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Alley Mills, known for her roles on The Wonder Years, The Bold and the Beautiful and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was born in Chicago on May 9, 1951.
Mills’ acting career kicked off during college when she landed a role in the 1970 film Diary of a Mad Housewife. She graduated from Yale in 1973 and then honed her acting skills at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Her first television role was on a sitcom called The Associates, a short-lived show about a recent law school graduate.
Perhaps her most noteworthy role came as Norma Arnold, the mother of three on the show The Wonder Years. The show depicted a family during the countercultural 1960s dealing with the typical family crises. After its first season on the air, it won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1988.
The Wonder Years eventually ended in 1993 and Mills took a role on the drama Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman as Jane Seymour. In addition to these roles she has made numerous guest appearances on television series.
Learn more:
Alley Mills – IMDb
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Comedian Richard Pryor had a statue erected in his honor recently in his hometown of Peoria. Pryor was a very successful stand-up comedian and actor who used humor to bring attention to the troubles of being an African-American man during the 20th century.
Pryor was born on December 1, 1940 to Gertrude and LeRoy Pryor and had a less than conventional childhood. He spent a significant portion of his childhood growing up in his grandmother’s brothel, and frequented the local movie theaters to escape this environment. After working multiple jobs in Peoria, he spent two years in the U.S. Army, where he developed a knack for performing in theaters. This helped him realize that his true calling was comedy, and he then spent time in New York and Las Vegas to sharpen his skills.
He began in the film industry with a role in the 1967 movie The Busy Body, followed by many other roles spanning a 13 year period. He flourished as a stand-up comedic, though his raunchy and foul-mouthed delivery style did not play well with all crowds. He performed his comedy routine frequently in front of sold-out theaters, and many of them, like Richard Pryor: Live and Smokin’, were recorded and sold after the fact.
Peoria’s statue in his honor is over 9 feet tall and was unveiled before hundreds of people on Sunday, May 3.
Learn more:
Richard Pryor statue unveiled in his Illinois hometown - WGN News
Richard Pryor - IMDb.com
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More than 3,500 athletes gathered at Eckersall Stadium on Chicago’s South Side on Monday, celebrating the beginning of Special Olympics Chicago’s Spring Games.
Founded in the 1960’s by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Special Olympics gives athletes with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to compete with their peers in a variety of athletic events. In 1968, the first International Special Olympics Summer Games were held at Soldier Field in Chicago, drawing more than 1,000 athletes from across the country.
Since that time, more and more athletes have participated in Special Olympics, with an estimated 4.4 million athletes involved in Special Olympics events worldwide in 2014.
Learn more:
Special Olympics Illinois
Special Olympics ceremony kicks off spring games in Chicago - Chicago Sun-Times
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Cities across the United States are celebrating Cinco de Mayo today with festivals, parades and other public events.
The holiday is a celebration of the Mexican army’s defeat of the French in an 1862 battle during the Franco-Mexican War, which lasted from 1861 until 1867. Widely celebrated in the United States as a celebration of Mexican-American culture, the holiday is not nearly as celebrated in Mexico outside of Puebla, where the defeat of the French took place.
Celebrations over the weekend brought an estimated 100,000 people to Chicago’s Douglas Park in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, which included a parade on the city’s West Side.
Learn more:
Cinco de Mayo – History.com
Cinco de Mayo celebrations begin with West Side parade - ABC 7 Chicago
Did You Know? Forty-two years ago, the Willis (Sears) Tower became the tallest building in the world
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Forty-two years ago this week, on a cool, breezy day on the western edge of downtown Chicago, engineers placed the final steel girder into the sky, topping out the Sears Tower and officially making it the tallest building in the world. It would be another three months before the building, designed by Fazlur R. Khan, would reach its working capacity of 15,000 people.
Since its opening, the building has not only housed Sears, Roebuck & Company, but many other businesses as well, from fine-dining restaurants to prestigious law firms. In 1996, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, ended the Sears Tower’s 25-year reign as the tallest building in the world.
In 2009, the building was renamed the Willis Tower after a large portion of it was purchased by the Willis Group. Today, the Willis Tower is the second-tallest building in the United States after the recently completed One World Trade Center building in New York City.
Learn more:
Wonders of the World – PBS.org
Dr. Fazlur R. Khan