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.

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.