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Intresting Facts About Chicago

I thought this would be good to share and fun to learn about Chicago

• Chicago is the third largest city in United States
• The name ‘Chicago’ is the French interpretation of the Miami-Illinois name ‘Shikaakwa’, which means ‘wild leek’.
• Chicago was founded in 1772, when Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a man from Haiti, established a settlement on the north bank of the Chicago River, calling it Eschikagou.
• Chicago is home to over 40 museums, more than 150 theaters and over 6,000 restaurants.
• Chicago boasts of housing three of the world’s tallest buildings, Sears Tower, Amoco Building and John Hancock.
• The world’s largest public library, Harold Washington Library Center, with a collection of more than 2 million books, is in Chicago.
• Roller skates, steel frame skyscraper, elevated railway, cracker jacks, zipper, window envelope, hostess Twinkie, pinball game and spray paint were invented in Chicago.
• More than 200 annual parades take place in the city of Chicago every year.
• Chicago is home to the largest building in America (excluding Pentagon), The Merchandise Mart, with 90 acres of floor space.
• Oceanarium, in Chicago, is the largest indoor marine mammal pavilion in the world.
• Chicago is home to one of the last free zoos in the world, the Lincoln Park Zoo.
• Chicago River is the only river in the world that flows backwards.
• Chicago is known as the ‘Candy Capital of the World’.
• The Art Institute of Chicago is home to the largest collection of Impressionist paintings in the world, apart from the Louvre (Paris).
• Kate Sturges Buckingham donated $750,000 to the city for construction of Buckingham Fountain as a memorial to her brother Clarence. The largest fountain in the world, it shoots a water jet 135 feet high.
• The Wrigley Building is the first air-conditioned office building.
• The first McDonald’s franchise restaurant, owned by Ray Kroc, opened in the suburb of Des Plaines.
• Chicago has 29 miles of Lake Frontage and 15 miles of public beach.
• Lake Michigan is more than 10,300 years old, 307 miles long, 118 across at its widest point, average depth is 279 feet, maximum depth is 923 feet
contains roughly 1,350 trillion gallons of water, covers an area of 22,300 square miles
• Tribune Tower, home of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, has exterior walls that are embedded with authentic pieces of famous buildings including Westminster Abbey, the Alamo, Hamlet’s castle, the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, Fort Sumter and the Arc de Triumph.