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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on 10 dates. [show] |
Does this deserve a reference here? The name clearly directly comes from the football team, but the Great Fire is the ultimate link (both ahve been alluded to in the show's scripts)--MartinUK (talk) 20:35, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
Was one third of the city destroyed? how much of it was destroyed?
Is it just me or does this contradict itself? It says that the legend of O'Leary's farm isn't true, then says that it did start at O'Leary's farm. Huh? --Jodan
Then it goes on to say "The Great Chicago Fire did start in Kate O'Leary's barn around 9:00 p.m. on October 8, 1871." after that. Should it be clear that this is indeed a legend? --Jodan
The fire did start in Mrs. O'Learys barn. The legend is that a cow kicked over the lantern, and that's how the fire happened. -- Lena
I've heard a theory that the Chicago fire was caused by an asteroid impact, apparently this is not a quack theory but is supported by some evidence, such as areas of forest land being flattened in the surrounding area which is consistent with a large explosion. Has anyone else heard this theory? I'll see if I can find out more. G-Man 00:45, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
There was also a Great Wisconsin fire on that date destroying 1,500,000 acres see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.38.15.34 (talk) 22:09, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
Pål Jensen (talk) 16:36, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
Many years ago I saw a documentary on architectural history that mentioned the rebuilding of Chicago after the fire: there had been a sum of money raised by the people of Glasgow, Scotland, to help the citizens of Chicago rebuild, and in memory of this there was a square built in Chicago that resembles George Square in Glasgow - does anyone know if this is actually true or was it just an urban myth?
The number of casualties given in this article is lower than in the article about the incident itself. CalJW 06:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
How many buildings survived the fire, I know that St. Michael's in Old Town survived, and St. Ignatius School survived, these shoud be noted here.. Someone want to make a list that shows what structures survived the blaze? also not what survived, but was never in the blaze.
Why are references to SF writer Patrick O'Leary being redirected here? I see mention of "O'Leary" but not a single "Patrick".
Any serious researcher concerned with the likely start of the Chicago Fire needs to read Chicago Tribune reporter Anthony DeBartolo's 2 feature stories on the subject. There's good evidence that the fire started when a craps game, often held in the O'Leary barn, got out of hand. The stories concern a man named Louis M. Cohn who admitted to being there. You'll find DeBartolo's research here: www.hydeparkmedia.com/cohn.html
First of all, the reporter's name is spelled - DeBartolo. I know, I'm the reporter. If such carelessness is any indication of your research skills, your comments above begin to make some sense. Second of all, there is no credible record that Sullivan ever confessed anything. The only credible confession we have on record concerning the start of the Great Chicago Fire came from Louis M. Cohn -- this confession was documented when his $35,000 estate was given to Northwestern University after his death in 1942, and has been confirmed by Cohn's attorney, Stan Feinberg, in the late 1990s...Those are the facts as I know them - if you have others, please make them public...Lastly, I suggest you read Richard Bales' original research on Peg Leg Sullivan published in the Spring 1997 Illinois Historical Journal -- you'll discover Bales' basis for his theory -- Sullivan must have lied about where he was standing (Peg Leg said he saw the "fire" while standing across the street), because land records suggest a house would have blocked his clear view of the O'Leary barn. Given the gale force winds at the time(and other fire-prone conditions), it would have been perfectly possible for Sullivan to have seen flames shooting above the roof line, or out from the barn's side. At the least, smoke would surely have been visable, if not the glow of the flames. In brief, the only historian who takes Sullivan seriously as a suspect is Bales.
The only thing I've tried to advocate here, dear sir, is good reporting. Unfortunately, in order to do so, I've needed to pull down your misstatements of fact. On more than one occasion. For example, you've claimed “many” historians now think Sullivan might be the culprit -- this is simply not true. Bales is the only 'historian' who holds this position. If you know of others cite them or their work, please. You’ve also claimed there’s a deathbed confession by Sullivan. What’s your source here?
I’m new here at Wikipedia and I’m not too sure of your rules, but I assume you’re looking for fair and intelligent reporting. Unfortunately, I must say I’ve found it lacking.
What is true, however, is the fact I don’t spell too well without my morning coffee. [DeBartolo]
No, you can just call me a reporter...As for the city council "activities" - they passed a resolution on 10/28/97. Since you asked, I just pulled a copy from my file ...here's the only line that mentions Peg Leg -- "WHEREAS, A neighbor, Daniel 'Peg Leg' Sullivan, was a man who some historians now suspect may have been the true culprit behind the fire; and..."
That's all they say about Peg Leg. You can't call it a conclusion. They're just citing Bale's research. The city carried out no "activites." They researched nothing. You reference the city council resolution like it actually means something...As for me removing your Sullivan copy early on - same story - when I first came across your work, you didn't simply suggest Sullivan was a possibility - rather, you presented him as the leading suspect...
I’ve seen several versions of the initial fire warning which implies that Mathias Schaffer, the watchman in the courthouse, sent the firefighters in a wrong direction. According to Gess & Lutz (Firestorm at Peshtigo, p. 114), “Mathias Schaffer looked through his spyglass to the flames on the west side of the city and immediately sent a message to the voice box…”Strike box 342”, etc. But now Schaffer was “…instantly confused. He had mislocated the fire about a mile or so. Either that – or this did not seem possible – the fire was coming from two directions at once…” Schaffer told Brown to strike box 319 instead, “but Brown did not do it, thinking it would confuse everyone more.” The distance between the courthouse and O¨Leary’s barn was about two miles, so a one mile deviation is relatively much. If Mathias Schaffer thought the fire was a mile west of O’Leary’s barn, it could barely be mistaken for the old Saturday Night Fire, which (seen from the courthouse) was in about the same direction as the barn. Therefore, Mathias Schaffer must have been misoriented. Or not? I don’t know whether or not Schaffer had a compass, a sextant, a street map and/or other equipment for computing the distance to and the direction of a fire. But I think the two warnings may have another cause than a mistake of Schaffer. If so, it’s time to exonerate Schaffer for erronous warning.
The events may have been like this:
According to Gess & Lutz, Chicago had 30 fires during the week before the disaster – i.e. more than four fires a day, and a new fire about each 6. hours at average. If this is correct, we should expect about four fires during the 22 or 23 hours from the Saturday Night Fire broke out till O’Leary’s barn cought fire. I don’t know the distribution of fires in Chicago during the week, but I think almost 24 hours without a new fire is unprobable – if not the Saturday Night Fire made the people extremely careful. I think this conclusion is true even if other sources are true in claiming “only” 20 fires the last week before the disaster.
Pål Jensen (talk) 08:09, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
How about setting a redirect page at Great Fire of Chicago? When I looked for the article originally, I typed that in and it came back with no results. 24.50.211.226 16:03, 13 May 2006 (UTC)
The passage in the 10/6/2006 Chicago Tribune allegedly dictated from Anthony DeBartolo reads without bracketed words, as follows:
"At that time, Cohn's estate was handed over to Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, and the [Northwestern] [U]niversity press release obtained by Wykes included an interesting paragraph about the "origin" of the fire:
"[Louis M. Cohn] asserted that he and Mrs. O'Leary's son, in the company of several other boys, were shooting dice in the hayloft ... by the light of a lantern, when one of the boys accidently overturned the lantern, thus setting the barn afire. Mr. Cohn never denied that when the other boys fled, he stopped long enough to scoop up the money."
FROM LAFEW:
The article has a cute reference about Cohn grabbing the money from the crap session. Yet, the reference in this Discussion attributed to DeBartolo contradicts the 10/6/2006 Tribune article. The Chicago Tribune states the basis of DeBartolo's assumption is the Northwestern University Press Release and the physical appearance of Stanley Feinberg to questioning by DeBartolo. The discussion with the "son of the executor Stanley Fineberg" is DeBartolo's basis for speculation.
The DeBartolo assessment of the credibility and veracity of the son of the executor is a bit removed from the source, Louis M. Cohn. Feinberg is asked about the Cohn will, which he never drafted nor was a part. There is no admission as a matter of civil law, just third or fourth hand speculation. The hearsay and speculation on the part of theorist Anthony DeBartolo in the recent Tribune Article is quoted:
From 10/6/2006 Chicago Tribune Article:
"Still, DeBartolo tracked down a son of one of the will's executors in La Jolla, Calif. Stanley Feinberg confirmed that Cohn had told the story about the dice game. Feinberg told the Tribune in 1998 that Cohn never admitted to him that he knocked over the lantern.
"The only time I thought Feinberg wasn't telling me the truth was when I asked him about Cohn's will--he stopped looking me in the eye." DeBartolo said.""
FROM Lafew:
This suggests to me discomfort on the part of Stanley Feinberg. It is innappropriate to question a non-attorney about an attorney-client privilege. If Mr. Feinberg's father is an attorney, Mr. Feinberg could not tell his son much or face disbarment. The idea that Anthony DeBartolo may have had access to a will was presented to Feinberg. This had to be uncomfortable for someone who is simply the son of an executor, who was likely not told even by his father about what was stated. Furthermore, an executor is not often the attorney who drafted the will, nor even one with knowledge of the origin of each passage in a will.
Stanley Feinberg is the recipient of hearsay from Northwestern University, the news media at the time, and what his father had to say about someone else, even if false. What was allegedly disclosed from the will does not implicate Louis M. Cohn anymore than it implicates James O'Leary or anyone at the crap shoot.
The "executor's son," Stanley Feinberg, did not witness the fire or even any conceivable statement made to his father, the executor, not necessarily the attorney of record. There were allegedly individuals with both Catholic and Jewish surnames at the site of the dice game in the O'Leary Barn (if the account is true). If you are confronted with someone who has a Catholic surname, like DeBartolo, but Stanley Feinberg and Louis M. Cohn, the alleged witness have Jewish surnames, how do you react? Stanley Feinberg's bit of discomfort, is rational and eye movement may be awkward and less than direct in this sort of situation. Such action may have no bearing on credibility or veracity.
If the NU report of the Louis M. Cohn Will is to be believed, then a group of Catholic and Jewish kids went into a barn, played craps, may have been drinking, and caused a fire by accident, nothing more. Apparently, someone had either the guts or simply wanted headlines, take your pick. The alleged actors are deceased and some remain unknown; all allegations demonstrate an accident with catastrophic results.
What was the exact admission by someone twice or thrice removed from the event? Why should we believe that Northwestern University would not report the truth. NU could simply abstain from reporting anything in the Louis M. Cohn will, correct? The Chicago Tribune article does not present a DeBartolo conclusion, but a DeBartolo allusion to second hand hearsay.
Of course, now that the alleged executor Feinberg has passed away, where does DeBartolo go from here? Was Feinberg the executor or a relative of the executor? The use of the material presented in the Tribune article of 10/6/2006 needs to be verbatim unless DeBartolo has a true admission, not just a decision by an "executor" to look in a different direction.
The Wikipedia reference is sensationalistic and without a basis in fact. Louis M. Cohn is simply an alleged observer of a possible event that took place in the O'Leary Barn. There is no evidence to document Cohn's relationship, if any, with James O'Leary. There is no evidence that confirms that Cohn caused the fire, merely that he was among a group of gamblers that may have triggered the fire, if the Will is located and the relationship verifiable. The fact that the NU Press Release passage takes place during World War II is also interesting due to the anti-semitism of that era.
These sentences seem a bit odd:
This implies, but does not state, that firefighters were initially not sent. It also implies there were other fires at the same time, but that is not mentioned elsewhere in this article.
I don't know the actual facts, so I can't improve the wording. Benthatsme (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
A number of comments are obviously spam (tip: do a search for 'aids')
Which template does one use to flag the article as containing individual nonsense sentences while not condemning the article as a whole? I read the vandalism guide, but it only suggested reverting and warning the user. I have neither time nor interest to do this, and want to flag the article for others to take action only.
For lack of a clear instruction I included the test2 tag. It's probably not the appropriate one, but there you go for not providing immediately accessible guidelines for infrequent Wiki contributors like me... ;-) 213.112.249.100 21:08, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
From Humboldt Park, Chicago: Most of the neighborhood was annexed into the city in 1869, the year the park was laid out. The fact that this area stood just beyond the city's fire code jurisdiction as set out after the 1871 fire made inexpensively built housing possible.
Where exactly are the borders of this? Have they changed over the years? --Kalmia 05:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone find a larger sample of this image? It would really be neat to see the exact borders of the fire area, but this map is so small it's kinda hard to tell. DirectorStratton 20:56, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm deleting this. The exact quote supporting this section is from Irving Cutler's book, The Jews of Chicago (1996), on p.28: "That night happened to be the Jewish holiday of Simchat torah, the festival of the rejoicing of the law, a celebration of merriment in which the congragants dance in their synagogues with the Torah scrolls. This is probably one of the reasons that some of the scrolls were saved from the fire." Cutler is a fine historian of the city, but the holiday explanation is plainly speculation on his part, and likely not the case. The main reason is that even in orthodox synagogues today, the Simchat Torah service will usually end before 10PM, as it does at the orthodox synagogue I attend. In 1871, most synagogues were not strictly orthodox, so they likely would have ended earlier. The fire started at about 9PM, so by the time the fire advanced to where the synagogues were, the services would have been over and the happy congregants home. The fire didn't get across the river until midnight. So a more probable reason why any torahs were saved is that the rabbi or another syngagoue official lived close enough to the synagogue to get in and grab the torahs before the fire destroyed the building. Many people tried to save physical property in the path of the fire, some successful, others not. There's no real need to highlight this, especially when there's no clear reference to contemporary testimony to support it. Icebox93 (talk) 22:03, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Please stop trying to add St. Ignatius College Preparatory School to the list of existing buildings that survived the fire. Yes, St. Ignatius predates the fire, but as noted above, it was not actually threatened by the fire. Kevin Forsyth (talk) 11:23, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Old St. Pat's, at the northwest corner of Adams and Des Plaines, was built before the fire, but was not threatened by it. Hence it should not be listed as a "survivor" of the fire. See [1] for a detailed map and chronology of the fire. Kevin Forsyth (talk) 05:06, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I have removed the "In popular culture" section. As stated in the essay on pop culture sections:
Reading Eagle, Saturday, Dec 26, 1936, pg 5, Last of Chicago’s O’Leary Family Dies, Chicago, Dec. 26 (AP)--- Mrs. Catherine O’Leary Ledwell, 70, last member of the O’Leary family, whose cow some say started the Chicago fire, died of heart disease last night at her home. Mrs. Ledwell always denied the legend that the O’Leary cow kicked over a lamp in their barn and touched off the great blaze of 1871. She declared they first learned of the fire at 8 o’clock (2000 hrs) when Denis Sullivan, the one-legged draymen from next door,” discovered it in the barn. “That’s the first we knew of the fire.” She always said. “No one had been up. I know mother didn’t milk the cow after 5 o’clock.” (1700 hrs) Mrs. Ledwell theorized that young bloods of the neighborhood who sometimes drank beer in the loft of the O’Leary barn had left a cigar butt smouldering in the hay. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RogerB34 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
I had to enlarge the map two or three times to be able to find the red dot indicating Mrs. O'Leary's barn - and then I had to scroll through the map to find it. How about adding an arrow that is large enough to be seen on the Wikipedia page at normalmagnification?Kdammers (talk) 06:48, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
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The Great Chicago Fire began on October 8, 1871. It happened on DeKoven Street at 9:00pm. It started in the O'Leary's barn. Nearly one-third of the city was destroyed. The fire lasted for three days. Some of the areas that were destroyed in this great fire were the O'Leary's house, a courthouse, a Tribune building, the Chamber of Commerce building, Bruno Goll's drugstore, Claire Innes neighborhood, and Horace White's house. the fire spread throughout the north and eat of Chicago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.75.192.4 (talk) April 24, 2018
The "red dot" showing the location of O'Leary's barn on a map is nearly impossible to see. Would it be possible to do something like this example.→
107.15.157.44 (talk) 06:18, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
A couple of years ago I read an article about the Great Chicago Fire and how it was started. I'm not sure it was true or have been able to verify. It stated that a comet broke up into 3 pieces, one landed in Chicago, the second landed in Holland Michigan and the third in Wisconsin. True? Not sure but all three fires started on the same date or within a day of two. 2600:6C4E:1B00:3400:1C74:61C:8AE8:BA12 (talk) 18:12, 2 March 2024 (UTC)