The first softball game was played inside the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago on Thanksgiving Day 1887. A crowd who had gathered to learn the outcome of the annual Harvard – Yale football game via telegraph began playing with a wrapped up boxing glove, a stick for a bat and no rules.

The next week, George Hancock, one of the participants and a reporter for the Chicago Board of Trade, began development of a proper ball and bat while members of the Farragut Boat Club began crafting rules for the game. Soon after, the sport spread to other cities.

The game was called ‘indoor baseball,’ ‘lemon ball’ & ‘mush ball’ before 1926, when the term ‘softball’ was first used.

Today, modern 16” softball, a close variant of the original game, is still very popular in Chicago. The Chicago 16” Softball Hall of Fame was formed in 1996 and a permanent museum is now located in Forest Park.

Learn more:
To learn more about 16” softball, visit the National Softball Association website & the 16” Softball Hall of Fame website.

“Home Alone,” the family comedy starring Macaulay Culkin and Joe Pesci, was released on this day in 1990. The movie was filmed in locations throughout Chicagoland, including several airport scenes shot at O’Hare Airport and in neighborhoods in Winnetka where the fictional McCallister family lived.

While only costing $18 million to make, the film grossed $17 million in its opening weekend alone. The movie would go on to gross nearly $300 million in the United States and become an iconic 1990s movie to an entire generation.

Learn more:
Read more about “Home Alone” on IMDb

Some of the greatest box-office hit comedies over the past several decades have been written and/or directed by Chicago native Harold Ramis.

After graduating high school, Ramis attended Washington University, eventually returning to Chicago in 1968. After a stint writing freelance for the Chicago Daily News, Ramis boldly cold-called Playboy magazine asking for a job. His efforts weren’t in vain. He was hired on the spot as a jokes editor.  During his time at Playboy, Ramis also worked with the Second City comedy troupe, meeting eventual collaborators Bill Murray and John Belushi.

Hit films soon followed, starting with the 1978 classic “Animal House,” along with “Meatballs,” “Ghostbusters” & “Ghostbusters II,” “Caddyshack” and “Groundhog Day.” Later in his career, he helmed movies like “Multiplicity” and the seminal “Analyze This.” Often Ramis acted in his own films and was known to act in others as well.

In his own words: “My characters aren’t losers. They’re rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else’s rules.”

Learn more:
Click here to see Harold Ramis’ body of work
Click here to read an article about the making of the now-classic Ghostbusters

Two-time Emmy and Grammy award-winning comedian Kathy Griffin was born in Chicago on November 4, 1960. Griffin graduated from Oak Park River Forest High School and moved to Los Angeles with her parents shortly after.

Griffin has a regular stand-up engagement at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles and hosted the reality series “Average Joe” in 2003. Griffin also stars in the self-titled reality series “Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List”.

Learn more:
Read more about the life of Kathy Griffin
Visit the official site of Kathy Griffin

Popular candy bars Baby Ruth and Butterfinger were both created in Illinois by Otto Schnering, who founded the successful Curtiss Candy Company near Chicago in 1916.

Curtiss Candy Company created the Baby Ruth bar in 1921 and the Butterfinger in 1923. After the Baby Ruth bar was introduced, most at the time assumed the candy bar was named after George “Babe” Ruth, then a player for the New York Yankees. The Curtiss Company claimed the bar was named after President Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth Cleveland.

Nestlé bought the rights to both Baby Ruth and Butterfinger and operates manufacturing facilities in Franklin Park.

Learn more:
Hungry History – Babe Ruth v. Baby Ruth (History.com)
Otto Schnering
Baby Ruth
Butterfingers