Illinois 250: Celebrating the state’s fabulous firsts

This Fourth of July the United States marks its 250th anniversary (or semiquincentennial) of existence. Some might be conflicted when it comes to celebrating our divided country this year. And, it turns out, some Chicagoans in 1876 felt the same way.

“Since the (Civil) War, the average Chicagoan has taken comparatively little interest in ‘the day we celebrate,'” the Tribune observed on July 5, 1876. “Nothing of (the Fourth of July) remains to-day, so far as Chicago is concerned, save a large number of headaches, the smoldering ruins of a few small-sized conflagrations, an occasional thumbless hand, and a general feeling of used-upness.

“A hundred years hence, (people) may search the files of the Tribune of the century previous to ascertain how the then half-million population of Chicago celebrated the first Centennial of the nation’s existence for the purpose of instituting a kind of Plutarchian comparison between the days that were and the days that are. … and they will do just as Chicago did yesterday.”

Yes, fireworks, cookouts and parades will still mark the occasion. And there likely will be much reflection on the country’s ingenuity and tenacity — including that shown by the Prairie State over the past 250 years.

That’s why the Tribune is taking a look back at what the Chicago area and the state of Illinois have uniquely contributed to the nation — and the world — from scientific inventions and pioneering businesses to food, culture, sports and transportation modernizations.

The seven-part series starts today and will run each Sunday leading up to the July 4 weekend. Expect about 35 items each week in our attempt to compile a list of 250.

This week’s focus is fabulous firsts — ideas that took root here in Illinois before they captured the world’s attention. You’ll learn that our state is home to giants of industry and innovation. Entrepreneurs have launched first-of-their-kind ventures here. We have welcomed diversity, better representation, empowerment and demonstration on behalf of people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, those with disabilities and women.

Our residents have perfected techniques to help save lives of people, animals and the environment. Some Chicagoans have been honored for their work with awards — including the Nobel Prize — or lifetime achievement honors. Others have been declared saintly for their devotion to the sick and poor. Then there are people or events we might prefer to forget for they have brought death or destruction. But combined with the good, these are the things that make up the fabric of the place we live.

Here, in chronological order, is a handpicked list — by no means a comprehensive one — of homegrown accomplishments to celebrate this year.

Oldest Black-founded town in the United States (1836) and first majority-Black town in America (1873)

Free Frank McWorter was an enterprising enslaved Kentucky man who purchased freedom for his pregnant wife, Lucy, then his own, by manufacturing and selling a component of gunpowder and fertilizer. He moved his family to Illinois, a free state, in 1831. McWorter bought 80 acres for $100 and in 1836 founded New Philadelphia, a promising city of brotherly love, in Pike County, 20 miles from the slave state of Missouri. The town was dissolved around 1880, about a decade after the railroad notably bypassed it. But two groups work tirelessly to tell Free Frank’s story — his descendants, spread widely across the country, and a small group of local residents who form the New Philadelphia Association.

Established in the early 1830s as a refuge for free and enslaved Black people and incorporated in 1873, Brooklyn is nestled on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River across from St. Louis. It was once a key outpost on the Underground Railroad and, later, a welcoming beacon for those fleeing the Jim Crow South. It was a thriving, close-knit community where, at its peak, more than 2,500 lived under the town motto: “Founded by Chance, Sustained by Courage.” In the last 70 years, though, Brooklyn has spiraled toward extinction. A group of tireless advocates and historians are trying to save it.

First state to ratify the 13th Amendment (1865)

A prominent anti-slavery battleground state, Illinois was prime Underground Railroad territory. The 13th Amendment, which banned slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, was passed by the U.S. House 119-56 on Jan. 31, 1865, several months after the Senate had approved it. The Tribune called the action, “the day of doom to man selling.”

First statewide organization advocating for women’s voting rights (1869)

The Illinois Woman Suffrage Association met Feb. 11-12, 1869, at Library Hall in Chicago. Orators included Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Gov. Edward Dunne signed the Illinois Suffrage Act into law in 1913, giving women the right to vote for president, as well as municipal officers. This made Illinois the first state east of the Mississippi River to empower women to vote for president. And on June 10, 1919, Illinois became one of the first states to ratify the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which would give women the right to vote. The 19th Amendment was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920.

First upright farm silo (1873)

Grain was stored in pits during the 1800s, which made it susceptible to spoilage. University of Illinois graduate Fred Hatch convinced his father, Lewis Hatch, to build up instead of down on the family’s farm near Spring Grove in McHenry County. The Hatches lined a 6-foot pit with rocks and mortar and kept building higher — extending the walls 16 feet high inside their family barn. They constructed the floor of the new structure out of double-ply floorboard lined with tar paper.

The design made it faster to fill, pack and empty, and set the stage for another agricultural invention — putting a separate roof on the silo, and building it outside.

The original silo no longer stands, but a plaque acknowledging its existence was added to the site by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers in 1984. Today it’s part of Lyle C. Thomas Park, 7816 Blivin St., in Spring Grove.

World’s first skyscraper (1884)

A permit was issued on March 1, 1884, for the construction of a nine-story structure at the northeast corner of LaSalle and Adams streets in downtown Chicago. This office building, for the Home Insurance Co., was designed by architect William Le Baron Jenney and completed the following year. For the first time, a skeleton of metal, rather than walls of masonry, formed the main supporting material for a large commercial tower. The Home Insurance Building was demolished in 1931 to make way for the 42-story Field Building, which became the city’s next largest office building.

First Ferris wheel (1893)

Visitors boarded the the giant wheel during its debut on June 15, 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Imagined and built by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., the ride stood a staggering 264 feet tall, its cars were 24 feet long, 13 feet wide and 10 feet high, and the whole construction weighed 26,000 pounds.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: For your amusement — pleasure parks of bygone summers

“It seemed as if 100,000 gazed in trembling and anticipation of something awful from the earth below,” a Tribune reporter aboard one of the cars recounted. “The stream of humanity along the Midway ceased its movement and gazed at the monster wheel.”

The wheel was moved to St. Louis for the 1904 World’s Fair, then destroyed in 1906.

First serial killer in the United States (1893)

Herman Mudgett — the man who became infamous as H.H. Holmes — preyed mainly on naive and gullible women who wouldn’t be missed amid the thousands of tourists streaming into Chicago’s fashionable Englewood neighborhood to attend the “White City” of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Many of Holmes’ dealings in his so-called “Murder Castle” at 610 W. 63rd St., however, were fabrications. He left the city in summer 1894 before he was linked to any murders. It was only after his subsequent arrest in Boston and confessions that his Chicago activities were scrutinized.

First open-heart surgery (1893)

The procedure was performed at Provident Hospital — the city’s first interracial hospital — on Chicago’s South Side. The patient was James Cornish, a young man with a knife wound to the chest from a barroom brawl. The surgeon, who had gone into medicine because he disliked earlier work as a shoemaker’s apprentice, was Daniel Hale Williams. Both patient and surgeon were Black.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: Inventions and innovations by Black Chicagoans

Despite lacking X-rays, antibiotics, adequate anesthesia or other tools of modern surgery, Williams stepped in. Cornish lived, and Williams went on to acclaim. Williams was appointed in 1894 as chief surgeon at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., which gave care to formerly enslaved Blacks.

First organized automobile race in the nation (1895)

The 55-mile route started in Chicago’s Jackson Park — amid snow and slush — and ended in Evanston. Of the seven competitors, only two crossed the finish line. A Duryea “motocycle” won the race. The other five, according to the Tribune, “were lost — wandering aimlessly about the streets of Chicago or lying wrecked in some gutter along the way.”

First juvenile court (1899)

Judge Richard S. Tuthill, a Civil War veteran, presided over the first case on July 3, 1899.

Chicago’s trailblazing first female judge known for looking after juveniles, stating, ‘There are no bad children’

Lena Campbell of 84 Hudson St. accused her 11-year-old son, Henry Campbell, of larceny. Instead of sending the boy to a penal institution, Tuthill sent the boy to New York to live with his grandmother. For thousands of children, the “child-saver” experiment was a huge success, and it expanded to all 50 states.

‘Greatest ship canal ever constructed’ (1900)

The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal (a project long championed by the Tribune) was completed on Jan. 2, 1900, after eight years of work by 8,500 laborers. “The opening of the greatest ship canal ever constructed in America and the informal completion of one of the engineering feats in the world’s history was accomplished without ceremony,” the Tribune reported.

First American to win a Nobel Prize (1907)

Albert A. Michelson, the first head of the physics department at the University of Chicago, won the first Nobel Prize in science.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: Nobel Prize winners with Chicago connections

The U.S. Naval Academy graduate measured the speed of light with unsurpassed accuracy and built several machines for studying the length of light waves.

First U.S. city to require pasteurization of milk (1908)

All milk producers in Chicago — as of Jan. 1, 1909 — were required by ordinance to provide “pure milk” that had either been treated to remove pathogens or certify that the milk they sold was produced from healthy cows. The union of milk shippers almost unanimously agreed to the arrangement during a meeting on Dec. 21, 1908, at 10 S. Clark St. The measure was championed by the city’s first health commissioner, William A. Evans, who sought to prevent tuberculosis and other debilitating diseases in children. Evans also contributed a column in the Tribune called “How to Keep Well,” which debuted Sept. 10, 1911. The first of its kind in a daily newspaper, it was syndicated and later widely imitated.

America’s first recorded commercial aviation disaster (1919)

For most of the day on July 21, 1919, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.’s Wingfoot Air Express airship cruised above the city. At about 5 p.m., however, the dirigible hurtled through a lobby skylight of the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank at 231 S. LaSalle St., killing 13 people and injuring 28. Nobody was charged. Nobody was tried. No definitive cause was reported, though the Tribune ran one story attributing the explosion to a static spark lighting the highly flammable hydrogen gas.

First public display of a ‘talking’ movie (1922)

University of Illinois professor Joseph Tykociner gave the first public demonstration on June 9, 1922, of his “sound on film” invention. The sound recording — which was converted to a light pattern on film — was played in real time with the film. Video of Tykociner’s presentation was captured and later restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation. One of the segments shows Tykociner’s wife, Helena, ringing a bell while saying, “I will ring … Did you hear the bell ringing?”

First LGBTQ rights organization (1924)

Postal clerk Henry Gerber formed the Society for Human Rights, but was soon arrested for being gay. Gerber was never convicted, but the publicity (including a newspaper headline reading “Strange Sex Cult Exposed”) led to his firing for conduct unbecoming of a postal worker. Before the group disbanded, it published “Friendship and Freedom” — the first American gay publication.

Gerber’s home at 1710 N. Crilly Court in the Old Town Triangle neighborhood was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2015.

First U.S. airport and aviation school built, owned and operated by Black men (1931)

Operating under the name the Challenger Air Pilots Association, Cornelius R. Coffey and John Charles Robinson began operations in 1931 along 139th Street in south suburban Robbins. Mayor Samuel Nichols, whose daughter Nichelle Nichols notably was a trailblazing icon aboard another aircraft, Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, helped them find land and labor to clear it for a hangar.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: The city’s groundbreaking Black aviators

The men were initially denied admission to Curtiss-Wright Aeronautical University in Chicago because they were Black, Tyrone Haymore, executive director of the Robbins Historical Society and Museum, told the Tribune. The Robbins Historical Museum now occupies part of the site. Both men were later allowed to attend Curtiss-Wright and graduated at the top of their class.

A windstorm destroyed their hangar and two airplanes in 1933, but they were welcomed to Harlem Airport in Oak Lawn. There they trained hundreds of pilots — Black and white — together.

First blood bank (1937)

Hungarian doctor Bernard Fantus coined the term and established a “Blood Preservation Laboratory” at Cook County Hospital on March 15, 1937. His work showed that blood and its components (red cells, plasma, platelets, etc.) could be collected and then refrigerated for later use — even a month or longer afterward, in some instances.

First live panda in captivity (1937)

Su-Lin — which loosely translates to mean “a little bit of something very cute,” and her guardian, Ruth Harkness, became instant celebrities when they arrived by boat in San Francisco in November 1936. Harkness, her partner Quentin Young and their crew discovered the baby panda in a hollow tree shortly after arriving in China’s Sichuan Province earlier that month. Brookfield Zoo became Su-Lin’s home while Harkness returned to China to search for a mate for the panda. The animal died of pneumonia in 1938. It is now part of the Field Museum’s taxidermy collection.

First ‘March Madness’ (1939)

Henry V. Porter, an Illinois High School Association official who was later inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, is credited with originally using the phrase in 1939 to describe the state’s high school basketball tournament.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: March Madness was born in Illinois. Here’s history of Chicago teams in the tournament.

The Tribune adopted it in 1940, but Porter’s motto remained largely a regional phenomenon for four decades until CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger, a former Chicago newspaper reporter, began using it during the NCAA tournament in 1982.

World’s first sustained nuclear reaction (1942)

U.S. scientists and government officials (collectively known as the Manhattan Project) had to figure out how to create a nuclear chain reaction before they could build an atomic bomb. That’s just what a team gathered beneath the stands at Stagg Field on the University of Chicago campus on Dec. 2, 1942, did with the world’s first nuclear reactor — nicknamed Chicago Pile-1.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: The Atomic Age is born at the University of Chicago’s football stadium

Why did this happen in Chicago? The city by the lake was an ideal location for several reasons. One, it had a huge pool of talent. Nobel Prize winner and physicist Enrico Fermi, who defected from Fascist-controlled Italy, was the team leader. Two, it was a central location away from the coasts, which were believed to be vulnerable to attack. Three, since the University of Chicago no longer had a football team, the project could be conducted in secrecy with added security on a former squash court underneath the football stadium’s stands.

Chicago’s role in the breakthrough experiment wasn’t revealed publicly until after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan — nearly three years later.

First Black-oriented magazine in the U.S. (1945)

First published on Nov. 1, 1945, Ebony became an influential monthly lifestyle magazine based in Chicago that documented the African American experience for more than seven decades. The 25,000-copy press run of the inaugural 52-page issue sold out. By its 10th year, the magazine was being read by 500,000 people.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: 10 longstanding Black-owned businesses to support all year

Founded by John H. Johnson, the monthly publication — focused like Life magazine on showing American lives — chronicled the achievements of those in the Black community. During its heyday, Ebony’s reporters and photographers followed Martin Luther King Jr. from the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott to the 1965 Selma march, culminating in the assassinated civil rights leader’s 1968 funeral.

Johnson Publishing went out of business in 2019, but the magazine lives on in a digital format and its incredible archives were acquired by a consortium that includes Getty and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

First American canonized by the Roman Catholic Church (1946)

Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini once walked among the people of Chicago. The youngest of 13 children of Italian farmers, she dreamed of serving as a missionary. Her poor health, however, meant she was rejected by several orders. She founded her own: Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Leo XIII encouraged Cabrini to expand her mission to the United States.

When she first arrived in America, Cabrini didn’t speak English and was told by the archbishop of New York that her trip was a mistake. Yet Cabrini persisted and even became a naturalized citizen in 1909. Before her death in Chicago at age 67, Cabrini founded 67 schools, orphanages, hospitals, convents and places of worship in North and South America. Pope Pius XII canonized Cabrini, which recognized her as a saint, on July 7, 1946.

First commercial nuclear power plant in the nation (1960)

The Dresden Generating Station near Morris was the second nuclear power plant built in the U.S. (the first was Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania), but it was the first that was privately financed (by Commonwealth Edison). The plant was retired on Oct. 31, 1978, but the site houses two nuclear reactors operated by Constellation that produce enough electricity to power roughly 1.4 million homes.

Birthplace of the birth control pill (1960)

Skokie pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle released Enovid in 1957, as a treatment for gynecological disorders, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its use as the first prescription oral contraceptive pill on May 9, 1960.

First state to repeal its sodomy law (1961)

Gov. Otto Kerner signed bills into law creating new criminal code for the state on July 28, 1961. Engaging in homosexual activity was no longer a criminal offense in Illinois starting on Jan. 1, 1962.

First Special Olympics (1968)

About 1,000 children with intellectual disabilities from 26 states and Canada who ranged in age from 8 to 18 gathered at Soldier Field in Chicago to compete in 200 events. Responding to a written proposal from Chicago Park District employee Anne Burke, a $25,000 check from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation was forwarded here to help start the games, courtesy of the foundation’s executive vice president, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Now, more than 6 million athletes from around the world take part in the program.

First state to adopt an Environmental Protection Act and create a dedicated Environmental Protection Agency (1970)

Gov. Richard B. Ogilvie signed the landmark legislation on June 29, 1970, while attending a press conference at Pheasant Run Lodge near St. Charles. The new regulations went into effect July 1, 1970 — five months before the U.S. EPA was established.

First gay pride parade in the U.S. (1970)

More a march than a parade, the city’s Gay Liberation Movement staged its first rally and procession on June 27, 1970, as part of Gay Pride Week. A short Tribune story the next day said 150 people listened to speakers in Bughouse Square (now Washington Square Park) before walking to the Civic Center (now Daley Plaza) where they formed a chain around the Picasso statue and shouted, “Gay power to gay people.” Chicago beat New York City, Los Angeles and other cities by one day.

Birthplace of the cellphone (1973) and first commercial cellphone call (1983)

Motorola executive Martin Cooper was standing on Sixth Avenue just blocks from Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan on April 3, 1973, when he dialed his Chicago-built cellphone prototype. The 2.5-pound, 10-inch-long model’s inspiration came from a bespoke, two-way radio system that the company created in the 1960s for the Chicago Police Department. Cooper officially claimed the first-ever cellphone call in history when Joel Engel — his rival at AT&T — answered. Cooper and seven others share U.S. Patent No. 3,906,166, published Oct. 17, 1973, for a “Radio Telephone System,” which included both the phone and the tower network to connect it.

David Meilahn, a suburban Chicago insurance agent, made the first commercial cellular call in the United States on Oct. 13, 1983, in a parking lot at Soldier Field. That’s when Ameritech Mobile Communications, then a subsidiary of AT&T, launched the first commercial cell service in Chicago. There was even a “Jeopardy!” answer about his accomplishment — you can look it up on your smartphone.

First state to designate the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday (Jan. 15) as a holiday (1973)

Illinois Gov. Dan Walker signed the measure into law on Sept. 17, 1973. The bill’s sponsor was then-Rep. Harold Washington, who was elected Chicago mayor 10 years later. The first Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed in Illinois on Jan. 15, 1974. A cheering crowd of 1,000 people joined a celebration at Operation PUSH headquarters while others attended a candlelit memorial service at St. Martin Catholic Church. Chicago public schools and city colleges were closed. All city, state and county offices in Chicago were closed as were criminal and civil courts and three state motor vehicle facilities.

First handgun ban (1982)

Morton Grove began enforcement of the controversial ordinance on Feb. 1, 1982. Residents turned in five guns to police that first day. The ordinance also banned possession of automatic weapons, overriding a newly effective state law that allowed it.

The measure triggered a storm of publicity and a nationwide debate over the merits of using local ordinances to control gun ownership, but was upheld in 1984 by the Illinois Supreme Court. The ordinance was repealed in July 2008.

First Farm Aid (1985)

“It was the biggest country music concert in history,” the Tribune wrote the day after the first Farm Aid on Sept. 22, 1985. “For more than 14 hours Memorial Stadium on the University of Illinois campus was transformed into Rockabilly Heaven before a rain-soaked but spirited crowd of about 78,000 and a national television audience estimated at more than 24 million.”

The event was the brainchild of country singer Willie Nelson, who was inspired by fellow musician Bob Dylan to hold a concert to raise money for American farmers.

First state to outlaw book bans (2023)

The measure was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker on June 12, 2023. Public libraries in Illinois could be cut off from state funding if they remove books and other materials from their shelves for “partisan or doctrinal” reasons.

First American elected pope (2025)

Chicago-born Robert Prevost, a longtime missionary and member of the Augustinian religious order, was introduced on May 8, 2025, as Pope Leo XIV — the first pontiff from the U.S. in the 2,000-year history of the Roman Catholic Church.

Since then, the Holy Father has consistently uplifted his birthplace on the international scene, from cheering on the White Sox and Bears to lauding the city’s South Side during an October general audience in St. Peter’s Square. Pope Leo has also emerged as a powerful counter to President Donald Trump, condemning his administration’s hardline immigration stance, framing of Russia’s war against Ukraine and military action in Venezuela.

Pope Leo XIV: What to know about Chicago-born Robert Prevost

The pope’s patchwork background speaks to the melting pot that is the U.S. Though Prevost worked in Peru for 20 years and has a deep bond to the country, his father was French and Italian and his mother was of Spanish descent. Genealogists later unearthed that his maternal grandparents were Creole people from Louisiana — an often mixed-race cultural identity linked to French, Spanish, African and Indigenous heritages.