Thought you knew everything about Chicago? So did we, but wait until you see what new things we learned thanks to the help of the Chicago History Museum.<\/p>\n
“You could pick almost any aspect of American life, and you can kind of trace it back to Chicago,” said Chicago History Museum director of exhibitions Paul Durica.<\/p>\n
The Bean, the Hancock Building, Buckingham Fountain, and the ‘L’ \u00a0are all parts of everyday Chicago, but CBS News Chicago wanted to know what we didn’t know. <\/p>\n
So, we turned Durica, who had some surprises, like a facsimile of the original Declaration of Independence, which is at the Chicago History Museum.<\/p>\n
“What you see here is something that was produced on July 4, 1776, itself,” Durica said. “Today, there’s 26 that we know that are still in existence, including the one that’s right here in the city of Chicago.”<\/p>\n
Navy Pier is home to the Centennial Wheel, which debuted in 2016 to celebrate the pier’s 100th anniversary, replacing the previous Ferris wheel on the lakefront.<\/p>\n
Did you know the world’s first Ferris wheel went up here in Chicago in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition?<\/p>\n
“That very first Ferris wheel had 36 cars that’s best to kind of think about them being almost like train cars, because they could fit 60 people,” Durica said. “The wheel wasn’t finished when the fair opened in May of 1893. Instead, it opened later that summer.”<\/p>\n
Navy Pier is home to another historical surprise. It’s now home to the start of Historic Route 66, which is marking its centennial this year.<\/p>\n
“Route 66 recently changed its starting location. So now it can go from Navy Pier to the Santa Monica Pier,” Durica said. <\/p>\n
For our next surprise, we go from the open road to the open water. <\/p>\n
You might already know engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River in 1900, but that’s just part of the story.<\/p>\n
“The river isn’t always traveling in reverse,” Durica said. “In fact, in certain seasons of the year, if you look at the surface, you’ll see the water going from east to west, but actually there’s a deeper current down below which is feeding directly into the lake.”<\/p>\n
For the stargazers out there, did you know the Adler was the first planetarium in the western hemisphere?<\/p>\n
Many impactful people have ties to Chicago, but some on the list of the people born in the city might surprise you’ like Robin Williams, Shonda Rhimes, Pat Sajak, Racquel Welch, and Walt Disney.<\/p>\n
A whole basketball team even was born in Chicago. When you hear Globetrotters, you think Harlem, but the team was founded in Chicago.<\/p>\n
The nation’s very first blood bank was at the old Cook County Hospital.<\/p>\n
The first Whirlwind vacuum cleaner was invented in Chicago, too.<\/p>\n
CBS even made history in Chicago, as the first televised presidential debate took place in the old WBBM-TV broadcast center in Streeterville.<\/p>\n
“If you start to pull on the thread of any subject in American life, at least one of those fibers is going to trace its way back to Chicago,” Durica said.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n