Sometimes, it seems as though all of history is defined by disaster. Rarely does the collective conscious truly pay attention to the plight of the world unless cataclysmic events are involved — you need only look at the recent earthquakes and tsunamis that rocked Indonesia and Samoa for proof. October 8 lives in infamy for a number of reasons: Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in the history of the World Series on this day in 1956, the U.S. House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and Crash Test Dummies put out a Christmas album in 2002. But today lives in infamy because it marked the beginning of the Great Chicago Fire, which ripped through the city in 1871. The apocryphal story says that a cow kicked over a lantern to start the blaze, which then ate through the mostly-wood metropolis. The unpredictable Chicago wind — coupled with the relatively spartan firefighting technology available at the time — kept the blaze going for three straight days until rain finally aided its containment. When it was over, 250 people had been killed and 18,000 buildings were destroyed, leaving over 100,000 people homeless.
The fire did a staggering $3 billion in damages, which makes it all the more incredible that Chicago ever recovered. But with the help of new mayor Joseph Medill and a lot of old-school elbow grease, the city came back in full force, culminating in the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, which put Chicago on the map as an international metropolis. As Chicago can tell you, fire is no joke — unless, of course, you're a member of Dragonforce.
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