History

“It’s a totally bonkers period,” says Annie Gray, a food historian and the author of a new cookbook focusing on British food from 1956-1970, the era of Call the Midwife. But the food "tells us so much about social attitudes" and more, she says.  

Even today there is a huge disparity in the number of women head chefs, but achieving success in the food industry earlier on was even less common. Meet some of the women who influenced Chicago and America's attitudes towards food. 

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 Great Chicago Fire: A Chicago Stories Special reveals new details with recreations and animation that bring the fire to life. Executive producer Dan Protess and producer and writer Peter Marks talked about their approach to telling the old story in a new way.

Poetry magazine has published most major poets of the last century and given many of them early breaks, from T.S. Eliot to Gwendolyn Brooks, Ocean Vuong, and Danez Smith. "Chicago," excerpts from Claudia Rankine's Citizen, and "anyone lived in a pretty how town" were first published in its pages. 

DuPage county, outside Chicago, took part in Jonas Salk's polio vaccine trials in 1954, a successful nationwide experiment that led to the virtual end of a terrifying disease and was called "one of the greatest events in the history of medicine." 

Chicago's Pride Parade didn't start as a parade at all. It was originally a small march to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. But a protest against anti-gay activist Anita Bryant in 1977 helped the parade become what it is today.

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.

75 years ago on December 2, scientists at the University of Chicago inaugurated the nuclear era by engineering the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Learn about the origins of nuclear power and the upsides and downsides of its future.

Many people probably assume midwives are a thing of the past. A midwife-in-training at the Yale School of Nursing shows otherwise, explaining the various roles midwives play today and surveying the recent history of midwifery.

April 6 marked the 100th anniversary of the United States' entry into World War I. The dance film Young Men dramatizes the effect of that war on the soldiers who fought in it. Explore other works of art that have grappled with the Great War.

To Walk Invisible: The Brontë Sisters, which aired Sunday, explores the lives of the authors of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey. Do the actors in the film look like the people that they play?

Explore some historic figures of Irish Chicago on this St. Patrick's Day. Beyond green beer and parades, there's a lot more to learn about. 

Celebrate the pioneering achievements, landmark reforms, and impressive careers of some of the women who resided at Jane Addams' social-minded Hull House in the early twentieth century.

In Ken Burns: America's Storyteller, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Wynton Marsalis, and more celebrate the career of legendary documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. Watch clips highlighting Burns and his career.