Illinois is a large state with big towns, small cities, many small towns and a huge city. The population and infrastructure where you live may determine your access to many of life’s resources.

One such resource important to most of us is an ability to use high-speed broadband for Internet access. With so many square miles of Illinois consisting of fields, farms and forests, you might think people who live in those areas are too rural or too remote to conduct personal and professional business easily online. In the early years of the Internet, that old, slow dial-up may have been your only option in rural areas.

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Illinois is home to the nation’s third largest number of farmers markets. These local markets allow consumers throughout the state to take full advantage of one of Illinois’ leading industries—agriculture.

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Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Loyola University Medical Center are nationally ranked for cardiology and heart surgery. They can thank Daniel Hale Williams, an African-American medical pioneer who performed the first successful open-heart surgery on a patient right here in Illinois.

Daniel Hale Williams, originally born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania in 1856, moved to Chicago as a young aspiring surgeon. He began as an apprentice for an accomplished surgeon and studied at Chicago Medical College.

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While Chicago is known as the Windy City, the entire state of Illinois is harnessing the natural power of the wind to produce clean energy and reduce pollution. The first wind farm in Illinois, Mendota Hills near Paw Paw, was activated in 2003. In the decade since this first installation, wind energy capacity in Illinois showed extraordinary growth. Illinois law pushed this wind innovation. By 2025, under the Illinois Renewable Portfolio Standard, 25 percent of Illinois electricity must come from renewable sources. In 2013, wind energy accounted for 4.7 percent of all electric generation in Illinois, enough energy to power the equivalent of 880,000 homes.

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