1. In 1837, the city of Chicago was incorporated as a city. At the time, it had a population of just over 4,000 people.

2. In 1867, the first meeting of the Illinois State Bar Association was held in Springfield. Today, the association has over 30,000 members.

3. In 1877, the first electric street lights in the United States were installed in Wabash, Indiana, a town just across the Illinois border.

4. In 1901, the Chicago Daily News became the first major newspaper in the United States to use a composite photograph on its front page. The photo, depicting the funeral of President William McKinley, was created by merging several individual photographs into a single image.

5. In 1977, the Illinois State Senate passed a resolution apologizing for the state's role in the forced removal of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the 1830s.