Jim Ridings

The story of Chicago gangsters in the 1920s is legendary. Less talked about is the tale of the politicians who allowed those gangsters to thrive. During the heyday of organized crime in the Prohibition era, Chicago mayor "Big Bill" Thompson and Gov. Len Small were the two most powerful political figures in Illinois. Thompson campaigned on making Chicago "a wide open town" for bootleggers. Small sold thousands of pardons and paroles to criminals, embezzled...

""It will put pink cheeks on you." That is what the managers of Radium Dial in Ottawa, Illinois, told the young women who painted radium on the faces of clock dials in the 1920s and 1930s. Instead, their teeth fell out and their jaws and bones disintegrated. Instead of putting pink in their cheeks, it put the women in their graves. The company knew the hazards of working with radium, but they took no safety precautions. They lied to the workers and...

At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a belief that fresh air, rest and a nutritional diet was the best way to treat tuberculosis patients. Dr. J. W. Pettit implemented this therapy by establishing the Ottawa Tent Colony in 1904. Antibiotics had not been developed at that time, so the fresh air treatment was the only option. TB patients were kept in canvas tents or open wooden huts outdoors, in freezing winters and blazing hot summers. It might...