Download or read book On This Day in Chicago History written by John R. Schmidt and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Think you know Chicago? If you are thinking of Al Capone, the L, the Cubs, Barack Obama or the Great Fire of 1871, then you are remembering the highlights from the tour bus. Here's the rest of the story, day by day. Chicago opened the first blood bank, invented the vacuum cleaner and sent a bowling ball around the world. One high school football game drew 120,000 people. Chicagoans fought nineteen years over the name of a street. For fifty years, they saved a gallows for an escaped killer. And those are just some of the stories.