Chicago

October is Polish Heritage Month, the perfect time to celebrate the influential and vibrant community of Poles in Chicago, which is often touted as the city with the largest Polish population outside Poland. Here are some of our highlights in honor of Polish Heritage Month.

In the 100 years since the Chicago White Sox players fixed games to lose the World Series, lots of myths about the scandal have sprung up. Two experts clear them up, and discuss the scandal's enduring significance. “It’s the power of poetry and fiction to overwhelm history.”

The Chicago Eight conspiracy trial pitted the counterculture of the late 1960s against the government and the establishment in an era-defining battle that featured everything from Allen Ginsberg engaging in a Hindu chant to the judge ordering a defendant to be bound and gagged.

"For me, sustainability is developing and training the largest sum of African American and brown young men and women that I can possibly find," says chef Erick Williams, who has recently garnered national acclaim for his new Hyde Park restaurant, Virtue.

Wrigley Field is beloved; Guaranteed Rate Field was essentially outdated within a year of construction. The Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, who wrote a book on American ballparks, discusses the two parks and how they reflect larger trends in American urbanism. 

“1919 represents a moment in time that is not that distant in the past in which you can see the violence of white supremacy enacted all across the country,” says a historian. And its effects still resonate today, in housing and the relationship between police and black communities.

Millennium Park, which opened fifteen years ago today, was supposed to be just another pleasant, dull park that would cover up railroad tracks. But the commissioning of internationally known artists and architects transformed it into an ever-popular, unique cultural destination.

Twenty years ago, "Cows on Parade" generated boundless enthusiasm, extraordinary tourism, millions of dollars, innumerable imitation exhibitions, and endless bovine puns. Now some of the original cows are returning to the public eye to celebrate the twentieth anniversary. 

The Society for Human Rights, founded by Chicago postal worker Henry Gerber, didn’t last long, but its legacy inspired various groups in the decades to come. Gerber's Old Town home where he was arrested in 1925 was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2015.

Pearl Hart spent much of her career as a lawyer defending people from the infringement of their rights, from Communists caught up in the Red Scare to lesbians and gay people. Her late-in-life partner Valerie Taylor advocated for LGBT rights through her writing, speaking, and novels.

The exterior of the McGraw-Hill Building on Michigan Avenue may look the same as it did when it was built in the twenties, but it underwent a controversial "façade-ectomy" after a battle between developers and preservationists – and it features sculptural panels by a neglected female artist.

Pullman was supposed to be an idyllic worker's town. But the restrictions and deprivations imposed by the wealthy George Pullman on his workers eventually led to one of the biggest labor actions in American history: the Pullman strike, which began 125 years ago. 

Over the 102 years that the Pulitzer Prize has been awarded, four distinct Chicago newspapers have won, for a total of 47 Prizes. Explore the journalism winners, from someone who received a Prize posthumously to the only person to receive two Pulitzers at a Chicago paper.

In 1963, some 225,000 students, or 47%, were absent from Chicago Public Schools in a boycott protesting segregation, the culmination of several years of protests against the school board's failure to address the needs of black students – including one in which a young Bernie Sanders was arrested.

This year's finalists for the James Beard Awards, often called the Oscars of Food, have been announced. As usual, Chicago has its fair share of nominees: fourteen, in eight distinct categories, plus two more for cookbooks. Find the list, plus reviews, interviews, and recipes from the finalists here.