According to the Associated General Contractors of America, Illinois is second in the nation in construction job gains.

With 115 skyscrapers, ranging from the 1924-built Chicago Temple Building to the recently topped out Loews North Park Drive building, Chicago is a world leader in the number and style of its skyscrapers.

The history of skyscrapers in Chicago goes back to 1885 with the construction of the iconic Home Insurance Building, widely recognized as the world’s first skyscraper.

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.

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.

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.