| December 21, 2012 | -
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, speaking to reporters for the first time since federal criminal complaints were filed against him, denied any wrongdoing and quoted, from memory, the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling.
| Source:
New York Times
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| January 30, 2009 | - One day before the 360th anniversary of the execution of Charles I, the Illinois State Senate voted 59 to zero to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich. “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King, and Gandhi,” said Blagojevich prior to the impeachment, “and tried to put some perspective to all this, and that is what I am doing now.” Lieutenant Governor Patrick J. Quinn succeeded Blagojevich as governor of Illinois. “You want to know my philosophy?” said Quinn. “One day a peacock. The next day a feather duster.”
| Source 1:
The Edge of the American West
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Chicago Sun Times
Source 4:
NYTimes
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| January 3, 2009 | -
Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich nominated Roland Burris, the state's former attorney general, as senator. “I've enjoyed the limelight the past couple of days,” said Blagojevich, who is currently under indictment for seeking to auction off President-elect Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat. “Please do not allow the allegations against me to taint this good man.” Said Burris: “We are the senator.”
| Source 1:
HuffPo
Source 2:
ProPublica
Source 3:
Chicago Sun-Times
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| December 22, 2008 | - Dozens of people in Illinois contracted food poisoning from contaminated ham served at the Lawrence County Health Department Christmas party. “It's not been funny,” said the head of the department, who was among those sickened by the ham. “It's taken the punch out of my whole Christmas.”
| Source:
MSNBC
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| December 15, 2008 | - An atheist group in Springfield, Illinois, posted a sign next to a Nativity scene in the state's capitol building. “There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell,” read the sign. “There is only our natural world.”
| Source:
Chicago Tribune
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| December 13, 2008 | -
Illinois Governor Milorad “Rod” Blagojevich was arrested for what U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called a “political corruption crime spree.” The evidence included wiretap recordings in which Blagojevich, who has the power to name President-elect Barack Obama's successor in the Senate, talks about trading the Senate seat for “something real good” and refers to Obama as “that motherfucker.” “Our Milorad was framed,” said Dragan Blagojevic, reportedly a cousin, who invited the governor back to his ancestral native village of Veliki Krcmari, in Serbia. “He can have a cow,” he added, “or a pig or two.”
| Source 1:
Chicago Tribune
Source 2:
Chicago Tribune
Source 3:
TPM
Source 4:
NYT
Source 5:
Politico
Source 6:
NYT
Source 7:
Chicago Tribune
Source 8:
Chicago Tribune
Source 9:
WP
Source 10:
Chicago Tribune
Source 11:
NYT
Source 12:
Chicago Tribune
Source 13:
Blic via Javno
Source 14:
Radio Free Europe
Source 15:
Chicago Tribune
Source 16:
Southtown Star
Source 17:
AP via Google
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| April 29, 2008 | - An Illinois newspaper carrier rescued an elderly woman whose leg had been pinned for four days under the dead body of her obese 77-year-old husband.
| Source:
Fox News
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| February 15, 2008 | - A graduate student in social work, specializing in mental health, shot up a classroom at Northern Illinois University, killing five people and then himself.
| Source 1:
Chicago Tribune
Source 2:
New York Times
Source 3:
Chicago Tribune
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| June 5, 2007 | - Three students were arrested in Aurora, Illinois, following a cafeteria food fight. “Milk cartons, full pop bottles, and blue slushies were flying around,” said one student. “Kids literally bought the food to throw it and, to me, that's a little expensive.”
| Source:
CNN
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| April 5, 2007 | - XXXChurch.com, an online ministry, staged a “Porn and Pancakes” event for evangelicals in Morton, Illinois.
| Source:
CNN.com
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| April 4, 2007 | - In Beardstown, Illinois, federal agents arrested 62 undocumented immigrants in a pork plant.
| Source:
Reuters
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| January 31, 2007 | -
President Bush staged an impromptu visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois, but few of the diners wanted to talk to him. “Sorry to interrupt you,” said Bush. “How's the service?”
| Source:
Newsweek via MSNBC
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| January 15, 2007 | - An Illinois man rode a stationary bike for 85 hours, setting a new world record.
| Source:
AP via ESPN.com
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| November 16, 2006 | - Parents in Illinois were lodging complaints against an elementary school library for carrying And Tango Makes Three, a children's book based on a true story about gay male penguins.
| Source:
CBS 3
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| August 24, 2006 | - At Chicago's O'Hare airport, Mardin Amin, 29, of Skokie, Illinois, was arrested after telling security agents that the penis pump in his backpack was a bomb.
| Source:
Forbes
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| June 1, 2006 | - The United States declared a moratorium on wind farms in Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
| Source:
PhysOrg.com
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| May 27, 2006 | - A jury in Illinois awarded a woman $5 million in compensation for her ruined vagina.
| Source:
Daily Southtown
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| April 28, 2006 | -
Scientists in Illinois said that they had refined a process that transforms pig manure into crude oil, and suggested that up to 3.6 gallons of crude oil could be generated daily per pig.
| Source:
Belleville News Democrat
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| April 17, 2006 | - Former Illinois Governor George Ryan was convicted of racketeering.
| Source:
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| April 3, 2006 | - Thunderstorms--along with at least 63 tornadoes--killed 27 people in Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois.
| Source:
CNN.com
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| April 2, 2006 | - Scientists successfully sent muon neutrinos from Illinois to Minnesota in order to prove that some neutrinos do transform, most likely to tau neutrinos.
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
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| February 18, 2006 | - An Illinois man was suing his ex-wife to keep her from having their 8-year-old son circumcised.
| Source:
The Chicago Tribune
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| July 15, 2005 | - A St. Charles, Illinois, man was accused of seducing an Akita through a chain-link fence.
| Source:
Daily Herald
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| May 30, 2005 | - An Illinois man burned down his house in order to clear it of crackheads.
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
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| April 16, 2005 | - The $90 million Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum opened in Springfield, Illinois. It features special effects created by Stan Winston Studios--which did the effects for Jurassic Park--and a life-sized model of Navy Secretary Gideon Welles with a terrible toupee.
| Source:
LATimes.com
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| February 24, 2005 | - An Illinois court ruled that a man could sue his ex-lover for using his sperm, acquired via oral sex, to impregnate herself.
| Source:
Chicago Sun-Times
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| January 1, 2005 | - The eastern tiger salamander was selected by voters in Illinois as the official "State Amphibian."
| Source:
Associated Press
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| April 8, 2004 | -
Illinois expressed regret for the lynching of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844 and the expulsion of the Mormons in 1846.
| Source:
Associated Press
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| August 7, 2003 | - A man in southern Illinois was charged with raping one horse and killing another.
| Source:
Associated Press
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