History

Here’s the story of a strange strike in which everybody went to work, and everybody got paid, and everybody went to jail.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when the picture comes from a different culture or time, it's tough to figure out exactly what those words might be. Illinois State University scholar Lea Cline deals with that challenge every day.

The McLean County Museum of History is about to rededicate a memorial honoring the 336 McLean County men and women who gave their lives for freedom during World War II.

The U.S. military used DNA analysis to identity the body of John Ferguson of Flanagan. Ferguson was 20 when he died as a prisoner of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippine Islands. He will be buried Oct. 1 in Gridley.

Queen Elizabeth II has died at the age of 96. When she ascended the throne in 1952, most present-day Britons, and most Americans for that matter, were not yet alive. Queen Elizabeth ruled for a period that is about a third of the length of U.S. history.

One doesn’t think of Bloomington and central Illinois as a lurid hotbed of crime. But it certainly seems it could have been that way during the mid-to-late 1800s as portrayed by the three city newspapers of the day.

Coming from nothing, an illiterate Black man from Bloomington-Normal — long before the civil rights movement — found a niche in the national market for cleaning products. In this episode of the WGLT feature McHistory, hear about a floor polish and the man who invented and sold it.

Illinois State University History Department Chair Ross Kennedy studies World War I. Kennedy is leery of drawing direct parallels between the pre-World War I network of alliances or anti-globalist sentiment and the present-day environment.

Ellen Ferguson was a champion of women and women's suffrage. She made Bloomington-Normal her home in the 1870s.

Ellen Ferguson was a champion of women and women's suffrage. She made Bloomington-Normal her home in the 1870s.