1. In 1863, the Union army under General William S. Rosecrans occupied the city of Winchester, Virginia, during the Civil War. Many Illinois soldiers were among the troops that fought in this crucial battle, which helped secure Union control of the Shenandoah Valley.

2. On June 25, 1880, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad completed a new bridge over the Mississippi River at Savanna, Illinois. The bridge, which still stands today, was an engineering marvel at the time and helped facilitate the transportation of goods and people between the Midwest and the West Coast.

3. In 1921, the infamous teapot dome scandal broke in the United States. One of the principal figures in the scandal was Sinclair Oil Corporation owner Harry Ford Sinclair, who had major operations in Illinois. Sinclair was eventually convicted of contempt of Congress in connection with the scandal and served six months in prison.

4. On June 25, 1964, civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. All three men were in Mississippi to register African Americans to vote. Their deaths helped galvanize the civil rights movement and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act the following year.

5. In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a landmark ruling in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The case was brought by several couples from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, but it had implications for all states, including Illinois. The ruling was widely celebrated by advocates of LGBTQ+ rights.