History

An eerie sculpture near the grave of an early Chicago settler at Graceland Cemetery comes with a spooky legend. 

Ahead of this weekend's Chicago Marathon, take a brief look at the history of long-distance running in Chicago, including the story of how a swing bridge interrupted the very first marathon in the city. 

The House committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol is holding its next public hearing on September 28, and PBS NewsHour is again offering live coverage. Find ways to watch here.

Writer and muckraker Upton Sinclair was born on this day 144 years ago. He was a prolific writer and political activist whose most notable work, The Jungle, had a transformative impact on the meatpacking industry in Chicago and nationwide. 

In honor of Queen Elizabeth II, revisit the festivities (and some dental drama) of her lone trip to Chicago, in 1959, as part of a tour of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Canada. 

An ongoing exhibition at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie tells the story of how a unit of artists, engineers, and other soldiers deceived German troops using inflatable tanks, weaponry, phony radio calls, and other artistic effects.

Geoffrey Baer takes a tour of some lost amusement parks that entertained Chicagoans, including his father, who loved Riverview, and himself—he was fond of the Kiddieland in Skokie. Do you have any fond memories of another park?

Watch PBS NewsHour's live coverage of public hearings laying out lawmakers' findings from a nearly yearlong investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which begin on Thursday, June 9.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Chicago had the third-largest Czech population in the world, behind only Prague and Vienna. Czechs were deeply involved in the labor movement, politics, and more, as the producers of a new documentary on Czechs in Chicago explain. 

Jane Byrne was the first woman to be elected Mayor of Chicago and the first woman to lead a mayor U.S. city. A new Chicago Stories documentary follow's Byrne's rise to power and tenure as mayor. 

The Pollard family contained the NFL's first Black head coach, the first Black licensend nurse in Illinois, a producer of silent films, the first Black woman graduate of Northwestern University, a Civil War veteran, and the winner of an Olympic medal.

The trailblazing actor and director Sidney Poitier, star of A Raisin in the Sun, The Defiant Ones, and other films, has died at the age of 94. Listen to two interviews with him conducted decades apart by Studs Terkel.

Chicago has become a major hub for film and television production in the past decade, but the city has been an important part of the film industry almost since the birth of movies. Here are some of Geoffrey Baer's favorite uses of Chicago in films.

The new documentary Home from School tells the story of the Northern Arapaho's efforts to repatriate the remains of three children who died at an assimilationist boarding school more than a century ago. “This film talks about closing those cycles [of generational trauma]," says an associate producer.