https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood
What basically happened is a work crew broke through an old service tunnel (one which was already leaking and which the city had failed to maintain), and the Chicago River began to flow into it.
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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The Far Side
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Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
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Plus the Great Chicago Fire said to have been started by Mrs O'Leary's cow knocking over a lantern in a barn.
Fire: 1871 Flood: 1992
I didn't mention the fire half, because the Mrs. O'Leary's cow trope is, well, a trope.
I'd never heard of it...
"Insurance battles lasted for years, the central point being the definition of the accident, i.e., whether it was a "flood" or a "leak". Leaks were covered by insurance, while floods were not. Eventually it was classified as a leak, which is why many residents still call it the "Great Chicago Leak"."
The cow belonging to Mrs. Catherine O'Leary, often blamed in folklore for starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871... The accusation is that her cow kicked a lamp over during milking and that started the fire.
Part of the blame was O'Leary she was an Irish immigrant.