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
Poles in Chicago singlehandedly painted New Gračanica Monastery in Third Lake, Illinois, over the span of three years. While large numbers of Jews from the former lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth immigrated to the Chicago area, they faced a historical trajectory far different from that of their Christian counterparts. In the process of Americanization, many Polish Jews in Chicago would lose their identification with their native land, with notable exceptions. There have also been small numbers of Muslims, mostly Lipka Tatars originating from the Białystok region. Chicago bills itself as the largest Polish city outside of Poland with approximately 1,100,000 people of Polish