That’s right. That fun, slow circling, classic amusement park ride was invented by George Washington Ferris, who was a civil engineer from Illinois.

Ferris built the wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. His invention was and is still is the largest wheel ever built standing at 25 stories high and weighing 1,300 tons! With its size, it could hold large amounts of people, too; more than 1,400 to be exact.

Passengers could see for 50 miles from the very top. It took 20 minutes for the wheel to make a complete turn, which could be good or bad for the daring people who rode on it.

Don’t try looking for the Ferris wheel, because when the Chicago World’s Fair was over the wheel was relocated to the St. Louis exposition and then was dismantled because of its expensive operation.

Pieces of the Ferris wheel were used to build the USS Illinois during World War I.

Learn more:
A more detailed history off the Ferris Wheel
Learn more about Chicago’s World’s Fair

Danny Pudi, best known for his role in the NBC series Community, was born and raised on the south side of Chicago.

Pudi, son of an Indian father and Polish mother, knew at a young age that performing was in his future.

While studying at Marquette University, Pudi was the recipient of the inaugural Chris Farley Scholarship, named after the famed comedian who graduated from the school in 1986. Pudi then went on to study at The Second City, a Chicago-based improvisational theatre that was formed in the 1950s.

Before making his debut on mainstream television, Pudi appeared in advertisements for products including Snickers, Verizon, McDonald’s, Pokémon and, most famously, T-Mobile.
 
Pudi has made cameo appearances in The West Wing, Cougar Town and Hot in Cleveland. He also has appeared in numerous films.

He currently plays Abed Nadir on the hit comedy Community, an NBC sitcom recently renewed for a 6th season by Yahoo! Screen.

Elzie Crisler Segar, known as E.C. Segar, was a cartoonist best known for creating Popeye. He was born Dec. 8, 1894, in Chester. Segar began working with his father painting houses and hanging paper before taking his musical talents to the local theater. This opened up a path for him to the Chester Opera House, where he worked as a film projectionist and did live performances.
 
After taking a class in cartooning, Segar dedicated his time to becoming a cartoonist and eventually moved to Chicago, where he published his first comic in the Chicago Herald in March 1916. His career in Chicago was short-lived as he moved to New York in 1919 to work for the New York Journal. He first featured Popeye in a 1929 Thimble Theatre comic strip, and the character immediately caught on with readers.

Segar passed away in 1938, but the fame of his comics lived on as Popeye comics were routinely reprinted, and in 1971 the National Cartoonists Society created the Elzie Segar award in his honor. In 1977, Chester named a park in Segar’s honor and erected a bronze statue of Popeye in the park, which is now the meeting place for the annual Popeye Picnic. A Popeye movie was created in 1980, and in 2006 all of Segar’s Thimble Theatre comics that featured Popeye were published in a six-volume book by a comic book publishing company.

Learn more: 
Popeye Website
Popeye Picnic Website
E.C. Segar Bio

Plaxico was born in Chicago and knew he loved music. He decided to teach himself to play the electric bass. By the time Plaxico was 14, he was a professional electric and acoustic bass player and had performed next to other prominent jazz figures.

He has produced Grammy-winning collaborations with Art Blakey and Cassandra Wilson and has recorded five albums.

Learn more:
Read Lonnie Plaxico's biography.
View a list of albums.

The high-tech light-emitting diodes (LED) used in TVs, computer screens and billboards were invented in Illinois by Nick Holonyak, Jr.

Born in Zeigler in 1928, Holonyak received his undergraduate degree, masters degree, and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. He was the first Ph.D. student of John Bardeen, the only person to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice. With the guidance of his mentor and consistent hard work, Holonyak created many useful inventions during his career.

Holonyak was noted for his work on light-emitting diodes and has been referred as "the father of the LED." He invented the first visible-spectrum LED in 1962 while working as a consulting scientist at General Electric. LEDs have many advantages over incandescent light sources, including lower energy consumption, longer lifetimes and smaller size.

Light-emitting diodes are now used in applications as diverse as aviation lighting, car headlights, advertising, general lighting, traffic signals and camera flashes. The inventor of LEDs made our world brighter and more colorful.

Learn more:
Want to know how light-emitting diodes work?  Read this article from HowStuffWorks.com.
Here is an interesting article about LED’s inventor, Nick Holonyak.