Chicago Facts

Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world.

In 1987, a Chicago TV station had its broadcast interrupted by a pirate signal that shows a man in a Max Headroom mask mumbling and being spanked with a fly swatter. Despite investigations by the FCC and FBI, this became the only known incident in which a hacker interrupted a major TV broadcast without getting caught.

The rarest motorcycle in the world was found behind a brick wall in Chicago and has engine technologies well ahead of its time. The “Traub” is still running to this day.

Binti Jua, a gorilla at Brookfield Zoo, was carrying her own 17-month-old baby on her back. A 3-year-old boy fell 24 feet into her enclosure and landed unconscious. She crossed the pit and cradled the boy against her chest. Her infant still on her back, she carried him to the keeper door. Six other gorillas were in the enclosure. The boy made a full recovery.

The Bean in Chicago's Millennium Park is really Cloud Gate, 168 stainless-steel plates welded into one seamless, 110-ton mirror. Every day the park is open, a small crew hand-wipes its base to strip off the fingerprints and oils that would corrode the finish. Twice a year another crew scaffolds the whole sculpture overnight for a full wash and polish. The wipe-down crew is still out there, cloths in hand.

Sue, the T. rex at Chicago's Field Museum, was found because of a flat tire. In 1990, a South Dakota fossil crew drove into town to fix it, but Sue Hendrickson stayed behind and walked her dog to cliffs the crew had not checked. Giant bones jutted from the rock above her, part of one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever found. The skeleton still carries her name.

Vietnam veterans got no parade when the war ended in 1975. Many came home to silence. Chicago decided eleven years was long enough. On June 13, 1986, nearly 200,000 veterans marched through downtown Chicago. More than half a million people came out to cheer them. One marcher, a paraplegic veteran, had days earlier saved a drowning toddler. He rode the route as an honorary marshal. Chicago was finally saying thank you.

The first Ferris wheel was built to out-Eiffel the Eiffel Tower at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. It stood 264 feet tall. Each of its 36 cars was the size of a train carriage. Together they could carry up to 2,160 riders at once. After the fair, no buyer wanted the giant machine. In 1906, workers dynamited it into scrap.

Sears Tower's Ledge lets tourists step onto glass floors 1,353 feet above Chicago's sidewalks. Each box weighs 1,500 pounds, built from three layers of half-inch glass. It's engineered to hold 10,000 pounds. No one leans out a window to clean it. A motor pulls the whole box back on rails, straight into the building, then slides back out over the drop. The boxes are still open every day, right now.