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
Crime in Chicago gang members. In July 2015, Chicago recorded a grisly and still unsolved quadruple homicide in the Chatham neighborhood which left a single mother and her 3 children all dead. In October 2015, Chicago was named "America's mass shooting capital", citing 18 occasions in 2015 in which 4 or more people were shot in a single incident. By October 2016, Chicago had already recorded 28 mass shooting incidents for the year, resulting in 12 fatalities and dozens injured. 2016's largest mass shooting event took place on October 15. A shooter in Chicago's Garfield Park neighborhood on Chicago's West side opened fire