Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes of North America, accounts for all 28 miles of Chicago's shoreline and beaches. The word "Michigan" is believed to come from the Ojibwe word mishigami meaning "great water".

Most people assume that Chicago earned its nickname as the Windy City from the frigid breezes that blow off Lake Michigan and sweep through the city's streets, but many historians believe the name dates back to an 1890 article by New York Sun newspaper editor Charles Dana, who lambasted the city's politicians for being "full of hot air."

Chicago-style pizza, also commonly referred to as deep-dish pizza, is baked in a pan, which gives the pizza its characteristically high edge. Similar to a pie, the ingredients are reversed, with slices of mozzarella lining the dough followed by meat, vegetables, and then topped with a can of crushed tomatoes. Some locations will finish off their pizzas with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese across the tomato sauce.

The Chicago River, known mainly for the different colors it is dyed to celebrate different events and holidays, has been a hallmark of Chicago since the earliest days of the city. Most people don't know that the river flows backwards. A reversal technique, using a system of locks and canals, was introduced to divert sewage away from Lake Michigan's water supply. In 1999, the American Society of Civil Engineers named the Chicago River flow reversal the "Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium".

The name is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion.

The original Ferris Wheel, sometimes referred to as the Chicago Wheel, was the tallest attraction at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, where it opened to the public on June 21, 1893. It was meant to rival the 324-metre (1,063 ft) Eiffel Tower, the centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition.

The Home Insurance Building, built in 1885 and located on the corner of Adams and LaSalle Streets in Chicago, went down in history as the world's first modern skyscraper. Because of its structural steel frame, the building weighed one-third as much as a masonry building and city officials were so concerned that they halted construction to investigate its safety, but their concerns were unfounded. The building stood for 46 years until it was demolished in 1931.

The city has two Major League Baseball teams: the Chicago Cubs of the National League play in Wrigley Field on the North Side, and the Chicago White Sox of the American League play in Guaranteed Rate Field on the South Side. The two teams have faced each other in a World Series only once, in 1906, when the White Sox, known as the "Hitless Wonders," defeated the Cubs, 4-2.

The Great Chicago Fire burned from October 8 to October 10, 1871, killing approximately 300 people, destroying over 17,000 structures, and leaving more than 100,000 residents homeless. More than two-thirds of the city's structures at the time of the fire were made entirely of wood, with most of the houses and buildings being topped with highly flammable tar or shingle roofs. Afterwards, the city improved building codes to prevent the rapid spread of future fires and quickly rebuilt to those higher standards.

After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, Barack Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. After his presidency, he built the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Hyde Park on the city's South Side.