On this day in 1942, a University of Chicago team led by Enrico Fermi created the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, in converted squash courts under Stagg Field, the University’s football stadium. more ›

Michael Williams brings us this amazing 16mm Kodachrome home movie of a group of Chicago police officers and their wives visiting Las Vegas in 1962. more ›

Sorry, guys. I hate to be the one to tell you this, now-middle-aged men of Chicago, but you don't do anything for Madonna. At least, the version of her that was shooting "A League Of Their Own" back in the early '90s doesn't think much of y'all. Letters of Note brings us this handwritten letter from Madge, signed "Dita" as was her alter-ego at the time. ("Dita" went on to mastermind the Madonna "Sex" book.) more ›

We've been all about flashbacks recently so this documentary film from 1965 detailing the construction of Marina City fits in quite nicely. [via] more ›

You didn't think we were gonna make it through a whole day without mentioning Oprah again, did you? Well, we'll be brief. We've already revisited the controversy over this year's season premiere which was filmed downtown in early September. But readers who've been this site for a bit might remember that Stoplman and my predecessor, Margaret, attended the 2008 season premiere, filmed in Millennium Park and featuring a slew of Olympic athletes from the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Be sure to check out the entire story and even more photos here. more ›

Between the Pitchfork Music Fest of a few weeks back and the approaching Lollapalooza marathon next weekend, it's sometimes easy to overlook the lesser known local music stars of our city. One such auteur? Jan Terri. We've posted Jan's videos before and she's actually well known about town and on the interwebs, but Friend of Chicagoist Griff sent us a collection of her videos which included a feature on her from the Daily Show from nine years ago (my God, Jon Stewart has been there that long?). Check out the interview below and after the jump, check out a few more of Jan's videos. more ›

We've been loving poking around the annals of Chicago's past via LexisNexis and enjoying seeing what goes on through the lens of history. Just for shits and giggles, we plugged in today's date from a hundred years back to see what the headline from a century-old news cycle. The hot topic from back then: Should Chicago require that milk be pasteurized? more ›

Yesterday we took a look at the dark side of catastrophe. Today, in the wake of this morning's announcement, we'll take a look at the history how we've dealt with them in the past. more ›

As we're tooling around the internets this morning wondering exactly when we got too cool for Saturday morning cartoons it popped into our heads to check out what cartoonery is hosted with our friends at FuzzyMemories.TV. Fingers were crossed for CBS local broadcasts of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or possibly that old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon that was beautifully geeky. We couldn't track down any of that, but observe the majesty of WFLD's Saturday Morning Movie in 1980, before the upstart station could probably even afford cartoons: more ›

Last week, we told you about an old "lost" episode of WTTW's Check, Please which featured a young state Senator and law professor from Hyde Park named Barack Obama talking about Dixie Kitchen. Now, we have our first glimpse of what that episode will look like thanks to the following clip which has leaked. Don't forget to check out the full episode on January 16 at 8:00 p.m. [via Menu Pages] more ›

Fans of "Check, Please!" know that WTTW often runs repeats of previous episodes, helping to propagate the "'Check, Please! Effect'" and make household names, for a brief time, of folks named Fred Solomon and Manase Latu. more ›

the shift is abrupt. more ›

So here we were, doing a little poking around some Chicago radio websites on a Saturday afternoon. One link leads to another, and all of a sudden we're on Chicago Tonight correspondent Rich Samuel's site, which we've discovered is a treasure trove of old Chicago media pictures, airchecks and video. more ›