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Chicago has a major park called Humboldt Park, an official community area called Humboldt Park, and a dignified old avenue called Humboldt Boulevard. But ask the first thousand Chicagoans you meet to tell you who "Humboldt" was, and chances are they won't have the slightest idea.

Humboldt has become even more obscure than William McKinley--remember him? So let's go out to the community, drive down the boulevard, and go into the park to his statue.

Alexander von Humboldt was born into minor Prussian nobility in 1769. He seemed destined for a career in politics or finance. But by the time he became a young man, he decided to follow his first passion, natural science.

In 1799 Humboldt and a friend traveled to the Spanish colonies in South Amerca. The trip evolved into a five-year-long expedition. Humboldt explored new lands, studied plant and animal life, made scientific measurements, and would boldly go where few Europeans had gone before.

Returning to Europe, he published his field research and became famous. Now Humboldt used his celebrity to promote science. Charles Darwin, for one, said that Humboldt had been his early inspiration.

In 1829 Humboldt headed an expedition into Asiatic Russia.

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It's a story they told in the newsroom of the Chicago American, many years ago.

A young reporter named Harry Reutlinger had been sent to get an interview with a patient at Columbus Hospital. The patient was involved in a criminal case, and the police were keeping a tight lid on him.

At the hospital Reutlinger encountered a little old woman mopping floors. "Don't worry. I'm supposed to be here," he told her. "Mother Cabrini sent for me." Frances Xavier Cabrini was the famous nun who ran the hospital.

The cleaning lady wasn't buying that. So Reutlinger snuck around the side of the building and came in through a fire escape. Again he met the old lady. This time she chased him out of the hospital, swinging her mop at him.

Back at the paper, going through some files, Reutlinger came across a picture of the cleaning lady. It was Mother Cabrini herself.

That was Frances Xavier Cabrini. She wasn't afraid of hard work, and she wasn't afraid of taking direct action.

Cabrini was born in northern Italy in 1850. As a young woman she worked as a teacher, and later ran an orphanage. She took religious vows in 1877.

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In a sense, today is the birthday of WBEZ.

Ninety years ago on this date, Chicago was introduced to the latest method of instantaneous communication. They called it radio-telephony--or just plain radio.

The city was a late starter in this particular technology. In the summer of 1920 the first American broadcast went out over the air from Detroit. A few months later Pittsburgh launched a regular radio station.

Westinghouse Electric, owner of the Pittsburgh station, was eager to have an outpost in Chicago. The Department of Commerce granted the company a license for a Chicago station on November 9, 1921. Two days later, station KYW was ready to make a test broadcast.

The site of the test was the Auditorium Theater, with the Chicago Grand Opera Company performing. A single microphone was hung over the stage. From there, telephone wires would carry the sound to the KYW transmitter on the roof of the Commonwealth Edison Building, three blocks away.

Opera director Mary Garden made the opening address. Newspaper reports said she began with the introduction, "This is station KYW, Chicago."

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Before TV or videogames or the Internet, everyone went to the movies--all the time. Theaters became opulent showplaces. Though now put to another use, the most historic of the Chicago movie palaces still stands on the West Side.

The Balabans were a Russian Jewish family who settled in the North Lawndale neighborhood. In 1907 one of the teenage sons got a job singing in a tiny vaudeville theater on Kedzie Avenue. The place also featured the primitive 15-minute movies of the time.

One day the boy's mother came to the theater. Mrs. Balaban was impressed by the business model. "People pay on the way in--nobody can owe us money!" she said. So the Balabans rounded up $400 and rented the theater. They had their own nickelodeon.

Nickelodeon--since admission was five cents, that's what early movie theaters were called. Like the little place on Kedzie, they were a store-front operation, with a few folding chairs and a bed sheet for a screen. That was acceptable in 1907.

But as movies became more popular, the Balabans adapted to the times. Something grander was needed. In 1917 they opened the Central Park Theater at 3535 W.

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For decades into the 1970s, the Lilac Farm grocery store stood near the southwest corner of Milwaukee and Devon. Customers rarely gave a thought to the old frame farm house behind the store. Neighborhood kids knew it only as "the haunted house."

Then, in 1978, a developer bought the 5.2 acres of land that included Lilac Farm, the farm house, and a few other buildings. He planned on replacing everything with a strip mall and some condos.

Now the old farm house attracted some more attention. It seemed the structure had been built by a German baker named Henry Rincker as long ago as 1851, when Milwaukee Avenue was still a wood-plank toll road. Besides being the earliest surviving example of Chicago balloon-frame construction, the Rincker House was also the second-oldest building in the city!

In 1979 the city council approved landmark status for the house. The developer opposed the action and sought a demolition permit. A compromise was reached, with the developer agreeing to move the Rincker House to another location on the property.

The house was still standing on its original site in February 1980, when vandals set it on fire. Despite heavy damage, firefighters saved most of the building.

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November 2, 1948. Election night.

Like the rest of the country, Chicagoans awaited news of who was going to be president. At about 10 p.m., the bulldog edition of the next day's Tribune hit the streets. The headline read "Dewey Defeats Truman."

Well, that was to be expected. President Harry Truman was trailing badly in all the polls. The election was a mere formality. Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, would be moving into the White House.

But don't go looking for President Dewey in your history books. Truman upset all the pollsters and won. And the World's Greatest Newspaper was stuck with its most embarrassing headline.

Many factors led to the Tribune's screw-up. The printers were on strike, so the first edition had an earlier deadline. First returns showed Dewey with his expected lead. The staunchly-Republican Tribune was no friend of Democrat Truman. The paper's political correspondent assured the editor that Dewey was in. So the editor gave the order: "Roll the bulldog!"

Over 150,000 papers were on the street when the Trib started to have second thoughts. Trucks were sent to retrieve the bulldog edition, replacing it with papers headlined "Early Dewey Lead Narrow."

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I first heard the story at one of the Duke's Halloween parties. That would make it when I was in college, in the late 'sixties.

The way the Duke told it, this guy he knew had been driving north on Milwaukee Avenue near Lawrence, by the Holiday Ballroom. Suddenly a young woman in a white dress jumped in front of the car. The guy screeched to a halt, the woman got in the car, and asked for a ride.

Now the driver figured he was getting lucky, so he agreed. The woman told him to head up Milwaukee toward Niles. Other than that, she didn't say much.

Getting into Niles, they passed the main entrance to St. Adalbert's Cemetery. "Stop the car!" the woman shouted. The driver stopped the car. When he turned to look at the woman, she had vanished.

Sound familiar? Substitute Archer Avenue, the Willow Brook Ballroom, and Resurrection Cemetery. Now you have Chicago's most famous ghost story, the tale of Resurrection Mary.

At the time I hadn't heard anything about Resurrection Mary. Neither had any of my friends. We only knew that this was a great story.

As the years went by, I became better acquainted with Chicago folklore. Then I realized that the Duke had picked up the Resurrection Mary story somewhere, and simply adapted it to his own purposes. That was a habit of his.

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