One hundred one years ago today, film noir actress Audrey Totter was born in Joliet.

Before establishing a career as a femme fatale in films of the 1940s, Totter grew up attending live theater in Chicago and elsewhere. Her parents took her to all the famous big-screen movies, which influenced her decision to become a movie star.

To fulfill her dream she started performing at her local YMCA and in school plays. She attended Joliet Township High School.

After high school, Totter began performing professionally as a radio actress. MGM Studios noticed her and signed her to a seven-year contract in 1944, offering her $300 a week.

On Nov. 29, 1963, one week after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Chicago City Council voted to rename the Northwest Expressway after the 35th president.

During Kennedy’s race for the White House, he made numerous trips to Illinois and called the expressway “one of the greatest highways in the United States.” Construction of the highway was completed Nov. 5, 1960, just three days after Kennedy won the presidential election.

On this day in 1838, Illinois’ first railroad locomotive began operating in the village of Meredosia in Morgan County.

The locomotive traveled back and forth along a 12-mile stretch of track, which was one of the earliest segments of Illinois’ first railroad between Quincy and Danville.

This week in 1955, Chicago O’Hare International Airport, among the largest and busiest airports in the world, opened for commercial flights for the first time.

At the time, Chicago had become the nation’s hub for the passenger-airline industry and Midway Airport, located on the city’s South Side, had grown overwhelmed by commercial traffic. The solution was to expand O’Hare Airport.

Before O’Hare opened for commercial flights, it was used primarily as a manufacturing plant and a United States Air Force base since the mid-1940s. Originally called Douglas Field and then Orchard Place Airport, it was renamed after World War II flying ace and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Edward “Butch” O’Hare in 1949.

By 1958, O’Hare had greatly expanded and was serving more than 10 million passengers annually. By the end of the century, that number had increased to 70 million passengers per year, making it the most congested airport in the world.