Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and the third-most-populous city in the United States. Chicago, Illinois, is known as the Windy City. The name may come from the breezes off Lake Michigan.

The largest city of the American Midwest, Chicago, Illinois, was founded in 1830 and quickly grew to become, as Carl Sandburg’s 1916 poem put it, “Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.” Established as a water transit hub, the city evolved into an industrial metropolis, processing and transporting the raw materials of its vast hinterland.

The Great Chicago Fire happened in October 1871, a fire destroyed one-third of Chicago and left more than 100,000 homeless. Its initial spark remains unknown (legends of Mrs. O’Leary’s lantern-kicking cow notwithstanding), but it was fueled by drought, high winds and wooden buildings. The factories and railroads were largely spared, and the city rebuilt with astonishing speed.

Route 66 begins in Chicago. This historic road begins in downtown Chicago at E Adams Street just west of Michigan Avenue. It runs through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and California, ending in Santa Monica and spanning 2,448 miles in total.

Twinkies were invented here. Invented in Schiller Park in 1930, these yellow sponge cakes used to be filled with banana cream, but it was changed to vanilla when bananas became scarce during World War II.

Chicago is home to the first and largest urban medical district in the United States, and is often called the medical center of the U.S. due to its large numbers of medical schools and hospitals. About one-fifth of all doctors in the U.S. have received all or part of their medical training in Chicago.

Chicago, Illinois, is known as the Windy City. The name may come from the breezes off Lake Michigan or the braggadocious population, no one knows for sure. But its rapid growth from a humble trading post to a major commercial center alone is enough to crow about.

You don’t take the subway in Chicago, you take the ‘L’.This is the name for the city’s rapid-transit rail system and is an abbreviated form of “el,” for “elevated.” It is the fourth-largest rapid transit system in the United States in terms of total route length, at 102.8 miles long as of 2014, and the third-busiest rail mass transit.

Tall-building construction was invented in Chicago and the city is known as the “Home of the Skyscraper.” It has four of the country’s ten tallest buildings.