On this day in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died in the Petersen family’s boarding house in Washington, DC, at 7:22 a.m. The night before, John Wilkes Booth shot him during a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre, and soldiers carried Lincoln across Tenth Street so that he could pass his last moments peacefully and not risk a bumpy carriage ride back to the White House.  After More

Today is the start of Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year. The holiday was Thailand’s official New Year until 1888 when it was switched to a fixed date of April 1. In 1940, the date of the New Year was changed again to January 1, and Songkran was transformed into a three-day national holiday. Thai More

In this blog post, Ariel Robinson, Chicago History Museum Research Center page and recent library school graduate, writes about her experience designing a Disability Studies LibGuide for CHM. At CHM, Gretchen Neidhardt, cataloging and metadata librarian, and Elizabeth McKinley, technical services librarian, have worked on developing LibGuides (subject guides) for various ethnic and BIPOC groups More

For National Beer Day, we hope you enjoy a cold one—if you’re of age, that is. The day is observed on April 7 because on that day in 1933, the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect, amending the National Prohibition Act and allowing the manufacture and sale of beer and wine with a 3.2% alcohol content or less. During the nineteenth century, beer making in Chicago was transformed from a small-scale, seasonal activity More

How can current and future monuments expand the narrative on Chicago stories? Join us for a free virtual discussion with a group of culturally diverse, interdisciplinary scholars, educators, and artists in support of the Chicago Monuments Project. Attendees are invited to share their thoughts and perspectives during the conversation. Topics addressed will include Abraham Lincoln’s More

It’s National Deep Dish Pizza Day! Where will you be ordering from tonight? Modern pizza is reputed to have started in Naples in 1889 when Raffaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita,” with tomato, mozzarella, and basil replicating the colors of the Italian flag, for King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Italy. From there, pizza spread across the More