On this day in 1908, French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris. She was a prolific and sometimes controversial writer who is perhaps best known for her seminal feminist text, The Second Sex (1949). While she was based mostly in Paris, Beauvoir traveled extensively and also spent time in Chicago. During More
On December 29, 1958, Reverend Joseph Harrison Jackson received his official Certificate of Life Time Call as Olivet Baptist Church’s head pastor. Jackson was a renowned African American pastor and civil rights leader in the twentieth century, who left his mark through activism focused on education, housing, and both economic and political equality for Black More
In the late nineteenth century, Chicago became a center for commercial printing in the United States, second only to New York. Chicago printers worked closely with magazine and catalog publishers; they had easy access to rail transportation; and they achieved a competitive position because Chicago was the point at which zoned shipping rates for bulky More
December 23 marks the anniversary of two milestones for Phil Jackson, the Chicago Bulls’ head coach from 1989 to 1998. Jackson was born in Deer Lodge, Montana, in 1945 and went to high school in North Dakota, where he was a multisport athlete. He played basketball for the University of North Dakota and in 1967 More
On December 22, 1910, one of the greatest disasters to strike an American fire department took place in Chicago. Around 4:00 a.m. that day, a night watchman noticed black smoke pouring out of the six-story Nelson Morris meatpacking company’s Beef Plant No. 7 in the Stockyards District. Several fire companies rushed to the scene, and More