History of Chicago and south branches of the Chicago River, which flows through the city's downtown. The three white stripes represent the North, West and South sides of the city, Lake Michigan being the east side. The most famous and serious disaster was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. On December 30, 1903 the "absolutely fireproof", five-week-old Iroquois Theater was engulfed by fire. The fire lasted less than thirty minutes; 602 people died as a result of being burned, asphyxiated, or trampled. The S.S. "Eastland" was a cruise ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On 24 July 1915—a calm, sunny day—the
Shouting fire in a crowded theater Wendell Holmes." Hitchens argued that the socialists imprisoned by the court's decision "were the ones shouting fire when there really a fire in a very crowded theatre indeed... [W]ho's going to decide?" People have indeed falsely shouted "Fire!" in crowded public venues and caused panics on numerous occasions, such as at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall of London in 1856, a theater in New York's Harlem neighborhood in 1884, and in the Italian Hall disaster of 1913, which left 73 dead. In the Shiloh Baptist Church disaster of 1902, over 100 people died when "fight" was misheard as "fire"