1680 Fort Crevecoeur is established near Peroria.
1720 For de Chartres became the seat of French government.
1778 A small band of Americans captured Kaskasia from the British.
1803 Fort Dearborn was established by federal infantry in Chicago.
1809 Illinois Territory was established.
1818 Illinois became the 21st state.
1831-1832 the Black Hawk war was fought and the Black Hawks lost.
1837 Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in Alton while defending his press from a pro slave mob.
1844 Mormon leader Joseph Smith was murdered in Carthage.
1846 The Mormons leave their settlements to travel to Utah.
1847 Cyrus McCormick built a plant to produce his reaper.
1858 Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln hold a series of seven debates.
1860 Lincoln received the Republican parties presidential nomination in Chicago.
1871 The Great Chicago Fire leveled most of Chicago.
1886 A bomb killed seven policemen at a rally at Chicago’s Haymarket Square. Anarchist were blamed and four were later hung.
1893 The Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago.
1894 Federal troops were sent to Chicago to crush the pullman strike.
1959 The first oceangoing vessel to pass through the St Lawrence seaway arrives in Chicago.
1968 Violence broke out at the Chicago Democratic Convention.
1974 The Sears Building was opened.