TBT: The Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX

• Chicago
• Throwback Thursday

This week in 1986, the Chicago Bears beat the New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XX.

Led by Hall of Fame coach Mike Ditka, who was a tight end for the Bears in the team’s last Super Bowl championship win, Chicago only lost one game to reach the championship match-up with the Patriots.

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Indoor water parks for the entire family to enjoy

With the recent inclement weather, a lot of Illinoisans are missing summer. Although there are a few more months left before the sunshine and warm weather arrive, there is still a way to enjoy one favorite summertime activity indoors.

The greater Chicagoland area has two indoor water parks: The Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee and The Water Works in Schaumburg.

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Founder of Chicago: Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable

• Chicago
• Illinois History
• Minority Feature
• African-American History

The first settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable. He was born in 1745 in Santa Domingo, Haiti, to a French mariner and a mother who was a slave from Congo. His father provided him with education, and he worked as a seaman for his father’s ships.

Before settling in Chicago, records show that Du Sable was in the Louisiana Territory in the 1760s, then moved to St. Louis. Ten years later he established an exchange post along the river in what today is Chicago.

Du Sable was an explorer in the Northwest Territory of United States and spoke fluent French, Spanish and English. When English colonists came to Chicago, Du Sable was the main supply station for them. He was known to be handsome, have exquisite taste and even built his home from French imported wood. Fellow explorers said he had a feather bed, couch and mirrors.

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TBT: Dorothea Dix submits proposal for Illinois’ first mental hospital

On this week in 1847, Dorothea Dix, a crusader for the rights of America’s mentally ill, submitted a proposal to the Illinois General Assembly to build the state’s first mental hospital.

Dix arrived in Illinois as a radical reformer who wanted to overhaul the way in which America treated its mentally ill citizens.

At the time, people with mental disorders were treated more like prisoners than patients, considered incurable and fit only to be locked away.

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