Imagine, if you will, how big a deal it would be if Taylor Swift gave a concert in Bloomington-Normal. That's the equivalent to the appearance of lyric tenor John McCormack on Nov. 24, 1924.

It seems like a new biography of President Abraham Lincoln comes out every few years, trying to discern new perspectives of his time and character. Lincoln himself didn't write much about his life, so what he did put down on paper has an outsized importance.

Human beings have marked the turning of the year with many different traditions over thousands of years. Some practices have fallen out of favor. Today, American society celebrates on New Year’s Eve, and not New Year's Day, though this was not always the case.

Christmas in America wasn't always the huge festive cultural movement we know today. The Puritans made the celebration of Christmas illegal. They thought such demonstrations were sacrilegious.

In the early 1800s, supply chains were a lot shorter, but the lack of mechanized transportation sometimes made it tremendously difficult to bring goods to market. Yet, a regional — edging toward national — marketplace did thrive.

The sudden freeze of ’36 came with a vengeance. It was like a wild prairie fire that snipped everything in its path. And woe to him who was far from human habitation.

It takes a beloved or significant figure in the history of an institution to name a building after that person. Illinois State University ended up naming two libraries for Angeline Vernon Milner.

Bloomington-Normal and McLean County are not really known as a cradle of country music. But there was this one time...in the 1930s. Cynthia May Carver, better known by her stage name “Cousin Emmy,” was a pioneer in country music.

There are many colorful characters in baseball. For Hall of Famer Burleigh "Old Stubblebeard" Grimes, the color in question is blue.

Legendary broadcaster and storyteller Campbell "Stretch" Miller had the attitude of why let facts get in the way of a good story.