#greatchicagofire — Public Fediverse posts

Ever wonder how history shapes our present? Heather Cox Richardson explores how collective memory of the Great Chicago Fire reveals patterns in what societies choose to remember and forget. Her latest letter connects 19th-century disaster narratives to ongoing debates about historical interpretation and national identity. The piece offers clear insight into why certain stories endure while others fade. Read the full letter for this thoughtful perspective.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/why-we-remember-the-great-chicago
#History #GreatChicagoFire #HistoricalMemory

🔥 THE NIGHT CHICAGO BURNED

October 8

On this night in 1871, a fire that started in a small barn on DeKoven Street turned within hours into one of the deadliest disasters in American history. Roaring through the dry, timber-built city in a wind-driven wall of flame, the Great Chicago Fire consumed more than 3.3 square kilometres, destroyed over 10,000 buildings, and left roughly 300 people dead and 100,000 homeless — a third of the entire city. The blaze also destroyed the original document of the Emancipation Proclamation. By the next morning, Chicago was a smoking ruin — and the rebuild that followed would make it one of the boldest cities in the world.

This post is 100% AI generated.

#OnThisDay #History #AIart #GenerativeAI #CinematicRealism #GreatChicagoFire #1871

“I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.”*…

Aaron Becker‘s Mapped.Earth is an extraordinary resource…

mapped.earth is maps and geography as a way to see the planet — by Aaron Becker. The Earth rendered as data: winds, currents, terrain, borders, populations, the shapes underneath the numbers. The through-line is wonder plus clarity — here is a way of looking at the world you haven’t seen before, and here is what it means…

The living globe — a real-time 3D Earth: live winds and ocean currents from the latest forecast cycles, active fires, population as terrain, and a Time Machine that scrubs eight decades of climate history.

Map films — short, narrated films built from geographic data: unfamiliar projections, seasonal winds, shipping lanes, the way a country’s people are actually arranged on its land.

Field notes — writing that backs the maps: where the data comes from, why a projection was chosen, what the pattern means.

And now (as illustrated above), the lighthouses of the world: every charted maritime navigational light on the planet, sweeping to its actual reach, on its actual arc, and on its real cycle.

Via Jason Kottke, who recorded this short video sampler:

https://youtu.be/2za9LNA7GAM?si=xQMtzth0FzAWkptz

“Lighthouses of the World,” from @aaronjbecker.bsky.social (via @kottke.org)

* George Bernard Shaw

###

As we illuminate, many will recall that this is the anniversary of the outbreak, on this date in 1871, of the Great Chicago Fire, famously blamed on Mrs. Kate O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lamp. (Though in 1997 the Chicago City Council looked into the evidence, both new and old, and passed a resolution exonerating Mrs. O’Leary and her cow.)

What many fewer remember is that on that date 37 separate fires broke out in the Great Lakes region, three were massive: the Great Chicago fire killed 300; the Great Michigan fire, 300-500.

But the Wisconsin Peshtigo fire—history’s deadliest—killed least 1,200– though data gathered from mass graves, both those already exhumed and those still being discovered, suggest that the death toll of the blaze was most likely greater than that of the 1889 Johnstown flood death toll of 2,200 people or more. The fire razed 1.2 million acres– and destroyed the Peshtigo Lighthouse, a key navigational aid in the Great Lakes region.