Tara McClellan McAndrew

You can’t talk about Second City’s roots or modern improv without talking about Viola Spolin and Jane Addam’s Hull House in Chicago, where Spolin -- a young daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants - worked in the 1920s.

Eighty-two years ago, theatrical impresario Orson Welles panicked the nation with his company’s “War of the Worlds” Halloween Eve radio broadcast. That…

When Prohibition became law 100 years ago, it led to bootlegging and gang warfare throughout Illinois. Its effect in Chicago is well-known, but its impact…

The worst pandemic in recent history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was the 1918 so-called “Spanish flu” pandemic, caused by…

One was sold away from her children. Another was freed and became a businessman. Others were freed only to be kidnapped and sold back into slavery. These…

2020 is the 75th anniversary of America dropping atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. Without Illinois, there wouldn’t have been nuclear medicine,…

It was a logical step for a state that granted suffrage rights years before. “Put Illinois over first!” was the battle cry of suffragists 100 years ago…

An Illinois woman posed as a man and served in the infantry during the Civil War. Was she transgender?More than 100 years after his death, Civil War…

Prairie politicians didn't let challenges, like rules, get in their way, historians say.Two hundred years ago on December 3, Congress granted Illinois…

Part 1: Radium poisoning took the lives of perhaps thousands of female factory workers, many in Ottawa, Illinois, in the last century.She was among the…