• the Blackhawk Hotel in Davenport, Iowa, has been host to high-profile people including Carl Sandburg, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon, Jack Dempsey, Guy Lombardo and Stan Kenton?

Facts on topics related to Carl Sandburg

Illinois

• bishop William McKendree (1757–1835) earned the nickname "Father of Western Methodism" for his travels through his vast see of Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, and Illinois?
• Meigs Field in Chicago, Illinois, sits on the site of Burnham Park (pictured), which was a serious contender to host the United Nations Headquarters?
• Wilmette, Illinois's Chicago and Northwestern Depot has been described as the most historic building in the village?
• algific talus slope ecosystems exist only in the Driftless Area of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa?
• Augustus Louis Chetlain was said to have been the first man in Illinois to volunteer for the American Civil War?
• Benjamin Ferguson bequeathed a fund to Chicago, Illinois that provided for seventeen of the city's most prominent sculptures?
• David Moosman led his high school to the Illinois state championship in football and qualified for the state championships three times in wrestling?
• Indian Village, Chicago hosts the only 24-hour elevator operator building in Chicago, Illinois?
• Peotone Mill, a windmill built in 1871, was donated to the village of Peotone, Illinois in 1982 after being idle for nearly a century, and was registered on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in the same year?
• Spoon River College in Illinois was founded in 1959 as Canton Community College?

Chicago

• architect John M. Van Osdel drafted the plans for the first architect-designed house in Chicago, formed Chicago's first architectural firm and ensured passage of Chicago's first building codes?
• blues musician Henry Gray is credited as helping to create the distinctive sound of the Chicago blues piano?
• blues singer Jesse Fortune, better known as the "Fortune Tellin' Man," passed on performing in Europe because he did not want to disappoint customers at his Chicago barbershop?
• Chicago alderman Sandi Jackson (pictured) transferred from Georgetown University Law Center to University of Illinois College of Law to be with her future husband, U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr.?
• Chicago theater-owner Tony DeSantis survived two near-fatal explosions in his life?
• Chicago composer Margaret Bonds wrote her first work, the Marquette Street Blues, at the age of five?
• Chicago hairstylist John Lanzendorf owned one of the world's largest collections of dinosaur-themed artwork?
• Chicago politician Giuseppe Esposito was shot and killed in front of his family during the 1928 Republican Pineapple Primary?
• Chicago's Crown Fountain (pictured) displays LED images of faces, which typically create the illusion of puckered lips spouting water?
• Chicago's Fountain of Time by Lorado Taft is considered the earliest outdoor concrete sculpture?

Milwaukee

• Milwaukee elected George Hampel to the state legislature first as a Socialist and later as a Progressive before he helped merge the Progressives into the Republican Party?
• Milwaukee's first underground parking garage was built in 1927 in the basement of George Brumder's Germania Building?
• Henry Schoellkopf, selected as an All-American fullback while attending Harvard Law School, later shot himself in the head at his Milwaukee law office?
• the 2007 film The Pool was directed by Milwaukee-based Chris Smith in Hindi, a language alien to him?
• the Women's Professional Basketball League, which played its first game in 1978 in Milwaukee in front of 7,800 fans, collapsed after three seasons and an estimated US$14 million in total losses?

North Carolina

• "Carolina in My Mind", James Taylor's nostalgic 1968 song about growing up in North Carolina, was written in London and on the Mediterranean islands of Formentera and Ibiza?
• English-born architect William Nichols designed and built statehouses for North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi in the early 19th century?
• hatchlings of the Cape Fear Shiner, a critically endangered minnow endemic to central North Carolina, feed off of their egg yolk for five days after they hatch?
• North Carolina furniture maker Thomas Day employed both African-American slaves as well as white apprentices in his Caswell County workshop, though he was himself a free person of color?
• North Carolina-based author Perry Deane Young's first Vietnam War article for UPI was about the Tet Offensive, which began the night he arrived in Saigon?
• Daniel Boyd is accused of leading a jihadist terrorist cell in North Carolina?
• Dismal Swamp Canal which runs along the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina is the oldest continually operating man-made canal in the United States?
• Elk Knob State Park, a state park in Watauga County, North Carolina, was established due to a grassroots movement to protect Elk Knob from housing development?
• Flat Top Manor, built by textile industrialist Moses H. Cone in 1900, gets nearly 250,000 visitors annually as the main feature of the Moses H. Cone Memorial Park in North Carolina?
• James Moore, hero of the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, was one of only five generals from North Carolina to serve in the Continental Army?

Denver

• both the first black woman in Colorado and the "founding father" of the state's Korean American community are buried in Denver's Riverside Cemetery (chapel pictured)?
• the western outlaw L.H. Musgrove "calmly puffed a cigar to its bitter butt" as he awaited hanging by vigilantes in Denver, Colorado, in 1868?