem
slogan	"Land of Lincoln"
soil	Drummer silty clay loam
song	"Illinois"
route marker	Illinois 19.svg|300px
quarter	2003 IL Proof.png|100px|Illinois quarter
quarterreleasedate	2003 }}

Illinois ( ) is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the state to other global ports from the Great Lakes, via the St. Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean; as well as the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River. For decades, O'Hare International Airport has ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. As the "most average state", Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics.

In the 1810s, settlers began arriving from Kentucky. In 1818 Illinois achieved statehood. The state's population originally grew from south to north. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan. Railroads and John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars. The Great Migration established a large community of African Americans in Chicago that created the city's famous jazz and blues cultures.

Three U.S. Presidents have been elected while living in IllinoisAbraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama. Additionally, President Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was actually the only US President born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan, ''Land of Lincoln'', which has been displayed on its license plates since 1954.

Name

"Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois people, a name that was spelled in many different ways in the early records.

The name "Illinois" has traditionally been said to mean "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original ''iliniwek'' transformed via French into Illinois. However, this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language itself, in which the word for 'man' is ''ireniwa'' and plural 'men' is ''ireniwaki''. The name ''Illiniwek'' has also been said to mean "tribe of superior men", though this is nothing more than a false etymology. In fact the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb ''irenwe·wa'' "he speaks the regular way". This was then taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ''ilinwe·'' (pluralized as ''ilinwe·k''). These forms were then borrowed into French, where the /we/ ending acquired the spelling ''-ois''. The current form, ''Illinois'', began to appear in the early 1670s. The Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was ''Inoka'', of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms.

History

Pre-European

Native Americans lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. The Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrated 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. They built more than 100 mounds and a woodhenge in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology. The civilization vanished in the 15th century for unknown reasons, but historians and archeologists have speculated that the people depleted the area of resources. Many indigenous tribes engaged in constant warfare. According to Suzanne Austin Alchon, "At one site in the central Illinois River valley, one-third of all adults died as a result of violent injuries."

The next major power in the region was the Illinois Confederation or Illini, a political alliance among several tribes. There were about 25,000 Illinois Indians in 1700, but systematic attacks and warfare by the Iroquois reduced their numbers by 90%. Gradually, members of the Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk, and other tribes came in from the east and north. In the American Revolution, the Illinois and Potawatomi supported the American colonists' cause.

European exploration

French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet explored the Illinois River in 1673. In 1680, other French explorers constructed a fort at the site of present day Peoria, and in 1682, a fort atop Starved Rock in today's Starved Rock State Park. As a result of this French exploration, Illinois was part of the French empire until 1763, when it passed to the British with their conquest of New France. The small French settlements continued; a few British soldiers were posted in Illinois, but there were no British or American settlers. In 1778, George Rogers Clark claimed the Illinois Country for Virginia. The area was ceded by Virginia to the new United States in 1783 and became part of the Northwest Territory.

19th century

The Illinois-Wabash Company was an early claimant to much of Illinois. The Illinois Territory was created on February 3, 1809, with its capital at Kaskaskia.

During the discussions leading up to Illinois' admission to the Union, the proposed northern boundary of the state was moved twice. The original provisions of the Northwest Ordinance had specified a boundary that would have been tangent to the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Such a boundary would have actually left Illinois with no shoreline on Lake Michigan at all. However, as Indiana had successfully been granted a 10-mile northern extension of its boundary to provide it with a usable lakefront, the original bill for Illinois statehood, submitted to Congress on January 23, 1818, stipulated a northern border at the same latitude as Indiana's which is defined as north of the southernmost extremity of Lake Michigan. But the Illinois delegate, Nathaniel Pope, wanted more. Pope lobbied to have the boundary moved further north, and the final bill passed by Congress did just such; it included an amendment to shift the border to 42° 30' north, which is approximately north of the Indiana northern border. This shift added to the state, including the lead mining region near Galena. More importantly, it added nearly 50 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and the Chicago River. Pope and others envisioned a canal which would connect the Chicago and Illinois rivers, and thusly, connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi.

In 1818, Illinois became the 21st U.S. state. The capital remained at Kaskaskia, headquartered in a small building rented by the state. In 1819, Vandalia became the capital, and over the next 18 years, three separate buildings were built to serve successively as the capitol building. In 1837, the state legislators representing Sangamon County, under the leadership of state representative Abraham Lincoln, succeeded in having the capital moved to Springfield, where a fifth capitol building was constructed. A sixth capitol building was erected in 1867, which continues to serve as the Illinois capitol today.

Though ostensibly a "free state", Illinois had slavery. The French owned black slaves as late as the 1820s. Slavery was nominally banned by the Northwest Ordnance, but that was not enforced. When Illinois became a sovereign state in 1818, the Ordnance no longer applied, and there were about 900 slaves there. As the southern part of the state, known as "Egypt", was largely settled by migrants from the South, the section was hostile to free blacks and allowed settlers to bring slaves with them for labor. Most citizens were opposed to allowing blacks as permanent residents, and efforts to make slavery official failed in 1822. Nevertheless, some slaves were brought in seasonally or as house servants. The Illinois Constitution of 1848 was written with a provision for exclusionary laws to be passed. In 1853, John A. Logan helped pass a law to prohibit all African Americans, including freedmen, from settling in the state.

In 1832, the Black Hawk War was fought in Illinois and current day Wisconsin between the United States and the Sauk, Fox (Meskwaki) and Kickapoo Indian tribes. The Indians withdrew to Iowa; when they attempted to return, they were defeated by U.S. militia and forced back to Iowa.

The winter of 1830–1831 is called the "Winter of the Deep Snow"; a sudden, deep snowfall blanketed the state, making travel impossible for the rest of the winter, and many travelers perished. Several severe winters followed, including the "Winter of the Sudden Freeze". On December 20, 1836, a fast-moving cold front passed through, freezing puddles in minutes and killing many travelers who could not reach shelter. The adverse weather resulted in crop failures in the northern part of the state. The southern part of the state shipped food north and this may have contributed to its name: "Little Egypt", after the Biblical story of Joseph in Egypt supplying grain to his brothers.

By 1839, the Mormons had founded a utopian city called Nauvoo. Located in Hancock County, along the Mississippi River, Nauvoo flourished and soon rivaled Chicago for the position of the state's largest city. But in 1844, the Mormon leader Joseph Smith was murdered in the Carthage Jail, about 30 miles away from Nauvoo. Soon afterward, after close to six years of rapid development, Nauvoo saw a rapid decline after the Mormons' new leadership led them out of Illinois in a mass exodus to present-day Utah.

Chicago gained prominence as a Great Lakes port and then as an Illinois and Michigan Canal port after 1848, and as a rail hub soon afterward. By 1857, Chicago was Illinois' largest city. With the tremendous growth of mines and factories in the state in the 19th century, Illinois played an important role in the formation of labor unions in the United States. The Pullman Strike and Haymarket Riot in particular greatly influenced the development of the American labor movement. From Sunday, October 8, 1871, until Tuesday, October 10, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire burned in downtown Chicago, destroying .

In 1847, after lobbying by Dorothea L. Dix, Illinois became one of the first states to establish a system of state-supported treatment of mental illness and disabilities, replacing local almshouses.

Civil War

thumb|right|Embarkation of [[Union (American Civil War)|Union troops from Cairo on January 10, 1862]]. During the American Civil War, over 250,000 Illinois men served in the Union Army, a figure surpassed by only New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Beginning with President Abraham Lincoln's first call for troops and continuing throughout the war, Illinois mustered 150 infantry regiments, which were numbered from the 7th to the 156th regiments. Seventeen cavalry regiments were also gathered, as well as two light artillery regiments. The town of Cairo at the southern tip of the state served as a strategically important supply base and training center for the Union army. For several months, both General Grant and Admiral Foote had headquarters in Cairo.

Twentieth century

At the turn of the 20th century, Illinois had a population of nearly 5 million. Bolstered by continued immigration from southern and eastern Europe, and by African-Americans from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, Illinois grew and emerged as one of the most important states in the union. By the end of the century, the population had reached 12.4 million.

The Century of Progress World's Fair was held at Chicago in 1933. Oil strikes in Marion County and Crawford County lead to a boom in 1937, and, by 1939, Illinois ranked fourth in U.S. oil production. Chicago became an ocean port with the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959. The seaway and the Illinois Waterway connected Chicago to both the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1960, Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines (which still exists today as a museum, with a working McDonald's across the street).

No state has had a more prominent role than Illinois in the emergence of the nuclear age. As part of the Manhattan Project, the first sustained nuclear chain reaction took place at the University of Chicago in 1942. In 1957, Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago, activated the first experimental nuclear power generating system in the United States. By 1960, the first privately financed nuclear plant in United States, Dresden 1, was dedicated near Morris. In 1967, Fermilab, a national nuclear research facility near Batavia, opened a particle accelerator which was the world largest for over forty years. And, with eleven plants currently operating, Illinois leads all states in the amount of electricity generated from nuclear power.

The state's fourth constitution was adopted in 1970, replacing the 1870 document. The first Farm Aid concert was held in Champaign to benefit American farmers, in 1985. The worst upper Mississippi River flood of the century, the Great Flood of 1993, inundated many towns and thousands of acres of farmland.

Geography

Boundaries

Illinois' eastern border with Indiana consists of a north-south line at west longitude, from Lake Michigan to the Wabash River, above Post Vincennes. The Wabash River continues as the eastern/southeastern border with Indiana, until the Wabash enters the Ohio River. This marks the beginning of Illinois' southern border with Kentucky, which runs along the northern shoreline of the Ohio River. Its western border with Missouri and Iowa is the Mississippi River. Its northern border with Wisconsin is fixed at north latitude. The northeastern border of Illinois actually lies within Lake Michigan, within which Illinois shares a water boundary with the state of Michigan.

Topography

Though Illinois lies entirely in the Interior Plains, it does have some minor variation in its elevation. In extreme northwestern Illinois, the Driftless Area, a region of unglaciated and therefore higher and more rugged topography, occupies a small part of the state. Charles Mound, located in this region, has the state's highest elevation above sea level at 1,235 feet (376 m). The floodplain on the Mississippi River from Alton to the Kaskaskia River is known as the American Bottom.

Divisions

Illinois has three major geographical divisions. Northern Illinois is dominated by the Chicago metropolitan area; the city of Chicago, its suburbs, and the adjoining exurban area into which the metropolis is expanding. As defined by the federal government, the Chicago metro area includes several counties in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Chicago is a cosmopolitan city, densely populated, industrialized, the transportation hub of the nation, and settled by a wide variety of ethnic groups with a population of 9.8 million people. The city of Rockford, the fourth largest metropolitan area, and the state's third largest city, sits along Interstates 39 and 90 some northwest of Chicago. The Quad Cities region, located along the Mississippi River in northern Illinois, had a population of 379,066 in 2009.

Southward and westward, the second major division is Central Illinois, an area of mostly prairie. Known as the Heart of Illinois, it is characterized by small towns and mid-sized cities. The western section (west of the Illinois River) was originally part of the Military Tract of 1812 and forms the conspicuous western bulge of the state. Agriculture, particularly corn and soybeans, as well as educational institutions and manufacturing centers, figure prominently. Cities include Peoria, the third largest metropolitan area in Illinois at 370,000; Springfield, the state capital; Quincy; Decatur; Bloomington-Normal; and Champaign-Urbana.

The third division is Southern Illinois, comprising the area south of U.S. Route 50, including Little Egypt, near the juncture of the Mississippi River and Ohio River. Southern Illinois is the site of the ancient city of Cahokia, as well as the site of the first state capital at Kaskaskia, which today is separated from the rest of the state by the Mississippi River. This region can be distinguished from the other two by its warmer climate, different variety of crops (including some cotton farming in the past), more rugged topography (due to the area remaining unglaciated during the Illinoian Stage, unlike most of the rest of the state), as well as small-scale oil deposits and coal mining. The Illinois suburbs of St. Louis comprise the second most populous metropolitan area in Illinois with over 700,000 inhabitants, and are known collectively as the Metro-East. The other significant concentration of population in Southern Illinois is the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin, Illinois Combined Statistical Area centered on Carbondale and Marion, a two-county area that is home to 123,272 residents. A portion of southeastern Illinois is part of the extended Evansville, Indiana Metro Area, locally referred to as the Tri-State with Indiana and Kentucky. Seven Illinois counties are in the area.

In addition to these three, largely latitudinally defined divisions, all of the region outside of the Chicago Metropolitan area is often called "downstate" Illinois. This term is flexible, but is generally meant to mean everything outside the Chicago-area. Thus, some cities in ''Northern'' Illinois, such as DeKalb, which is west of Chicago, and Rockford—which is actually ''north'' of Chicago—are considered to be "downstate".

Climate

Because of its nearly 400 mile distance from its northernmost and southernmost extremes, as well as its mid-continental situation, Illinois has a widely varying climate. Most of Illinois has a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification ''Dfa''), with hot, humid summers and cold winters. The southernmost part of the state, from about Carbondale southward, borders on a humid subtropical climate (Koppen ''Cfa''), with more moderate winters. Average yearly precipitation for Illinois varies from just over at the southern tip to around in the northern portion of the state. Normal annual snowfall exceeds in the Chicago area, while the southern portion of the state normally receives less than . The all time high temperature was , recorded on July 14, 1954, at East St. Louis, Illinois, while the all time low temperature was , recorded on January 5, 1999, at Congerville, Illinois.

Illinois averages around 51 days of thunderstorm activity a year, which ranks somewhat above average in the number of thunderstorm days for the United States. Illinois is vulnerable to tornadoes with an average of 35 occurring annually, which puts much of the state at around five tornadoes per annually. The deadliest tornadoes on record in the nation have occurred largely in Illinois, not because the tornadoes are more common or frequent in Illinois, but rather, because Illinois is simply the most populous state in Tornado Alley. The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 killed 695 people in three states; 613 of the victims died in Illinois. Modern developments in storm tracking have caused death tolls from tornadoes to dramatically decline since the 1960s, with no major losses of life in the state since the 1967 tornado storm in northern Illinois.

Monthly Normal High and Low Temperatures For Various Illinois Cities>

City

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

Cairo

Chicago

Edwardsville

Moline

Peoria

Rockford

Springfield

Demographics

In the 2010 Census, Illinois was found to have a population of 12,830,632, representing a slightly lower increase than had been anticipated in estimates from two years earlier. Illinois is the most populous state in the Midwest region. The Chicago metropolitan area, the third most populous city in the United States, comprises only 8% of the land area of the state, but contains 65% of the state's residents.

Specific demographic data from the 2010 Census is not subject to release until March 2011, but as of the 2007 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 1,768,518 foreign-born inhabitants of the state or 13.8% of the population, with 48.4% from Latin America, 24.6% from Asia, 22.8% from Europe, 2.9% from Africa, 1.2% from Northern America and 0.2% from Oceania. Of the foreign-born population, 43.7% were naturalized U.S. citizens and 56.3% were not U.S. citizens. Additionally, the racial distributions were as follows: 65.0% White American, 15.0% African American, 14.9% Latino American, 4.3% Asian American, 0.3% American Indian and Alaska Natives, and 0.1% Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander American. In 2007, 6.9% of Illinois' population was reported as being under age 5, 24.9% under age 18 and 12.1% were age 65 and over. Females made up approximately 50.7% of the population.

According to the 2007 estimates, 21.1% of the population had German ancestry, 13.3% had Irish ancestry, 7.9% had Polish ancestry, 6.7% had English ancestry, 6.4% had Italian ancestry, 4.6% listed themselves as American, 2.4% had Swedish ancestry, 2.2% had French ancestry, other than Basque, 1.6% had Dutch ancestry, 1.4% had Norwegian ancestry and 1.3% had Scottish ancestry. Also, 21.8% of the population age 5 years and over reported speaking a language other than English, with 12.8% of the population speaking Spanish, 5.6% speaking other Indo-European languages, 2.5% speaking Asian and Austronesian languages, and 0.8% speaking other languages.

Chicago, along the shores of Lake Michigan, is the nation's third largest city. In 2000, 23.3% of Illinois' population lived in the city of Chicago, 43.3% in Cook County and 65.6% in the counties of the Chicago metropolitan area: Will, DuPage, Kane, Lake and McHenry counties, as well as Cook County. The remaining population lives in the smaller cities and rural areas that dot the state's plains. As of 2000, the state's center of population was at , located in Grundy County, northeast of the village of Mazon.

Urban areas

Chicago is the largest city in the state and the third most populous city in the United States, with its 2010 population of 2,695,598. The U.S. Census Bureau currently lists seven other cities with populations of over 100,000 within Illinois. Based upon the Census Bureau's official 2010 population,: Aurora, a Chicago satellite town which eclipsed Rockford for the title of "Second City" of Illinois in 2006; its 2010 population was 197,899. Rockford, at 152,871, is the third largest city in the state, and is also the largest city in the state not located within the Chicago metropolitan area. Joliet, located southwest of Chicago, is the fourth largest city in the state, with a population of 147,433. Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, is fifth with 141,853; Naperville and Aurora (the 2nd largest city) share a boundary along Illinois Route 59. Springfield, the state capital of Illinois, comes in sixth with 117,352. Peoria, which decades ago was the second largest city in the state, comes in seventh with 115,007. The eighth largest and final city in the 100,000 club is Elgin, a northwest suburb of Chicago with a 2010 population of 108,188.

The most populated city in the state south of Springfield is Belleville, with 44,478 people at the 2010 census. It is located in the Illinois portion of Greater St. Louis (often called the Metro-East area), which has a rapidly growing population of over 700,000 people.

Other major urban areas include the Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area, which has a combined population of almost 230,000 people, the Illinois portion of the Quad Cities area with about 215,000 people, and the Bloomington-Normal area with a combined population of over 165,000.

Religion

Roman Catholics constitute the single largest religious denomination in Illinois; they are heavily concentrated in and around Chicago, and account for nearly 30% of the state's population. However, taken together ''as a group'', the various Protestant denominations comprise a greater percentage of the state's population than do Catholics. In 2000 Catholics in Illinois numbered 3,874,933, the largest Protestant denominations were the United Methodist Church, with 365,182 members, and the Southern Baptist Convention, with 305,838. The largest non-Christian group were Jews with 270,000. Chicago and its suburbs are also home to a large and growing population of Hindus, Muslims, Baha'is and Sikhs.

Illinois played an important role in the early Latter Day Saint movement, with Nauvoo, Illinois, becoming a gathering place for Mormons in the early 1840s. Nauvoo was the location of the succession crisis, which led to the separation of the Mormon movement into several Latter Day Saint sects. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest of the sects to emerge from the Mormon schism, claims 55,460 in Illinois today.

Economy

The dollar gross state product for Illinois was estimated to be billion in 2008. The state's 2008 per capita gross state product was estimated to be , and the state's per capita personal income was estimated to be in 2009.

, the state's unemployment rate was 11.5%, and two months later, the rate dropped to 10.8% in May.

Taxes

Illinois' state income tax is calculated by multiplying net income by a flat rate. In 1990, that rate was set at 3%, but in 2010, the General Assembly voted in a temporary increase in the rate to 5%; the new rate went into effect on January 1, 2011, and is scheduled to return to 3% after four years. There are two rates for state sales tax: 6.25% for general merchandise and 1% for qualifying food, drugs and medical appliances. The property tax is the largest single tax in Illinois, and is the major source of tax revenue for local government taxing districts. The property tax is a local not state tax, imposed by local government taxing districts, which include counties, townships, municipalities, school districts and special taxation districts. The property tax in Illinois is imposed only on real property.

Agriculture

Illinois' major agricultural outputs are corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, dairy products, and wheat. In most years, Illinois is either the first or second state for the highest production of soybeans, with a harvest of 427.7 million bushels (11.64 million metric tons) in 2008, after Iowa's production of 444.82 million bushels (12.11 million metric tons). Illinois ranks second in U.S. corn production with more than 1.5 billion bushels produced annually. Illinois also produces wine, and the state is home to two American viticultural areas. Illinois' universities are actively researching alternative agricultural products as alternative crops.

Manufacturing

Illinois is one of the nation's manufacturing leaders, boasting annual value added productivity by manufacturing of over $107 billion in 2006. About three-quarters of the state's manufacturers are located in the Northeastern Opportunity Return Region, with 38 percent of Illinois' approximately 18,900 manufacturing plants located in Cook County. As of 2006, the leading manufacturing industries in Illinois, based upon value-added, were chemical manufacturing ($18.3 billion), machinery manufacturing ($13.4 billion), food manufacturing ($12.9 billion), fabricated metal products ($11.5 billion), transportation equipment ($7.4 billion), plastics and rubber products ($7.0 billion), and computer and electronic products ($6.1 billion).

Services

By the early 2000s, Illinois' economy had moved toward a dependence on high-value-added services, such as financial trading, higher education, law, logistics, and medicine. In some cases, these services clustered around institutions that hearkened back to Illinois' earlier economies. For example, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a trading exchange for global derivatives, had begun its life as an agricultural futures market. Other important non-manufacturing industries include publishing, tourism, and energy production and distribution.

Energy

Illinois is a net importer of fuels for energy, despite large coal resources and some minor oil production. Illinois exports electricity, ranking fifth among states in electricity production and seventh in electricity consumption.

Coal

The coal industry of Illinois has its origins in the middle 19th century, when entrepreneurs such as Jacob Loose discovered coal in locations such as Sangamon County. Jacob Bunn contributed to the development of the Illinois coal industry, and was a founder and owner of the Western Coal & Mining Company of Illinois. About 68% of Illinois has coal-bearing strata of the Pennsylvanian geologic period. According to the Illinois State Geological Survey, 211 billion tons of bituminous coal are estimated to lie under the surface, having a total heating value greater than the estimated oil deposits in the Arabian Peninsula. However, this coal has a high sulfur content, which causes acid rain unless special equipment is used to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. Many Illinois power plants are not equipped to burn high-sulfur coal. In 1999, Illinois produced 40.4 million tons of coal, but only 17 million tons (42%) of Illinois coal was consumed in Illinois. Most of the coal produced in Illinois is exported to other states, while much of the coal burned for power in Illinois (21 million tons in 1998) is mined in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.

Mattoon was recently chosen as the site for the Department of Energy's FutureGen project, a 275 megawatt experimental zero emission coal-burning power plant which just received a second round of funding from the DOE.

Petroleum

Illinois is a leading refiner of petroleum in the American Midwest, with a combined crude oil distillation capacity of nearly . However, Illinois has very limited crude oil proved reserves that account for less than 1% of U.S. crude oil proved reserves. Residential heating is 81% natural gas compared to less than 1% heating oil. Illinois is ranked 14th in oil production among states, with a daily output of approximately in 2005.

Nuclear power

Nuclear power arguably began in Illinois with the Chicago Pile-1, the world's first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the world's first nuclear reactor, built on the University of Chicago campus. There are six operating nuclear power plants in Illinois: Braidwood; Byron; Clinton; Dresden; LaSalle; and Quad Cities. With the exception of the single-unit Clinton plant, each of these facilities has two reactors. Three reactors have been permanently shut down and are in various stages of decommissioning: Dresden-1 and Zion-1 and 2. , Illinois was ranked first among the 50 states both in nuclear capacity and nuclear generation. In 2007, 48% of Illinois' electricity was generated using nuclear power.

Wind power

Illinois has seen growing interest in the use of wind power for electrical generation. Most of Illinois was rated in 2009 as "marginal or fair" for wind energy production by the U.S. Department of Energy, with some western sections rated "good" and parts of the south rated "poor". These ratings are for wind turbines with hub heights; newer wind turbines are taller, enabling them to reach stronger winds farther from the ground. As a result, more areas of Illinois have become prospective wind farm sites. As of September 2009, Illinois had 1116.06 MW of installed wind power nameplate capacity with another 741.9 MW under construction. Illinois ranked ninth among U.S. states in installed wind power capacity, and sixteenth by potential capacity. Large wind farms in Illinois include Twin Groves, Rail Splitter, EcoGrove, and Mendota Hills.

As of 2007, wind energy represented only 1.7% of Illinois' energy production, and it was estimated that wind power could provide 5-10% of the state's energy needs. Also, the Illinois General Assembly mandated in 2007 that by 2025, 25% of all electricity generated in Illinois is to come from renewable resources.

Biofuels

Illinois is ranked second in corn production among U.S. states, and Illinois corn is used to produce 40% of the ethanol consumed in the United States. The Archer Daniels Midland corporation in Decatur, Illinois is the world's leading producer of ethanol from corn.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the partners in the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), a $500 million biofuels research project funded by petroleum giant BP.

Arts and culture

Museums

Illinois has numerous museums. The state of the art Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield is the largest presidential library in the country; numerous museums in the city of Chicago are considered some of the best in the world. These include the John G. Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Adler Planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Polish Museum of America. Illinois is also home to several landmark historic house museums such as Magnolia Manor in Cairo or the Elihu Benjamin Washburne and Ulysses S. Grant Homes in Galena.

Music

Illinois is a leader in music education having hosted the Midwest Clinic: An International Band and Orchestra Conference since 1946, as well being home to the Illinois Music Educators Association (IMEA), one of the largest professional music educator's organizations in the country. Each summer since 2004, Southern Illinois University Carbondale has played host to the Southern Illinois Music Festival, which presents dozens of performances throughout the region. Past featured artists include the Eroica Trio and violinist David Kim.

Sports

Major league teams

As one of the United States' major metropolises, all major sports leagues have teams headquartered in Chicago. Two Major League Baseball teams are located in the state. The Chicago Cubs of the National League play in the second-oldest major league stadium (Wrigley Field) and are widely known for having the longest championship drought in all of major American sport: not winning the World Series since 1908. The Chicago White Sox of the American League won the World Series in 2005, their first since 1917.

The Chicago Bears football team has won nine total NFL Championships, the last occurring in Super Bowl XX in 1986. The NFL's Arizona Cardinals were the ''Chicago'' Cardinals until they left the city in 1961.

The Chicago Bulls of the NBA is one of the most recognized basketball teams in the world, due largely to the efforts of Michael Jordan, who led the team to six NBA championships in eight seasons in the 1990s.

The Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL began playing in 1926, as a member of the Original Six and have won four Stanley Cups, most recently in 2010 (after one of the longest Stanley Cup droughts of any NHL team, not having won since 1961).

The Chicago Fire soccer club is a member of MLS and is one of the league's most successful and best-supported, since its founding in 1997, winning one league and four Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cups in that timespan.

Minor league teams

Many minor league teams also call Chicago their home. These include

The Chicago Rush of the Arena Football League, who won ArenaBowl XX in 2006.

The Chicago Wolves is an AHL team.

The Chicago Sky of the WNBA

The Chicago Bandits of the NPF, a female softball league; the Bandits won their first title in 2008

The Chicago Red Stars of the WPS, a female soccer league

Folded sports franchises

The city was formerly home to several other teams that either failed to survive, or that belonged to leagues that folded.

The Chicago Blitz, United States Football League

The Chicago Sting, Major Indoor Soccer League

The Chicago Cougars, World Hockey Association

The Chicago Rockers, Continental Basketball Association

The Chicago Skyliners, American Basketball Association

The Chicago Bruisers, Arena Football League

The Chicago Power, National Professional Soccer League

The Chicago Blaze, National Women's Basketball League.

Professional sports teams outside of Chicago

Chicago is not the only place in Illinois where professional sports are played. The Rockford Lightning is one of the oldest CBA teams in the league. The Peoria Chiefs and Kane County Cougars are minor league baseball teams affiliated with MLB. The Schaumburg Flyers and Lake County Fielders are members of the North American League, and the Southern Illinois Miners, Gateway Grizzlies, Joliet Slammers, Windy City ThunderBolts and Normal CornBelters belong to the Frontier League.

In addition to the Chicago Wolves, the AHL also has two teams in Illinois outside of Chicago: the Rockford IceHogs serves as the AHL affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Peoria Rivermen is the AHL affiliate of the St. Louis Blues.

Motor racing

Illinois has a long tradition of motor racing. Oval tracks at the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, the Chicago Motor Speedway in Cicero and the Gateway International Raceway in Madison, near St. Louis, have hosted NASCAR, CART and IRL races, whereas the Sports Car Club of America, among other national and regional road racing clubs, have visited the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, the Blackhawk Farms Raceway in South Beloit and the former Meadowdale International Raceway in Carpentersville. Illinois also has several short tracks and dragstrips. The dragstrip at Gateway International Raceway and the Route 66 Raceway, which sits on the same property as the Chicagoland Speedway, both host NHRA drag races.

Parks and recreation

The Illinois state parks' system began in 1908 with what is now Fort Massac State Park, becoming the first park in a system encompassing over 60 parks and about the same number of recreational and wildlife areas.

Areas under the protection and control of the National Park Service include: the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor near Lockport; the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail; the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield; the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail; the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail; and the American Discovery Trail.

In March 2011, Illinois ranked as a bottom-seven "Worst" state (tied with Georgia and Oklahoma) in the American State Litter Scorecard. The Land of Lincoln suffers from overall poor effectiveness and quality of its statewide public space cleanliness—due to state and related eradication standards and performance indicators.

Governance

While the organization of the central government of Illinois is largely the same as every other state (having three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial), below this top level, the substructure of Illinois' government is extremely complex, arguably the most complex of all fifty states.

State government structure

Legislative functions are granted to the Illinois General Assembly, composed of the 118-member Illinois House of Representatives and the 59-member Illinois Senate. The executive branch is led by the Governor of Illinois, but four other executive officials are separately elected by the people. The judiciary is composed of the Supreme Court of Illinois and the lower appellate and circuit courts.

Local government structure

Illinois has more units of local government than any other state—over 8,000 in all.. The basic subdivision of Illinois is like almost every other state, the county, and Illinois has 102 of these. About half of these counties, in turn, are divided into townships, which is much the same as many other Midwestern states. And finally, Illinois has a number of cities, villages, and towns commensurate with a state of its size. But the counties, townships, and municipal governments in Illinois make up only about 1/4 of all of the governmental units in the state. The reason Illinois has so many units of government is because so many single-purpose governmental entities have been created.

Not uniquely, Illinois has school districts which do not share boundaries with either counties nor townships. What would observers from many other states as odd is that there are many places where a given piece of land sits within ''two'' school districts, one high school district, and another elementary district, each of which has its own school board and its own taxing authority.

Another common political unit is the "library district". Library districts are run by library boards elected at the same elections as are governors, senators, and presidents. The boundaries of these library districts occasionally coincide with those of another governmental entity, such as a township, but more often, they are set independently. Another unit of government with taxation authority is the "sanitary district", a euphemism for "sewage district". Many Illinoisians first learned of the existence of these entities when, in 1978, a sanitary district board member named Alex Seith captured the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate against the veteran senator Charles Percy and nearly upset him in the general election. There are additional units of government that oversee watersheds, land use, and many other functions that in another state would be handled by the county or city governments.

The Constitution of 1970 created, for the first time in Illinois, a type of "home rule", which allows cities of certain sizes to opt out of certain types of state laws.

Law enforcement

The complexity and overlapping jurisdictions of Illinois' law enforcement agencies is not unlike that of the overlapping taxing authorities noted above. At the state level, there are at least eleven law enforcement agencies. At the county level, there are sheriffs, forest preserve police and other specialized police forces. At the local level, most cities and many villages have municipal police forces, park district police forces, and even local specialized police forces. Many colleges also have their own campus police that are often sworn police officers.

In 2000, Illinois was ranked 4th in the U.S. in the number of full-time sworn officers with 321 per 100,000 persons, behind Louisiana (415), New York (384), and New Jersey (345). In this ranking, only New York had a higher total population than Illinois. Illinois is also near the top of most law enforcement numbers lists, such as number of agencies per state, number of agencies with special jurisdictions, and number of local police agencies. Even taking into account that Illinois is the fifth most populous state, many of the ratios are higher than more populated states. There is much overlap in jurisdiction amongst the different law enforcement agencies.

Politics

Party balance

Historically, Illinois was long a major swing state, with near-parity existing between the Republican and the Democratic parties. However, in recent elections, the Democratic Party has slowly gained ground, and Illinois has come to be seen as more of a "blue" state. Chicago and most of Cook County votes have long been strongly Democratic. In addition, Democratic voters have moved to the traditionally Republican "collar counties" (the suburbs surrounding Chicago's Cook County, Illinois), which are becoming increasingly diverse.

Republicans continue to prevail in rural northern and central Illinois; Republican support is strong in southern Illinois outside of the East St. Louis metropolitan area. Illinois has voted for Democratic presidential candidates in the last five elections. State resident Barack Obama easily won the state's 21 electoral votes in 2008, by a margin of 25 percentage points with 61.9% of the vote. And though the Republicans' electoral performance in the 2010 mid-year elections marked some improvement, the trend in Illinois politics for the long term appears to be more blue than red.

History of corruption

Politics in the state, particularly those of the Chicago machine, have been famous for highly visible corruption cases, as well as for crusading reformers, such as governors Adlai Stevenson (D) and James R. Thompson (R). In 2006, former Governor George Ryan (R) was convicted of racketeering and bribery. In 2008, then-Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) was served with a criminal complaint on corruption charges, stemming from allegations that he conspired to sell the vacated Senate seat left by President Barack Obama (D) to the highest bidder. In the late 20th century, Congressman Dan Rostenkowski (D) was imprisoned for mail fraud; former governor and federal judge Otto Kerner, Jr. (D) was imprisoned for bribery; and State Auditor of Public Accounts (Comptroller) Orville Hodge (R) was imprisoned for embezzlement. In 1912, William Lorimer, the GOP boss of Chicago, was expelled from the U.S. Senate for bribery and in 1921, Governor Len Small (R) was found to have defrauded the state of a million dollars.

US Presidents from Illinois

Three presidents have claimed Illinois as their political base: Lincoln, Grant, and Obama. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but moved to Illinois at the age of 21; he served in the General Assembly and represented the 7th congressional district in the US House of Representatives before his election as President. Ulysses S. Grant was born in Ohio and had a military career that precluded settling down, but on the eve of the Civil War, and approaching middle age, Grant moved to Illinois and thus claimed it as his home when running for President. Barack Obama was born and raised in Hawaii (other than a four year period of his childhood spent in Indonesia) and made Illinois his home and base after completing law school.

Only one person elected President of the United States was actually born in Illinois. Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, raised in Dixon and educated at Eureka College. Reagan moved to Los Angeles as a young adult and later became Governor of California before being elected President.

Though never elected president, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, who was born and raised in central Illinois, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956.

Black senators

Since the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789, only six African-Americans have served as members of the United States Senate, and ''half'' of them represented Illinois: Carol Moseley-Braun, Barack Obama, and Roland Burris, who was appointed to replace Obama after his election to the presidency.

Education

Illinois State Board of Education

The Illinois State Board of Education or ISBE, is autonomous of the governor and the state legislature, and administers public education in the state. Local municipalities and their respective school districts operate individual public schools but the ISBE audits performance of public schools with the Illinois School Report Card. The ISBE also makes recommendations to state leaders concerning education spending and policies.

Primary and secondary schools

Education is compulsory from kindergarten through the twelfth grade in Illinois, commonly but not exclusively divided into three tiers of primary and secondary education: elementary school, middle school or junior high school and high school. District territories are often complex in structure. Many areas in the state are actually located in ''two'' school districts—one for high school, the other for elementary and middle schools. And such districts do not necessarily share boundaries. A given high school may have several elementary districts that feed into it, yet some of those feeder districts may themselves feed into multiple high school districts.

Colleges and universities

Using the criterion established by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, there are eleven "National Universities" in the state. , five of these rank in the "first tier" (that is, the top quartile) among the top 500 National Universities in the United States, as determined by the ''U.S. News & World Report'' rankings: the University of Chicago (8), Northwestern University (12), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (39), Illinois Institute of Technology (106), and Loyola University Chicago (119).

Illinois also has more than 20 additional accredited four-year universities, both public and private, and dozens of small liberal arts colleges across the state. Additionally, Illinois supports 49 public community colleges in the Illinois Community College System.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Because of its central location and its proximity to the Rust Belt and Grain Belt, Illinois is a national crossroads for air, auto, rail and truck traffic.

Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD) is one of the busiest airports in the world, with 59.3 million domestic passengers annually, along with 11.4 million international passengers in 2008. It is a major hub for United Airlines and American Airlines, and a major airport expansion project is currently underway. Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW) is the secondary airport in the Chicago metropolitan area, and is a major hub for Southwest Airlines. It served 17.3 million domestic and international passengers in 2008.

Illinois has an extensive passenger and freight rail transportation network. Chicago is a national Amtrak hub and in-state passengers are served by Amtrak's Illinois Service, featuring the Chicago to Carbondale ''Illini'' and ''Saluki'', the Chicago to Quincy ''Carl Sandburg'' and ''Illinois Zephyr'', and the Chicago to St. Louis ''Lincoln Service''. Currently there is trackwork on the Chicago-St. Louis line to bring the maximum speed up to which would reduce the trip time by an hour and a half. Nearly every North American railway meets at Chicago, making it the largest and most active rail hub in the country. Extensive commuter rail is provided in the city proper and some immediate suburbs by the Chicago Transit Authority's 'L' system. The largest suburban commuter rail system in the United States, operated by Metra, uses existing rail lines to provide direct commuter rail access for hundreds of suburbs to the city and beyond.

In March 2011, Illinois ranked as a bottom-seven "Worst" state (tied with Georgia and Oklahoma) in the American State Litter Scorecard. The Land of Lincoln suffers from overall poor effectiveness and quality of its statewide public space cleanliness (primarily from roadway and adjacent litter/debris abatement)--due to state and related eradication standards and performance indicators.

Major U.S. Interstate highways crossing the state include: I-24, I-39, I-55, I-57, I-64, I-70, I-72, I-74, I-80, I-88, I-90, and I-94. Its central location is the reason that Illinois carries the distinction of having the most primary (2-digit) Interstates pass through it among the 50 states.

In addition to the state's rail lines, the Mississippi River and Illinois River provide major transportation routes for the state's agricultural interests. Lake Michigan gives Illinois access to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

See also

Chicago

List of National Register of Historic Places in Illinois

List of people from Illinois

U.S. state

References

Further reading

External links

State of Illinois ''official government website''

The Official Website for International Visitors to Chicago

State of Illinois research information guide from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Illinois Bureau of Tourism

Illinois: Science In Your Backyard USGS Illinois State Agency Databases compiled by the Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) of the American Library Association Illinois State Energy Profile DOE, Energy Information Administration Illinois: State Fact Sheets USDA, Economic Research Service Illinois State Guide LOC, Virtual Programs & Services Biographies Of Governors of Illinois: 1818 to 1885 compiled by OnlineBiographies.info Illinois Highways Page by Richard Carlson

Category:States of the United States Category:States and territories established in 1818

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Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Taylor Swift
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Taylor Alison Swift
Birth date	December 13, 1989
Birth place	Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, ganjo, piano, ukulele
Genre	Country pop, pop, country, dance-pop
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, actress
Years active	2006–present
Label	Big Machine
Associated acts	Nathan Chapman, Liz Rose
Website	150pxTaylor Swift's signature }}

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American country pop singer-songwriter, musician and actress.

In 2006, she released her debut single "Tim McGraw", then her self-titled debut album, which was subsequently certified multi-platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. In November 2008, Swift released her second album, ''Fearless'', and the recording earned Swift four Grammy Awards, including the Album of the Year, at the 52nd Grammy Awards. ''Fearless'' and ''Taylor Swift'' finished 2008 at number-three and number-six respectively, with sales of 2.1 and 1.5 million. ''Fearless'' topped the ''Billboard'' 200 for 11 non-consecutive weeks. Swift was named ''Artist of the Year'' by ''Billboard'' Magazine in 2009. Swift released her third album ''Speak Now'' on October 25, 2010, which sold 1,047,000 copies in its first week.

In 2008, her albums sold a combined four million copies, making her the best-selling musician of the year in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. ''Forbes'' ranked Swift 2009's 69th-most powerful celebrity with earnings of $18 million, 2010's 12th-most powerful celebrity with earnings of $45 million and 2011's 7th-most powerful celebrity with earnings of $45 million, too. Swift was ranked the 38th Best Artist of the 2000s by ''Billboard''. In January 2010 Nielsen SoundScan listed Swift as the most successful digital artist in music history with over 34.3 million digital tracks sold. On June 2011, renowned site The Boot named Swift and Carrie Underwood ''The Country Royalty'', as they were the only female country artists to be ranked on ''Rolling Stone'' Queens of Pop list. , she has sold over 20 million albums and 34.3 million singles worldwide. She has been listed in the 2012 ''Guinness Book Of World Records'' as the Fastest Selling Digital Album by a Female Artist for her album ''Speak Now'', and Most Simultaneous U.S. Hot 100 Hits by a Female Artist. In 2011, ''Billboard'' named her woman of the year.

Early life

Swift was born on December 13, 1989, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. She is the daughter of Andrea Gardner (née Finlay), a homemaker who previously worked in finance, and Scott Kingsley Swift, a stockbroker. Her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Finlay (née Moehlenkamp), was an opera singer. Swift has a younger brother, Austin. She grew up on a Christmas-tree farm.

When Swift was in fourth grade, she won a national poetry contest with a three-page poem, "Monster in My Closet". At the age of ten, a computer repairman showed her how to play three chords on a guitar, sparking her interest in learning the instrument. Afterwards, Swift wrote her first song, "Lucky You". When Swift was 12, she devoted an entire summer to writing a 350-page novel, which remains unpublished. She began writing songs regularly and used it as an outlet to help her with her pain from not fitting in at school. Swift was a victim of bullying, and spent her time writing songs to express her emotions. She also started performing at local karaoke contests, festivals, and fairs.

Swift began to regularly visit Nashville, Tennessee, and work with local songwriters. When she was 14, her family relocated to Nashville. Her first major show was a well-received performance at the Bloomsburg Fair. In Tennessee, Swift attended Hendersonville High School, but was subsequently homeschooled for her junior and senior years. In 2008, she earned her high school diploma.

Swift's greatest musical influence is Shania Twain. Her other influences include LeAnn Rimes, Tina Turner, Dolly Parton, and Swift's grandmother. Although her grandmother was a professional opera singer, Swift's tastes always leaned more toward country music. In her younger years, she developed a love for Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton. She also credits the Dixie Chicks for demonstrating the impact that one can have by "stretching boundaries".

Music career

2000–2005: musical beginnings

At age 11, Swift made her first trip to Nashville, hoping to obtain a record deal by distributing a demo tape of her singing with karaoke songs. She gave a copy to every label in town, but was rejected. After Swift returned to Pennsylvania, she was asked to sing at the US Open tennis tournament, where her rendition of the national anthem received much attention.

When Swift was 15, she rejected RCA Records because the company wanted to keep her on an artist development deal. After performing at Nashville's songwriters' venue, The Bluebird Café, she caught the attention of Scott Borchetta, who signed her to his newly formed record label, Big Machine Records. At age 14, she became the youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree publishing house.

2006–2008: ''Taylor Swift''

Swift released her debut single, "Tim McGraw", in mid-2006, reaching No.6 on ''Billboard'' magazine's Hot Country Songs chart. Her self-titled debut album was later released on October 24, 2006. Debuting high on the ''Billboard'' 200, the album sold 39,000 copies during its first week. It peaked at No.1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums and No.5 on the ''Billboard'' 200. Her debut album spent eight consecutive weeks at the top of the Top Country Albums charts and remained at the top for 24 out of 91 weeks. The only other country artists this decade to achieve the number-one sales position for 20 weeks or more are The Dixie Chicks and Carrie Underwood. The music video for "Tim McGraw" won Swift an award for Breakthrough Video of the Year at the 2007 CMT Music Awards. Her pursuit of country music stardom was the subject of "GAC Short Cuts", a part-documentary, part-music-video series airing since the summer of 2006. On May 15, 2007, Swift performed "Tim McGraw" at the Academy of Country Music Awards. Swift has been an opening act for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill on their Soul2Soul 2007 tour. She has opened in the past for George Strait, Brad Paisley and Rascal Flatts as well. The second single from the ''Taylor Swift'' album, "Teardrops on My Guitar", was released February 24, 2007. In mid-2007, the song peaked at No.2 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart and No.33 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The song was re-released with a pop remix that brought "Teardrops on My Guitar" to No.13 on the Hot 100 and No.11 on the Pop 100. In October 2007, Swift was awarded Songwriter/Artist of the Year by the Nashville Songwriters Assn. Intl., making her the youngest artist ever to win the award. Her third song off her debut album, "Our Song" spent six weeks at No.1 on the Country charts, peaked at No.16 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, and rose to No.24 on the ''Billboard'' Pop 100. Swift recorded a holiday album, ''Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection,'' which was released exclusively at Target in late 2007. Swift was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award in the category of Best New Artist, but lost to Amy Winehouse. Swift's successful single, "Picture to Burn", was the fourth single from her debut album. The song debuted and soon peaked at No.3 on the Billboard Country chart in spring 2008. left|upright|thumb|Swift performing at Yahoo HQ in 2007 "Should've Said No" became Swift's second No.1 single. In Summer 2008, Swift released ''Beautiful Eyes'', an EP sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. In its first week of release, the album sold 45,000 copies, debuting at No.1 on ''Billboard'''s Top Country Albums chart and No.9 on the ''Billboard'' 200. With her self-titled debut album sitting at No.2 during the same week, Swift became the first artist since 1997 to hold the Top 2 positions of the Top Country Albums chart. In October 2008, Swift performed a duet with best selling rock band Def Leppard in a taped show in Nashville, Tennessee, and their collaboration was up for both Performance of the Year and Wide Open Country Video of the Year at the CMT Music Awards in 2009.

2008–2010: ''Fearless'' and MTV VMA incident

Swift's second studio album, ''Fearless'', was released in the United States on November 11, 2008. The album debuted at No.1 on the ''Billboard'' 200 Album Chart. Its sales of 592,304 were the highest debut of any country artist in 2008. This is also the largest opening U.S. sales week in 2008 by a female artist in all genres of music, and the fourth biggest overall behind Lil Wayne, AC/DC and Coldplay. Its lead single "Love Story" became a hit on both the country and pop charts. During the first week of release, more than 129,000 of Swift's sales were sold digitally. This gives Swift the best online start for any country album in history. It also makes Swift the fourth biggest week for a digital album since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking them in 2004. Through its eighth week of release, ''Fearless'' has sold more than 338,467 downloads, making it the bestselling country album in digital history. In second place is Swift's debut ''Taylor Swift'' with sales of 236,046 downloads as of April 18, 2009. In its debut week, seven songs in total on ''Fearless'' were charted on ''Billboard'' Hot 100, tying Swift with Miley Cyrus for the most by a female artist in a single week. With "White Horse" charted at #13, this gave Swift her sixth top 20 debut of 2008, a calendar year record for any artist in the history of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Of the 13 tracks on ''Fearless'', 11 have already spent time on the Hot 100. "Change", a song from the album, was selected as part of a soundtrack supporting Team USA's efforts in the 2008 Summer Olympics. The song was also featured as part of the soundtrack of NBC's broadcast package of the Olympics. The lead single from the album, "Love Story", was released on September 12, 2008. The Fearless album includes the "Love Story" music video which is based on ''Romeo and Juliet''. The song has reached No.2 on iTunes Store Top Downloaded Songs and No.4 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. Fifteen weeks after being added to pop radio, "Love Story" also became the first country crossover recording to hit number one on the Nielsen BDS CHR/Top 40 chart in the 16-year-history of the list, as well as number one on the Mediabase Top 40 Chart. The second single from ''Fearless'', "White Horse", was released on December 8, 2008. The music video for the song premiered on CMT on February 7, 2009. Though it missed the No.1 spot on Billboard's Hot Country Songs as of the week April 11, 2009, "White Horse" claimed the No.1 spot atop the USA Today/Country Aircheck chart (powered by Mediabase) in that week. "Forever & Always", another song from the album, was based on Swift's relationship with singer Joe Jonas. She was the first artist in the history of Nielsen SoundScan to have two different albums in the Top 10 on the year end album chart. It also was the first album by a female artist in country music history to log eight weeks at No.1 on The ''Billboard'' 200. In mid-January 2009, Swift became the first country artist to top the 2 million mark in paid downloads with three different songs. Swift is ''Billboard'''s Top Country Artist and Hot Country Songwriter of 2008; she is also country music's best-selling artist of 2008. Swift ranked seventh on Nielsen SoundScan Canada's top-10 selling artists across all genres in 2008. ''Fearless'' and ''Taylor Swift'' took the No.1 and No.2 slots on 2008 Year-End Canadian Country Albums Chart. Swift sang the Star-Spangled Banner at game three of the World Series in Philadelphia on October 25, 2008. In January 2009, Swift announced her North American Fearless Tour planned for 52 cities in 38 states and provinces in the US and Canada over the span of 6 months. The tour kicked off April 23 in Evansville, Indiana. In the same month, Swift made her first musical guest appearance on ''Saturday Night Live''. On February 8, 2009, Swift performed her song "Fifteen" with Miley Cyrus at the 51st Grammy Awards. As of the week ending February 8, 2009, Swift's single "Love Story" became the country song with the most paid downloads in history. Since the release of Swift's second album, ''Fearless'', she has released one new song "Crazier" for the soundtrack of the feature film ''Hannah Montana: The Movie''. At the 44th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, Swift picked up Album of the Year honors as a performer and producer for ''Fearless''. Swift is the youngest artist in history to win the ACM ''Album of the Year'' award. The Academy lauded her for career achievements including selling more albums in 2008 than any other artist in any genre of music, the breakthrough success of her debut album, and the worldwide crossover success of her No.1 single "Love Story". The Academy also cited Swift's contribution to helping country music attract a younger audience. As of late April 2009, Swift has sold more than 14 million downloads, as well as three Gold Mobile Ringtones. On April 28, 2009, Swift gave a free, private concert to students at Bishop Ireton High School, a small Catholic school in Alexandria, Virginia after the school won a national "TXT 2 WIN" contest from Verizon Wireless. The students sent over 19,000 text messages to Verizon during a roughly one month long contest. Swift played for about an hour during the school's field day, an annual day-long recess with games and activities. On October 8, 2009 Swift's official website announced that her sold-out Fearless Tour would return to North America for 37 additional dates in 2010.

Scheduled to perform on September 13, 2009, Swift attended the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. This was her first VMA performance, where she became the first country music artist to win an MTV Video Music Award. During the show, as Swift was on stage accepting the award for Best Female Video for "You Belong with Me," singer/rapper Kanye West came on stage and took the microphone from Swift, saying that Beyoncé's video for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", nominated for the same award, was "one of the best videos of all time," an action that caused the many audience members to boo West. He handed the microphone back to a stunned and reportedly upset Swift, who did not finish her acceptance speech. When Beyoncé later won the award for Best Video of the Year for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", she called Swift up on stage so that she could finish her acceptance speech. Following the awards show, West apologized for his verbal outburst in a blog entry (which was subsequently removed). He was criticized by various celebrities for the outburst, and even by President Barack Obama who called West a "jackass" in an "off the record" comment. He later posted a second apology on his blog and made his first public apology one day after the incident on the debut episode of ''The Jay Leno Show''. On September 15, 2009, Swift talked about the matter on ''The View'', where she said she was at first excited to see West on stage and then disappointed once he acted out. She said West had not spoken to her following the incident. Following her appearance on ''The View'', West contacted her to apologize personally; Swift said she accepted his apology. However, on November 8, 2010, in an interview with a Minnesota radio station, West seemed to recant a bit of his past apologies by attempting to describe the act at the 2009 awards show as "selfless" and downgrade the perception of disrespect it created. Swift would later perform a song at the 2010 VMA called "Innocent" which is about the incident and in the song she absolves West of his actions. On November 11, 2009, Swift became the youngest artist ever to win the Country Music Association Award for Entertainer of the year, and is one of only six women to win the Country Music Association's highest honor. On the chart week of November 14, 2009, Swift set a record for the most songs on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 by a female artist at the same time with eight singles from the re-release of her 2008 album ''Fearless'' namely five debut new songs in the top 30: "Jump Then Fall" at #10, "Untouchable" at #19, "The Other Side of the Door" at #22, "Superstar" at No.27 and "Come in With the Rain" at No.30 and three already-charted songs that were released as singles—"You Belong with Me" (#14), "Forever & Always" which re-entered the chart at #34, and "Fifteen" (#46). In addition, the song "Two Is Better Than One" by Boys Like Girls which features Swift, debuted at No.80 in the same issue. This gives Swift six debuts in one week, the biggest number of debuts by any female artist of all time. It also lifts the number of her simultaneously-charting songs to nine, setting another record for the biggest number of charting songs by the same female artist in the same week. When "Fifteen" reached No.38 on the chart week of November 21, 2009, Swift became the female artist with the most Top 40 singles this decade, surpassing Beyoncé. "Fifteen" became Swift's twentieth Top 40 single overall. "Two Is Better Than One" by Boys Like Girls and John Mayer's "Half of My Heart" both featured Swift, peaking at No.40 and No.25 respectively. The two songs are her 21st and 22nd Top 40 singles. ''Fearless'' was the best-selling album of 2009 in the US with more than 3.2 millions copies sold in that year. Swift claimed both the No.1 and No.2 positions atop Nielsen's BDS Top 10 Most Played Songs chart (all genres), with "You Belong With Me" and "Love Story," respectively. She also topped the all format 2009 Top 10 Artist Airplay chart with over 1.29 million song detections, and the Top 10 Artist Internet Streams chart with more than 46 million song plays.

2010–present: ''Speak Now''

Swift released the track "Today Was a Fairytale" as a digital download on iTunes on January 19, 2010. The song was featured on the soundtrack for the film ''Valentine's Day'', in which she made her feature-film acting debut. The song debuted on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 at No. 2, becoming her sixth Top 10 and 23rd Top 40 single on that chart. According to Nielsen SoundScan, with sales of "Today Was a Fairytale" more than 325,000 in its first week, Swift has broken the record for first-week download sales by a female artist. The song also debuted at number one on the Canadian Hot 100, making it Swift's first number one hit in Canada. In February 2010, Swift brought her Fearless Tour to 5 cities in Australia. Opening acts included Gloriana. In mid-July 2010, ''Billboard'' revealed that Swift's new album is called ''Speak Now''. It was released on October 25, 2010. She has written the album completely by herself in Arkansas, New York, Boston and Nashville with Nathan Chapman serving as co-producer. On Wednesday, August 4, 2010, the lead single from the album, "Mine," was leaked onto the internet. Big Machine Records decided to rush the release of the song to counteract the leak. Swift appeared at the 44th Annual Country Music Awards on November 10, 2010. In 2011, Swift visited Singapore as the first stop of the Asian leg of her first world tour. Hong Kong is the last stop of the Speak Now World Tour and Swift will begin the European and American leg afterwards. Swift's first live album, ''Speak Now World Tour: Live'', featuring all seventeen performances from the North American leg of her concert tour, is scheduled for a November 21, 2011 release. Many dates on the Speak Now World Tour were cancelled due to Swift suffering from bronchitis and was told she is unable to perform. Swift sold approximately 4,470,000 albums in the US in 2010 (more than any other artist) and sold 9.9 million digital tracks. She was ranked second on ''Rolling Stone'''s lists of Top 16 "Queen Of Pops" of the decade. Swift appeared on the ''Hamish & Andy'' show where she performed a new song called "Chaperone Dads", which is dedicated to a select group of her fans. The week following the release of her "Sparks Fly" video Swift jumped from nineteen to ten on the ''Billboard'''s Social 50. Swift has revealed that she has already written 25 songs for an untitled follow-up album to ''Speak Now'', set to release in the later part of 2012. She commented on them, "They’re sad. If I'm being honest."

On December 23, 2011, Taylor announced via Twitter, "Something I've been VERY excited about for a VERY long time is going to be happening VERY soon." Several hours later, Taylor announced that she is featured on ''The Hunger Games'' Official Movie Soundtrack. Her song, entitled "Safe & Sound", was the first track released from the album. The song was co-written by The Civil Wars, who also co-recorded the song with Taylor. On January 8, 2012, Taylor was elected the fifth top artist (fourth female top artist) of all-time with the best-selling digital music tracks. Taylor has sold 41,821,000 million digital tracks as of the end of 2011 according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Songwriting style

Swift's lyrics are highly autobiographical; she has said that "If you listen to my albums, it’s like reading my diary." For example, the song "Forever & Always" was inspired by her relationship with Joe Jonas, while the song "Hey Stephen" was written about a boy whom she toured with in the past. "Fifteen" was written about her freshman year of high school. It has been said that her lyrics "can be tinged with acid: the quiet loner girl getting one over on the cheerleaders, or a caustic payback for the boy who dumped her." She has also indicated that she tries to write so her fans can relate to the lyrics, saying "My goal is to never write songs that my fans can't relate to." She parodied her confrontational style of songwriting during her appearance on ''Saturday Night Live''; during her opening monologue, she performed an original song that featured lines such as "You might think I'd bring up Joe, that guy who broke up with me on the phone/ Hey, Joe, I'm doing real well, tonight I'm hosting 'SNL'" referring to her highly publicized relationship with Joe Jonas.

The intensely personal nature of the songs has drawn her attention in the music industry. Swift once said, "I thought people might find them hard to relate to, but it turned out that the more personal my songs were, the more closely people could relate to them." Due to the autobiographical nature of her songs, some fans have researched the songs' origins. Swift once said, "Every single one of the guys that I’ve written songs about has been tracked down on MySpace by my fans." ''The New York Times'' described Swift as "one of pop's finest songwriters, country’s foremost pragmatist and more in touch with her inner life than most adults".

Other work

Acting

In 2008, Swift made her acting debut in Brad Paisley's music video "Online". In that same year Swift filmed a documentary for MTV entitled ''MTV's Once Upon a Prom'' and a documentary with Def Leppard for CMT entitled ''CMT Crossroads'', which premiered on November 7, 2008. Swift collaborated with the Jonas Brothers in their 3D Concert Film, ''Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience''. The film was released on February 27, 2009 in North America and brought in $12.7 million on its opening weekend. Swift made her primetime television acting debut on CBS's ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'' "Turn, Turn, Turn" as Haley Jones on March 5, 2009 in the U.S. and Canada. The episode was watched by 20.8 million viewers. Swift made a cameo appearance in Kellie Pickler's music video "Best Days of Your Life". Swift also appeared in ''Hannah Montana: The Movie'' credited as herself. The film was released on April 10, 2009 in North America. The television show Dateline NBC showcased an hour on Swift on May 31, 2009. The episode titled ''Dateline NBC: On Tour With Taylor Swift'' included scenes from her tour bus, concert footage, and rehearsals. Swift both hosted and performed as the musical guest for the November 7, 2009 episode of ''Saturday Night Live''. In 2010, Swift made her feature film acting debut as Felicia in the film ''Valentine's Day''. For this role she won the Teen Choice Award for Movie Female Breakout. She has been cast to voice the role of Audrey in the animated film ''The Lorax'', set to be released in 2012. In January 2012, Swift was offered the role of Eponine in the film adaptation of the musical, ''Les Misérables''.

Cover model and recognition

Swift has been featured on the cover of a number of magazines. She has been a cover girl for ''Blender'', for which she was one of two country artists during the magazine’s fifteen year run to be a cover subject. She was included in ''People'''s annual "100 Most Beautiful People" 2008, 2009, and 2010 lists. Additionally, she was named number fifty-seven on ''Maxim's'' sexiest women of 2008, number fifty on the 2009 list and number thirty-one on the 2010 list. ''CosmoGirl'' voted Swift as the "2008 Girl of the Year". Swift was named by ''Rolling Stone'' magazine as one of "The RS 100: Agents of Change". She was nominated as a candidate for ''TIME''s "2009 The Time 100 Finalists" list, which is determined by online voting. ''People'' magazine named Swift one of 25 Most Intriguing People of 2009.

Merchandise

Jakks Pacific released a celebrity doll of Swift in late 2008. Swift has been the face of L.E.I. Jeans (Life Energy Intelligence) since 2008. Swift and the L.e.i. Clothing Line made a deal to create a line based on Swift's style of dressing, which will appear in Wal-Mart in the coming months. However, Swift said she does not want to be called a designer. Instead, she says she will inspire the clothing company's dress line based on her own style. "I don't look at it like I'm branching out as a designer... It's not the Taylor Swift designer line." In 2009, Swift became the National Hockey League's newest celebrity spokesperson. She appears in commercials for the Nashville Predators.

In May 2009, Swift filed a lawsuit (kept sealed until August 2010) against numerous sellers of unauthorized counterfeit merchandise bearing her name, likeness, and trademarks, where she demanded a trial by jury, sought a judgement for compensatory damages, punitive damages, three times the actual damages sustained, and statutory damages, and sought for recovery of her attorney's fees and prejudgement interest. Nashville's U.S. District Court granted an injunction and judgment against the sellers, who had been identified at Swift's concerts in several states. The court ordered merchandise seized from the defendants to be destroyed. On July 15, 2011, Swift's official website announced that she had partnered with Elizabeth Arden to launch a fragrance, which is to be released in October 2011. The fragrance's name, "Wonderstruck", is a reference to the song "Enchanted" featured on her ''Speak Now'' album. Swift is also working with American Greetings, Inc.

Philanthropy

On September 21, 2007, Swift helped launch a campaign to protect children from online predators. She has teamed up with Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen to combat internet sex crimes. The year-long campaign, in partnership with the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police, will distribute Internet safety information and materials to parents and students across the state. In early 2008, Swift donated the pink Chevy pick-up truck given to her by her record label to the children’s charity, the ''Victory Junction Gang''; in June 2008, Swift donated all the proceeds from her merchandise sales at the 2008 Country Music Festival to Red Cross, the ''Nashville Area Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund'' and the ''National American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund''.

Swift donated $100,000 to the Red Cross in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to help the victims of the Iowa flood of 2008. Swift has teamed up with Sound Matters to make listeners aware of listening "responsibly". Swift supports @15, a teen-led social change platform underwritten by Best Buy to give teens opportunities to direct the company's philanthropy through the newly-created @15 Fund. Swift's song, "Fifteen", is featured in this campaign. Swift lent her support to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal by joining the lineup at Sydney's Sound Relief concert, reportedly making the biggest contribution of any artist playing at Sound Relief to the Australian Red Cross. Swift donated her prom dress, which raised $1,200 for charity, to DonateMyDress.org. On November 20, 2009 after a live performance on BBC's Children in Need night Swift announced to Sir Terry Wogan she would donate £13,000 of her own money to the cause.

On December 13, Swift's own birthday, she donated $250,000 to various schools around the country which she had either attended or been involved with. Swift has donated a pair of her shoes – a gently-worn pair of black Betsey Johnson heels with her autograph on the sole – to the Wish Upon a Hero Foundation's Hero in Heels fundraiser for auction to raise money to benefit women with cancer.

In response to the May 2010 Tennessee floods, Swift donated $500,000 during a flood relief telethon hosted by WSMV, a Nashville television station.

On May 23, 2011, Taylor Swift transformed what was to have been the final dress rehearsal for the North American leg of her Speak Now tour into a benefit concert for victims of recent tornadoes in the United States southeast region. The concert in Nashville drew more than 13,000 people and raised more than $750,000 from proceeds from ticket sales, merchandise and other facets of the show. The benefit concert for tornado relief was subsequently honored at the 2011 Do Something Awards. In July 2011, Swift further aided to the cause by donating $250,000 to Alabama football coach Nick Saban's charity Nick's Kids to aid in the tornado relief efforts of West Alabama.

Personal life

In addition to her relationship with Joe Jonas, which ended in October 2008, Swift's dating history has included other celebrities: Taylor Lautner, for three months in 2009; and Jake Gyllenhaal, from late 2010 to early 2011. Swift has also been romantically linked to John Mayer. There has been speculation that the songs "Dear John" and "The Story of Us" from her album ''Speak Now'' are about Mayer. In October 2011, she revealed to Ellen Degeneres on her show ''Ellen'' that, "I don't even have, like, kind of a boyfriend. I don't have someone that I'm texting that is a guy that someday might be my boyfriend. There's like nothing going on right now."

In November 2011, Taylor adopted a Scottish fold kitten. She named her Meredith after the character Meredith Grey from the popular ABC drama ''Grey's Anatomy''. The kitten appeared in the official music video for Taylor's song ''Ours'' alongside Taylor and ''Friday Night Lights'' star Zach Gilford.

Filmography

>

! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
2007		Herself	Guest; Episode: Season 2 Finale
2008	''CMT Crossroads''	Herself	Episode: "Taylor Swift and Def Leppard"
2009	''Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience''	Herself
2009	''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation''	Haley Jones
2009	''Hannah Montana: The Movie''	Herself	Cameo
2009	''Saturday Night Live''	Herself	Host/Musical Guest
2009		Herself	Guest; Episode: Week 6 results
2010		Felicia	Movie acting debut
2010	''Taylor Swift: Journey to Fearless''	Herself	Main Role
2010		Herself	Guest; Episode: 200th episode
2012	''''	Audrey
2012	''Bruno the Robot''	Various

Discography

Albums

''Taylor Swift'' (2006)

''Fearless'' (2008)

''Speak Now'' (2010)

Awards and nominations

Tours

Fearless Tour (2009–10)

Speak Now World Tour (2011–2012)

References

External links

Category:1989 births Category:American child singers Category:American country banjoists Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American female guitarists Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American pianists Category:American pop singers Category:American television actors Category:Big Machine Records artists Category:Child pop musicians Category:English-language singers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Living people Category:Musicians from Pennsylvania Category:People from Reading, Pennsylvania Category:People from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania Category:Ukulele players

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Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	John Hancock
Alt	Half-length portrait of a man with a hint of a smile. His handsome features suggests that he is in his 30s, although he wears an off-white wig in the style of an English gentleman that makes him appear older. His dark suit has fancy embroidery.
Office	4th President of the Continental Congress
Term start	May 24, 1775
Term end	October 31, 1777
Predecessor	Peyton Randolph
Successor	Henry Laurens
Office3	1st and 3rd Governor of Massachusetts
Term start3	October 25, 1780
Term end3	January 29, 1785
Predecessor3	Office Created
Successor3	Thomas Cushing (acting) James Bowdoin (Governor)
Term start4	May 30, 1787
Term end4	October 8, 1793
Predecessor4	James Bowdoin
Successor4	Samuel Adams
Birth date	January 23, 1737
Birth place	Braintree (now Quincy), Province of Massachusetts Bay
Death date	October 08, 1793
Death place	Hancock Manor, Boston, Massachusetts
Spouse	Dorothy Quincy
Blank1	Net worth
Data1	USD $350 thousand at the time of his death (approximately 1/714th of US GNP)
Signature	JohnHancocksSignature.svg
Signature alt	John Hancock's stylish signature. The handwriting, which slants slightly to the right, is firm and legible. The final letter loops back to underline his name in a flourish. }}

John Hancock ( – October 8, 1793) was a merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress and was the first and third Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term "John Hancock" has become, in the United States, a synonym for ''signature''.

Before the American Revolution, Hancock was one of the wealthiest men in the Thirteen Colonies, having inherited a profitable shipping business from his uncle. Hancock began his political career in Boston as a protégé of Samuel Adams, an influential local politician, though the two men would later become estranged. As tensions between colonists and Great Britain increased in the 1760s, Hancock used his wealth to support the colonial cause. He became very popular in Massachusetts, especially after British officials seized his sloop ''Liberty'' in 1768 and charged him with smuggling. Although the charges against Hancock were eventually dropped, he has often been described as a smuggler in historical accounts, but the accuracy of this characterization has been questioned.

Hancock was one of Boston's leaders during the crisis that led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775. He served more than two years in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and as president of Congress, was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence. Hancock returned to Massachusetts and was elected governor of the Commonwealth, serving in that role for most of his remaining years. He used his influence to ensure that Massachusetts ratified the United States Constitution in 1788.

Early life

John Hancock was born on January 23, 1737; according to the Old Style calendar then in use, the date was January 12, 1736. His birthplace was Braintree, Massachusetts, in a part of town which eventually became the separate city of Quincy. He was the son of the Reverend John Hancock of Braintree and Mary Hawke Thaxter, who was from nearby Hingham. As a child, Hancock became a casual acquaintance of young John Adams, whom the Reverend Hancock had baptized in 1734. The Hancocks lived a comfortable life, and owned one slave to help with household work.

After Hancock's father died in 1744, John was sent to live with his uncle and aunt, Thomas Hancock and Lydia (Henchman) Hancock. Thomas Hancock was the proprietor of a firm known as the House of Hancock, which imported manufactured goods from Britain and exported rum, whale oil, and fish. Thomas Hancock's highly successful business made him one of Boston's richest and best-known residents. He and Lydia, along with several servants and slaves, lived in Hancock Manor on Beacon Hill. The couple, who did not have any children of their own, became the dominant influence on John's life.

After graduating from the Boston Latin School in 1750, Hancock enrolled in Harvard University and received a bachelors degree in 1754. Upon graduation, he began to work for his uncle, just as the French and Indian War (1754–1763) began. Thomas Hancock had close relations with the royal governors of Massachusetts, and secured profitable government contracts during the war. John Hancock learned much about his uncle's shipping business during these years, and was trained for eventual partnership in the firm. Hancock worked hard, but he also enjoyed playing the role of a wealthy aristocrat, and developed a fondness for expensive clothes.

From 1760 to 1761, Hancock lived in England while building relationships with customers and suppliers. Back in Boston, Hancock gradually took over the House of Hancock as his uncle's health failed, becoming a full partner in January 1763. He became a member of the Masonic Lodge of St. Andrew in October 1762, which connected him with many of Boston's most influential citizens. When Thomas Hancock died in August 1764, John inherited the business, Hancock Manor, two or three household slaves, and thousands of acres of land, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colonies. The household slaves continued to work for John and his aunt, but were eventually freed through the terms of Thomas Hancock's will; there is no evidence that John Hancock ever bought or sold slaves.

Growing imperial tensions

After its victory in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), the British Empire was deep in debt. Looking for new sources of revenue, the British Parliament sought, for the first time, to directly tax the colonies, beginning with the Sugar Act of 1764. The act provoked outrage in Boston, where it was widely viewed as a violation of colonial rights. Men such as James Otis and Samuel Adams argued that because the colonists were not represented in Parliament, they could not be taxed by that body; only the colonial assemblies, where the colonists were represented, could levy taxes upon the colonies. Hancock was not yet a political activist; however, he criticized the tax for economic, rather than constitutional, reasons.

Hancock emerged as a leading political figure in Boston just as tensions with Great Britain were increasing. In March 1765, he was elected as one of Boston's five selectmen, an office previously held by his uncle for many years. Soon after, Parliament passed the 1765 Stamp Act, a wildly unpopular measure in the colonies that produced riots and organized resistance. Hancock initially took a moderate position: as a loyal British subject, he thought that the colonists should submit to the act, even though he believed that Parliament was misguided. Within a few months, Hancock had changed his mind, although he continued to disapprove of violence and the intimidation of royal officials by mobs. Hancock joined the resistance to the Stamp Act by participating in a boycott of British goods, which made him popular in Boston. After Bostonians learned of the impending repeal of the Stamp Act, Hancock was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in May 1766.

Hancock's political success benefited from the support of Samuel Adams, the clerk of the House of Representatives and a leader of Boston's "popular party", also known as "Whigs" and later as "Patriots". The two men made an unlikely pair. Fifteen years older than Hancock, Adams had a somber, Puritan outlook that stood in marked contrast to Hancock's taste for luxury and extravagance. Some traditional stories suggest that Adams masterminded Hancock's political ascendancy so that the merchant's great wealth could be used to further Adams's agenda. In some of these tales, Hancock is portrayed as shallow and vain, easily manipulated by Adams. In other versions, Hancock is moderate and reasonable, while Adams is radical and dangerous. Historian William M. Fowler, who wrote biographies of both men, argued that these stories contain a grain of truth, but are mostly folklore. Fowler characterized the relationship between the two as symbiotic, with Adams as the mentor and Hancock the protégé.

Townshend Acts crisis

After the repeal of the Stamp Act, Parliament took a different approach to raising revenue, passing the 1767 Townshend Acts, which established new duties on various imports and strengthened the customs agency by creating the American Customs Board. The British government believed that a more efficient customs system was necessary because many colonial American merchants had been smuggling. Smugglers violated the Navigation Acts by trading with ports outside of the British Empire and avoiding import taxes. Parliament hoped that the new system would reduce smuggling and generate revenue for the government.

Colonial merchants, even those not involved in smuggling, found the new regulations oppressive. Other colonists protested that new duties were another attempt by Parliament to tax the colonies without their consent. Hancock joined other Bostonians in calling for a boycott of British imports until the Townshend duties were repealed. In their enforcement of the customs regulations, the Customs Board targeted Hancock, Boston's wealthiest Whig. They may have suspected that he was a smuggler, or they may have wanted to harass him because of his politics, especially after Hancock snubbed Governor Francis Bernard by refusing to attend public functions when the customs officials were present.

On April 9, 1768, two customs employees (called ''tidesmen'') boarded Hancock's brig ''Lydia'' in Boston Harbor. Hancock was summoned, and finding that the agents lacked a writ of assistance (a general search warrant), he did not allow them to go below deck. When one of them later managed to get into the hold, Hancock's men forced the tidesman back on deck. Customs officials wanted to file charges, but the case was dropped when Massachusetts Attorney General Jonathan Sewell ruled that Hancock had broken no laws. Later, some of Hancock's most ardent admirers would call this incident the first act of physical resistance to British authority in the colonies and credit Hancock with initiating the American Revolution.

''Liberty'' affair

On the evening of May 9, 1768, Hancock's sloop ''Liberty'' arrived in Boston Harbor, carrying a shipment of Madeira wine. When custom officers inspected the ship the next morning, they found that it contained 25 pipes of wine, just one fourth of the ship's carrying capacity. Hancock paid the duties on the 25 pipes of wine, but officials suspected that he had arranged to have additional pipes of wine unloaded during the night to avoid paying the duties for the entire cargo. They did not have any evidence to prove this, however, since the two tidesmen who had stayed on the ship overnight gave a sworn statement that nothing had been unloaded.

One month later, while the British warship HMS ''Romney'' was in port, one of the tidesmen changed his story: he now claimed that he had been forcibly held on the ''Liberty'' while it had been illegally unloaded. On June 10, customs officials seized the ''Liberty'', which had since been loaded with new cargo, and towed it out to the ''Romney''. Bostonians, already angry because the captain of the ''Romney'' had been impressing sailors in Boston Harbor, began to riot. The next day, customs officials, claiming that they were unsafe in town, relocated to the ''Romney'', and then to Castle William, an island fort in the harbor.

Two lawsuits stemming from the ''Liberty'' incident were brought up against Hancock: an ''in rem'' suit against the ship, and an ''in personam'' suit against him. As was the custom, any penalties assessed by the court would be awarded to the governor, the informer, and the Crown, each getting a third. The first suit, filed on June 22, 1768, resulted in the confiscation of the ''Liberty'' in August. Customs officials then used the ship to enforce trade regulations until it was burned by angry colonists in Rhode Island the following year.

The second trial began in October 1768, when charges were filed against Hancock and five others for allegedly unloading 100 pipes of wine from the ''Liberty'' without paying the duties. If convicted, the defendants would have had to pay a penalty of triple the value of the wine, which came to £9,000. With John Adams serving as his lawyer, Hancock was prosecuted in a highly publicized trial by a vice admiralty court, which had no jury and did not always allow the defense to cross-examine the witnesses. After dragging out for nearly five months, the proceedings against Hancock were dropped without explanation.

The ''Liberty'' incident created two popular images of Hancock: supporters celebrated him as a martyr to the Patriot cause, while critics portrayed him as a scheming smuggler. Historians have been similarly divided. "Hancock's guilt or innocence and the exact charges against him", wrote historian John W. Tyler in 1986, "are still fiercely debated." Historian Oliver Dickerson argued that Hancock was the victim of an essentially criminal racketeering scheme perpetrated by Governor Bernard and the customs officials. Dickerson believed that there is no reliable evidence that Hancock was guilty in the ''Liberty'' case, and that the purpose of the trials was to punish Hancock for political reasons and to plunder his property. Opposed to Dickerson's interpretation were Kinvin Wroth and Hiller Zobel, the editors of John Adams's legal papers, who argued that "Hancock's innocence is open to question", and that the British officials acted legally, if unwisely.

Aside from the ''Liberty'' affair, the degree to which Hancock was engaged in smuggling, which was widespread in the colonies, has been questioned. Given the clandestine nature of smuggling, records are of course scarce. If Hancock was a smuggler, no documentation of this has been found. John W. Tyler identified 23 smugglers in his study of more than 400 merchants in revolutionary Boston, but found no written evidence that Hancock was one of them. Biographer William Fowler concluded that while Hancock was probably engaged in some smuggling, most of his business was legitimate, and his reputation as the "king of the colonial smugglers" is a myth without foundation.

Massacre to Tea Party

The ''Liberty'' affair reinforced a previously made British decision to suppress unrest in Boston with a show of military might. The decision had been prompted by Samuel Adams's 1768 Circular Letter, which was sent to other British American colonies in hopes of coordinating resistance to the Townshend Acts. Lord Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, sent four regiments of the British Army to Boston to support embattled royal officials, and instructed Governor Bernard to order the Massachusetts legislature to revoke the Circular Letter. Hancock and the Massachusetts House voted against rescinding the letter, and instead drew up a petition demanding Governor Bernard's recall. When Bernard returned to England in 1769, Bostonians celebrated.

The British troops remained, however, and tensions between soldiers and civilians eventually resulted in the killing of five civilians in the Boston Massacre of March 1770. Hancock was not involved in the incident, but afterwards he led a committee to demand the removal of the troops. Meeting with Bernard's successor, Governor Thomas Hutchinson, and the British officer in command, Colonel William Dalrymple, Hancock claimed that there were 10,000 armed colonists ready to march into Boston if the troops did not leave. Hutchinson knew that Hancock was bluffing, but the soldiers were in a precarious position when garrisoned within the town, and so Dalrymple agreed to remove both regiments to Castle William. Hancock was celebrated as a hero for his role in getting the troops withdrawn. His reelection to the Massachusetts House in May was nearly unanimous.

After Parliament partially repealed the Townshend duties in 1770, Boston's boycott of British goods ended. Politics became quieter in Massachusetts, although tensions remained. Hancock tried to improve his relationship with Governor Hutchinson, who in turn sought to woo Hancock away from Adams's influence. In April 1772, Hutchinson approved Hancock's election as colonel of the Boston Cadets, a militia unit whose primary function was to provide a ceremonial escort for the governor and the General Court. In May, Hutchinson even approved of Hancock's election to the Council, the upper chamber of the General Court, whose members were elected by the House but subject to veto by the governor. Hancock's previous elections to the Council had been vetoed, but now Hutchinson allowed the election to stand. Hancock declined the office, however, not wanting to appear to have been co-opted by the governor. Nevertheless, Hancock used the improved relationship to resolve an ongoing dispute. To avoid hostile crowds in Boston, Hutchinson had been convening the legislature outside of town; now he agreed to allow the General Court to sit in Boston once again, to the relief of the legislators.

Hutchinson had dared to hope that he could win over Hancock and discredit Adams. To some, it seemed that Adams and Hancock were indeed at odds: when Adams formed the Boston Committee of Correspondence in November 1772 to advocate colonial rights, Hancock declined to join, creating the impression that there was a split in the Whig ranks. But whatever their differences, Hancock and Adams came together again in 1773 with the renewal of major political turmoil. They cooperated in the revelation of private letters of Thomas Hutchinson, in which the governor seemed to recommend "an abridgement of what are called English liberties" to bring order to the colony. The Massachusetts House, blaming Hutchinson for the military occupation of Boston, called for his removal as governor.

Even more trouble followed Parliament's passage of the 1773 Tea Act. On November 5, Hancock was elected as moderator at a Boston town meeting that resolved that anyone who supported the Tea Act was an "Enemy to America". Hancock and others tried to force the resignation of the agents who had been appointed to receive the tea shipments. Unsuccessful in this, they attempted to prevent the tea from being unloaded after three tea ships had arrived in Boston Harbor. Hancock was at the fateful meeting on December 16, where he reportedly told the crowd, "Let every man do what is right in his own eyes." Hancock did not take part in the Boston Tea Party that night, but he approved of the action, although he was careful not to publicly praise the destruction of private property.

Over the next few months, Hancock was disabled by gout, which would trouble him with increasing frequency in the coming years. By March 5, 1774, he had recovered enough to deliver the fourth annual Massacre Day oration, a commemoration of the Boston Massacre. Hancock's speech denounced the presence of British troops in Boston, who he said had been sent there "to enforce obedience to acts of Parliament, which neither God nor man ever empowered them to make". The speech, probably written by Hancock in collaboration with Adams, Joseph Warren, and others, was published and widely reprinted, enhancing Hancock's stature as a leading Patriot.

Revolution begins

Parliament responded to the Tea Party with the Boston Port Act, one of the so-called Intolerable Acts intended to strengthen British control of the colonies. Hutchinson was replaced as governor by General Thomas Gage, who arrived in May 1774. On June 17, the Massachusetts House elected five delegates to send to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which was being organized to coordinate colonial response to the Intolerable Acts. Hancock did not serve in the first Congress, possibly for health reasons, or possibly to remain in charge while the other Patriot leaders were away.

Gage soon dismissed Hancock from his post as colonel of the Boston Cadets. In October 1774, Gage canceled the scheduled meeting of the General Court. In response, the House resolved itself into the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, a body independent of British control. Hancock was elected as president of the Provincial Congress and was a key member of the Committee of Safety. The Provincial Congress created the first minutemen companies, consisting of militiamen who were to be ready for action on a moment's notice.

On December 1, 1774, the Provincial Congress elected Hancock as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress to replace James Bowdoin, who had been unable to attend the first Congress because of illness. Before Hancock reported to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, the Provincial Congress unanimously reelected him as their president in February 1775. Hancock's multiple roles gave him enormous influence in Massachusetts, and as early as January 1774 British officials had considered arresting him. After attending the Provincial Congress in Concord in April 1775, Hancock and Samuel Adams decided that it was not safe to return to Boston before leaving for Philadelphia. They stayed instead at Hancock's childhood home in Lexington.

Gage received a letter from Lord Dartmouth on April 14, 1775 advising him "to arrest the principal actors and abettors in the Provincial Congress whose proceedings appear in every light to be acts of treason and rebellion". On the night of April 18, Gage sent out a detachment of soldiers on the fateful mission that would spark the American Revolutionary War. The purpose of the British expedition was to seize and destroy military supplies that the colonists had stored in Concord. According to many historical accounts, Gage also instructed his men to arrest Hancock and Adams, but, as historian John Alden pointed out in 1944, the written orders issued by Gage made no mention of arresting the Patriot leaders. Gage apparently decided that he had nothing to gain by arresting Hancock and Adams, since other leaders would simply take their place, and the British would be portrayed as the aggressors.

Although Gage had evidently decided against seizing Hancock and Adams, Patriots initially believed otherwise. From Boston, Joseph Warren dispatched messenger Paul Revere to warn Hancock and Adams that British troops were on the move and might attempt to arrest them. Revere reached Lexington around midnight and gave the warning. Hancock, still considering himself a militia colonel, wanted to take the field with the Patriot militia at Lexington, but Adams and others convinced him to avoid battle, arguing that he was more valuable as a political leader than as a soldier. As Hancock and Adams made their escape, the first shots of the war were fired at Lexington and Concord. Soon after the battle, Gage issued a proclamation granting a general pardon to all who would "lay down their arms, and return to the duties of peaceable subjects"—with the exceptions of Hancock and Samuel Adams. Singling out Hancock and Adams in this manner only added to their renown among Patriots.

President of Congress

With the war underway, Hancock made his way to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia with the other Massachusetts delegates. On May 24, 1775, he was unanimously elected President of the Continental Congress, succeeding Peyton Randolph after Henry Middleton declined the nomination. Hancock was a good choice for president for several reasons. He was experienced, having often presided over legislative bodies and town meetings in Massachusetts. His wealth and social standing inspired the confidence of moderate delegates, while his association with Boston radicals made him acceptable to other radicals. His position was somewhat ambiguous, because the role of the president was not fully defined, and it was not clear if Randolph had resigned or was on a leave of absence. Like other presidents of Congress, Hancock's authority was limited to that of a presiding officer. He also had to handle a great deal of official correspondence, and he found it necessary to hire clerks at his own expense to help with the paperwork.

In Congress on June 15, 1775, Massachusetts delegate John Adams nominated George Washington as commander in chief of the army then gathered around Boston. Many years later, Adams wrote that Hancock had shown great disappointment at not getting the command for himself. If true, Hancock did not let his disappointment interfere with his duties, and he always showed admiration and support for General Washington, even though Washington politely declined Hancock's request for a military appointment.

Hancock was criticized for what was considered his lavish lifestyle while President of the Continental Congress. Hancock rode in a highly decorative chariot; accompanied by 50 armed horsemen along with many servants. He associated himself with Philadelphia's elite society having dined and dressed luxuriously. Samuel Adams wrote, "Does it become us to lead the People to such publick diversions as promote Superfluity of Dress & ornament, when it is as much as they can bear to support the Expense of a naked Army."

When Congress recessed on August 1, 1775, Hancock took the opportunity to wed his fiancée, Dorothy "Dolly" Quincy. The couple was married on August 28 in Fairfield, Connecticut. John and Dorothy would have two children, neither of whom survived to adulthood. Their daughter Lydia Henchman Hancock was born in 1776 and died ten months later. Their son John George Washington Hancock was born in 1778 and died in 1787 after suffering a head injury while ice skating.

Hancock served in Congress through some of the darkest days of the Revolutionary War. The British drove Washington from New York and New Jersey in 1776, which prompted Congress to flee to Baltimore, Maryland. Hancock and Congress returned to Philadelphia in March 1777, but were compelled to flee six months later when the British occupied Philadelphia. Hancock wrote innumerable letters to colonial officials, raising money, supplies, and troops for Washington's army. He chaired the Marine Committee, and took pride in helping to create a small fleet of American frigates, including the USS ''Hancock'', which was named in his honor.

Signing the Declaration

Hancock was president of Congress when the Declaration of Independence was adopted and signed. He is primarily remembered by Americans for his large, flamboyant signature on the Declaration, so much so that "John Hancock" became, in the United States, an informal synonym for ''signature''. According to legend, Hancock signed his name largely and clearly so that King George could read it without his spectacles, but this fanciful story did not appear until many years later.

Contrary to popular mythology, there was no ceremonial signing of the Declaration on July 4, 1776. After Congress approved the wording of the text on July 4, a copy was sent to be printed. As president, Hancock may have signed the document that was sent to the printer, but this is uncertain because that document is lost, perhaps destroyed in the printing process. The printer produced the first published version of the Declaration, the widely distributed Dunlap broadside. Hancock, as President of Congress, was the only delegate whose name appeared on the broadside, although the name of Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress, but not a delegate, was also on it. This meant that until a second broadside was issued six months later with all of the signers listed, Hancock was the only delegate whose name was publicly attached to the treasonous document. Hancock sent a copy of the Dunlap broadside to George Washington, instructing him to have it read to the troops "in the way you shall think most proper".

Hancock's name was printed, not signed, on the Dunlap broadside; his iconic signature appears on a different document—a sheet of parchment that was carefully handwritten sometime after July 19 and signed on August 2 by Hancock and those delegates present. Known as the engrossed copy, this is the famous document on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Return to Massachusetts

In October 1777, after more than two years in Congress, President Hancock requested a leave of absence. He asked George Washington to arrange a military escort for his return to Boston. Although Washington was short on manpower, he nevertheless sent fifteen horsemen to accompany Hancock on his journey home. By this time Hancock had become estranged from Samuel Adams, who disapproved of what he viewed as Hancock's vanity and extravagance, which Adams believed were inappropriate in a republican leader. When Congress voted to thank Hancock for his service, Adams and the other Massachusetts delegates voted against the resolution, as did a few delegates from other states.

Back in Boston, Hancock was reelected to the House of Representatives. As in previous years, his philanthropy made him popular. Although his finances had suffered greatly because of the war, he gave to the poor, helped support widows and orphans, and loaned money to friends. According to biographer William Fowler, "John Hancock was a generous man and the people loved him for it. He was their idol." In December 1777, he was reelected as a delegate to the Continental Congress and as moderator of the Boston town meeting.

Hancock rejoined the Continental Congress in Pennsylvania in June 1778, but his brief time there was unhappy. In his absence, Congress had elected Henry Laurens as its new president, which was a disappointment to Hancock, who had hoped to reclaim his chair. Hancock got along poorly with Samuel Adams, and missed his wife and newborn son. On July 9, 1778, Hancock and the other Massachusetts delegates joined the representatives from seven other states in signing the Articles of Confederation; the remaining states were not yet prepared to sign, and the Articles would not be ratified until 1781.

Hancock returned to Boston in July 1778, motivated by the opportunity to finally lead men in combat. Back in 1776, he had been appointed as the senior major general of the Massachusetts militia. Now that the French fleet had come to the aid of the Americans, General Washington instructed General John Sullivan of the Continental Army to lead an attack on the British garrison at Newport, Rhode Island, in August 1778. Hancock nominally commanded 6,000 militiamen in the campaign, although he let the professional soldiers do the planning and issue the orders. It was a fiasco: French Admiral d'Estaing abandoned the operation, after which Hancock's militia mostly deserted Sullivan's Continentals. Hancock suffered some criticism for the debacle but emerged from his brief military career with his popularity intact.

After much delay, the new Massachusetts Constitution finally went into effect in October 1780. To no one's surprise, Hancock was elected Governor of Massachusetts in a landslide, garnering over 90% of the vote. He governed Massachusetts through the end of the Revolutionary War and into an economically troubled postwar period. Hancock took a hands-off approach to governing, avoiding controversial issues as much as possible. According to William Fowler, Hancock "never really led" and "never used his strength to deal with the critical issues confronting the commonwealth." It is however recorded that he confronted growing unrest in the countryside toward the end of his first term as Governor, unrest which it is believed that ultimately led to Shays' Rebellion. Opening salvos of discontent in Central Massachusetts, led Governor Hancock to send the sheriff to suppress riots by rural farmers at Uxbridge in 1783. Hancock was easily reelected to annual terms as governor, until his surprise resignation on January 29, 1785. Hancock cited his failing health as the reason, but he may have become aware of further unrest in the countryside and wanted to get out of office before the trouble came. Hancock's critics often suspected that he suffered from "political gout", which is when an official allegedly uses an illness to avoid a difficult political situation. The turmoil that Hancock avoided ultimately blossomed as Shays' Rebellion, which Hancock's successor James Bowdoin had to deal with. After the uprising, Hancock was reelected in 1787, and he promptly pardoned all the rebels. Hancock was reelected to annual terms as governor for the remainder of his life.

Final years

When he had resigned as governor in 1785, Hancock was again elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress, known as the Confederation Congress after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781. Congress had declined in importance after the Revolutionary War, and was frequently ignored by the states. Congress elected Hancock to serve as its president, but he never attended because of his poor health and because he was not interested. He sent Congress a letter of resignation in 1786.

In 1787, in an effort to remedy the perceived defects of the Articles of Confederation, delegates met at the Philadelphia Convention and drafted the United States Constitution, which was then sent to the states for ratification or rejection. Hancock, who was not present at the Philadelphia Convention, had misgivings about the new Constitution's lack of a bill of rights and its shift of power to a central government. In January 1788, Hancock was elected president of the Massachusetts ratifying convention, although he was ill and not present when the convention began. Hancock mostly remained silent during the contentious debates, but as the convention was drawing to close, he gave a speech in favor of ratification. For the first time in years, Samuel Adams supported Hancock's position. Even with the support of Hancock and Adams, the Massachusetts convention narrowly ratified the Constitution by a vote of 187 to 168. Hancock's support was probably a deciding factor in the ratification.

Hancock was put forth as a candidate in the 1789 U. S. presidential election. As was the custom in an era where political ambition was viewed with suspicion, Hancock did not campaign or even publicly express interest in the office; he instead made his wishes known indirectly. Like everyone else, Hancock knew that George Washington was going to be elected as the first president, but Hancock may have been interested in being vice president, despite his poor health. Hancock received only four electoral votes in the election, however, none of them from his home state; the Massachusetts electors all voted for another native son, John Adams, who became the vice president. Hancock was disappointed with his poor showing, but he remained as popular as ever in Massachusetts.

His health failing, Hancock spent his final few years as essentially a figurehead governor. With his wife at his side, he died in bed on October 8, 1793, at 56 years of age. By order of acting governor Samuel Adams, the day of Hancock's burial was a state holiday; the lavish funeral was perhaps the grandest given to an American up to that time.

Legacy

Many places and things in the United States have been named in honor of John Hancock. The U.S. Navy has named vessels USS ''Hancock'' and USS ''John Hancock''; a World War II Liberty ship was also named in his honor. Ten states have a Hancock County named for him; other places named after him include Hancock, Massachusetts; Hancock, Michigan; Hancock, New York; and Mount Hancock in New Hampshire. The John Hancock Insurance company, founded in Boston in 1862, was also named for him; it had no connection to Hancock's own business ventures. The insurance company has passed on the name to famous office buildings such as the John Hancock Tower in Boston, the John Hancock Center in Chicago, and the John Hancock Student Village at Boston University.

Notes

References

Bibliography

Adams, James Truslow. "Portrait of an Empty Barrel". ''Harpers Magazine'' 161 (September 1930), 425–34.

Alden, John R. "Why the March to Concord?" ''The American Historical Review'' 49 (1944), 446–54.

Allan, Herbert S. ''John Hancock: Patriot in Purple''. New York: Macmillan, 1948.

Boyd, Julian P. "The Declaration of Independence: The Mystery of the Lost Original". ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' 100, number 4 (October 1976), 438–67. Available online from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Brown, Richard D. ''Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-393-008-10-X.

Brown, Robert E. ''Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691–1789''. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1955.

Dickerson, O. M. "John Hancock: Notorious Smuggler or Near Victim of British Revenue Racketeers?" ''The Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' 32, no. 4 (March 1946), 517–40. This article was later incorporated into Dickerson's ''The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution'' (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951).

Fischer, David Hackett. ''Paul Revere's Ride''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-19-508847-6.

Fowler, William M., Jr. ''The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. ISBN 0-395-27619-5.

———. ''Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan''. New York: Longman, 1997. ISBN 0-673-99293-4.

Gannett, Henry. ''The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States.'' 2nd ed. Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1973. ISBN 0806305444.

Nobles, Gregory. "Yet the Old Republicans Still Persevere: Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and the Crisis of Popular Leadership in Revolutionary Massachusetts, 1775–90" in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., ''The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement''. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995, 258–85.

Proctor, Donald J. "John Hancock: New Soundings on an Old Barrel". ''The Journal of American History'' 64, no. 3 (December 1977), 652–77.

Reid, John Phillip. ''In a Rebellious Spirit: The Argument of Facts, the Liberty Riot, and the Coming of the American Revolution.'' University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-271-00202-6.

Tyler, John W. ''Smugglers & Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution''. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-930350-76-6.

Wroth, L. Kinvin and Hiller B. Zobel, eds. ''Legal Papers of John Adams'', volume 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965.

Unger, Harlow Giles. ''John Hancock: Merchant King and American Patriot''. New York: Wiley & Sons, 2000. ISBN 0-471-33209-7.

Further reading

Baxter, William T. ''The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775''. 1945. Reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1965. Deals primarily with Thomas Hancock's business career.

Brandes, Paul D. ''John Hancock’s Life and Speeches: A Personalized Vision of the American Revolution, 1763–1793.'' Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996. ISBN 0810830760. Contains the full text of many speeches.

Brown, Abram E. ''John Hancock, His Book''. Boston, 1898. Mostly extracts from Hancock's letters.

Sears, Lorenzo. ''John Hancock, The Picturesque Patriot''. 1912. The first full biography of Hancock.

Wolkins, George G. "The Seizure of John Hancock's Sloop ''Liberty''". ''Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society'' 55 (1923), 239–84. Reprints the primary documents.

External links

Category:1737 births Category:1793 deaths Category:People from Quincy, Massachusetts Category:American Congregationalists Category:American philanthropists Category:Boston Latin School alumni Category:American businesspeople in shipping Category:Colonial American merchants Category:Continental Congressmen from Massachusetts Category:Signers of the Articles of Confederation Category:Governors of Massachusetts Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Massachusetts militiamen in the American Revolution Category:Members of the colonial Massachusetts House of Representatives Category:Militia generals in the American Revolution Category:People from Braintree, Massachusetts Category:People of Massachusetts in the American Revolution Category:Signers of the United States Declaration of Independence Category:United States presidential candidates, 1789 Category:Quincy family

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