McHistory

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.

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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 and roots music during the golden age of radio from the 1930s to the 1960s.

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Hall of Fame pitcher Burleigh Grimes was the last major league pitcher to legally throw a spitball. Grimes played with seven different major league teams, though mostly with the Dodgers and Cardinals. He retired in 1934, the year before he came to Bloomington.

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There are truths. And there are poetic truths, ones that illustrate the human condition even if the stories portrayed lack a certain...accuracy. Why let facts get in the way of a good story, after all? Legendary broadcaster and storyteller Campbell "Stretch" Miller had that attitude toward life and storytelling in McLean County and elsewhere.

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There was a time when people operated elevators across the country, instead of passengers just pressing buttons as they do today. Meet the elevator operators who kept McLean County moving.

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Baseball is happening and all is right with the world. Today, though, let's hear about another bat and ball game — softball. It was big in Central Illinois for many decades with lots of semi-pro teams and even industrial leagues for men and women, and offered an outlet for young women before they had opportunities to play other organized sports.

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The story of the Henney Kilowatt, the mid-20th century experimental electric battery-powered car made in Bloomington-Normal by the Eureka-Williams Corporation, is a colorful one, according to McLean County Museum of History Librarian Bill Kemp.

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A teenaged boy-soldier from Normal survived one of the most brutal prison camps in history. Decades after the Civil War, Alpheus Pike wrote a memoir. He detailed horrific sanitary conditions, the murderous behavior of guards and prisoners alike, and amid the privation, the grace notes of human caring that emerged from these trials. Pike was born in Maine in 1846 and came to Bloomington as a young boy.

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Central Illinois, particularly in small rural school districts, is basketball country. Hear about the longest running annual basketball tournament in the state, at 112 years and counting.

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In 1927 The Pantagraph newspaper in Bloomington held its own holiday affirmation of Santa Claus with dispatches from an intrepid explorer named Danny Dare who traveled to the arctic to prove Santa existed and then wrote to children about his adventures.

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