Ms. Frizzle and her magic school bus can make way, Illinois has made a new, impressive bus to take students to and from school. Lion Electric announced on Nov. 2, 2022 that they had produced their first American-made LionC zero-emission electric school bus at their factory in Joliet, located in Will County.
Lion electric selected Joliet in May of 2021, providing new job opportunities to the area. Over the first three years of its presence in Will County, Lion Electric will create over 800 new jobs, and then a total of 1,400 jobs with in the first six years. Lion Electric is in Will County to stay and provide permanent jobs to many residents. Now, they are providing environment friendly transportation to our students. Lion Electric has always been dedicated to moving towards electric vehicles, sustainability and decreasing the overall environmental impact transportation has. This dedication has paid off as they put over 700 electric vehicles on the road, supporting commuters and students as they traveled over 10 million miles. Joining that number is the new, electric school bus thanks to the manufacturing site in Joliet. Illinois is devoted to the fight against climate change and helping our environment, and Joliet is a foreground in that fight.
Lion Electric expects the Joliet factory to have an annual production capacity of 20,000 buses and trucks after scaling their manufacturing operations. Joliet will first focus on manufacturing electric school buses, as there has been a nationwide surge in demand for electric buses. Several cities and states have committed to transitioning to electric school buses. The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, passed in Illinois General Assembly in 2021, increased support for electric transportation, aiming to put 1 million battery-powered cars and trucks in Illinois by 2030, and included incentives for electrifying Illinois school buses. One step towards Illinois’ goal has been made as this LionC zero-emission electric school bus will be used at Troy Community Consolidated School District 30-C in Illinois. Joliet has been a key player in meeting this goal, and will serve a vital role in the future of Lion Electric and the future of sustainability in the nation.
School districts in Illinois and around the nation are looking to decrease their impact on the environment by moving towards electric school buses. Lion Electric has committed themselves in helping school districts in that transition. The first LionC zero-emission electric school bus is a positive step towards achieving that goal. The buses may not contain real magic like Ms. Frizzle’s, however the impact Joliet’s electric school buses will have on the environment and economy almost seems magical.
To learn more about Lion Electric and their LionC zero-emission electric school bus click here.
October has drawn to a close, and November is well on its way. However, before you start throwing out your candy corn for candy canes, let’s take a moment to celebrate the month of October and Illinois. Many birthdays of note from those born in Illinois occurred in October. History starts the moment we are born. The famous, historic, or otherwise distinguished figures who can track their birthplaces back to Illinois in October are as follows:
The year was 1872, and Lucinda Glidden was perplexed. Her large wire hairpins were missing, and her daughter denied taking them for her own hair. She was contemplating the missing items as her whole family sat down for supper. Suddenly, she noticed her husband, Joseph F. Glidden, take two of the missing hairpins out of his pocket. Confused she asked, “Joseph, what are you doing with my hairpins?” He replied he was working on making a new fence to help keep their livestock in their yard. Lucinda was left with more questions than she had started with.
Joseph F. Glidden, from DeKalb, invented the most widely used barbed wire in the nation and patented his idea in 1874. What started out as an idea with his wife’s hairpins, turned into a popular and easy to produce barbed wire design that included two strands of wire twisted together to hold the barbs firmly in place. Previous versions of barbed wire had already existed, but it was Glidden’s design that made barbed wire a commonly used item on farmlands all around the country.
His design helped to forever change the outlook of the American Midwest. The barbed wire was well suited to mass production. Farmers quickly realized Glidden’s wires were the cheapest, strongest and most durable way to fence their property. Wood fencing was very expensive at the time, so Glidden’s wire gave even poorer farmers the capability to protect their farms and grazing herds of sheep and cattle. The large amounts of barbed wire fencing all over the Great Plains virtually brought the open range cattle industry to an end. Gone was the need to drive cattle over miles of unfenced land. Joseph Glidden’s barbed wire changed the farming and herding industries, allowing more people to protect their farms and animals. This was all thanks to the idea of one man and his wife’s hairpins.
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a witch? It’s a ghost? It’s Superman? No, it’s a bird! Residents in Eureka were convinced they saw the wicked witch flying around on her broomstick in their neighborhood. It made sense, Halloween was a couple weeks away, why wouldn’t the witches come out to play? As it turned out, the so-called witch was actually an owl flying around with a child’s toy it had stolen earlier that day. The image circulating was caught by Eric Lind outside of his parents’ house. Too see the video Lind captured of the owl, visit here.
The toy was a stick horse, and the bird was a great horned owl. Great horned owls are known for their long, earlike tufts, intimidating yellow-eyes stare, and deep hooting voice. They are the inspiration for the quintessential owls found in storybooks, so it is only fitting one was mistaken for a storybook witch. The owl thief snuck into someone’s home and stole the toy of their child. Why the owl seemed to make friends with the horse is unclear. Some have suggested its similarity in size to mice drew the owl in, others reference how juvenile red-tailed hawks have been reported to play with inanimate objects, so the owl could be doing the same. Either way it was drawn to the toy and the owl’s silhouette made a convincing witch. Luckily for those in Eureka, this was merely a cute owl playing with its new friend.
Then again, one of the powers of a witch can include turning into an animal, and an owl is a known companion to some storybook villains. So who knows? Maybe witches really do roam among us and this one turned back into an owl just in the knack of time. Either way, they arrived in Eureka just in time for spooky season.