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Chicago, Illinois - Cool Facts
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The 4 stars on the Chicago flag represent Fort Dearborn, the Chicago Fire, the World's Columbian Exposition, and the Century of Progress Exposition.
The Art Institute of Chicago holds the largest collection of Impressionist paintings outside the Louvre in Paris.
Among the Field Museum's most prized jewels is the 5,890-carat Chalmerz topaz, which weighed 10,200 carats in the rough.
Chicago has 29 miles of lake frontage and 15 miles of public beach.
Chicago is home to the world's largest population of Poles outside of Warsaw.
Chicago is home to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is one of the last free zoos.
Chicago's McCormick Place has the largest amount of exhibit space of any convention center in the country at 2.2 million square feet.
Chicago's Western Avenue is the world's longest street.
The Chicago Public Library, the Harold Washington Library, is the world's largest public library with a collection of more than 2 million books.
Chicago's central water filtration plant, located on the lakefront north of Navy Pier, is the largest in the world.
Chicago's Oceanarium is the world's largest indoor marine mammal pavilion and doubles the size of the John G. Shedd Aquarium, which is the largest indoor aquarium in the world.
- update: The Georgia Aquarium holds more than 8 million gallons of water to house well over 100,000 fish. It's a leap in size and capacity over the next largest aquarium -- Chicago's Shedd, which holds 5 million gallons of water to support 20,000 aquatic animals.
Georgia's $200 million building, designed to look like a ship breaking through a wave, was a gift from Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus.
- The Chicago River is always dyed green on St. Patrick's Day.
The Chicago Post Office at 433 West Van Buren is the only postal facility in the world you can drive a car through.
The official flower of the city of Chicago is the chrysanthemum.
Lake Michigan:
more than 10,300 years old
307 miles long, 118 across at its widest point
average depth is 279 feet, maximum depth is 923 feet
contains roughly 1,350 trillion gallons of water
covers an area of 22,300 square miles
Hugh Hefner started the publication of "Playboy" at 6052 S. Harper St. in Chicago in 1953.
Jesse Owens, Frazier Thomas, "Wheaties," and Muddy Waters all have a Chicago street named in their honor.
Nabisco, the world's largest cookie and cracker factory, is located in Chicago (7300 S. Kedzie Avenue).
Stephen Douglas, who beat Abe Lincoln in debates by defending the rights of slave owners, lies buried beneath a monument to him off 35th Street at South Shore Drive in the heart of Chicago's South Side black community.
The Taste of Chicago is the world's largest free outdoor food festival. In 2006, the Taste of Chicago ran from June 30 to July 9 in Grant Park. It was the best 10-day event ever for attendance and sales. A record total of 3.6 million people had visited the festivities. Attendance for the previous record 10-day event, in 2004, was 3.59 million, with $12.33 million in revenue.
Tribune Tower, home of the Chicago Tribune newspaper, has exterior walls that are embedded with authentic pieces of famous buildings including Westminster Abbey, the Alamo, Hamlet's castle, the Great Pyramid, the Taj Mahal, Fort Sumter and the Arc de Triomphe.
The world's largest ice cream cone factory, Keebler, is also located in Chicago (10839 S. Langley Avenue).
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