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Imagine, if you will, how big a deal it would be if Taylor Swift gave a concert in Bloomington-Normal. That's the equivalent to the appearance of lyric tenor John McCormack on Nov. 24, 1924.

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It seems like a new biography of President Abraham Lincoln comes out every few years, trying to uncover new perspectives of his time and character. Lincoln himself didn't write much about his life so what he did put down on paper has an outsized importance. On today's episode of our feature series McHistory, listen how a Bloomington-Normal man nudged Lincoln to do that.

McHistory is a co production of WGLT and the McLean County Museum of History. You heard Bill Kemp and Frankie Gordey. Charlie Schlenker produced this episode.

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Human beings have marked the turning of the year with many different traditions over thousands of years. Some practices have fallen out of favor. Today, American society celebrates on New Year’s Eve, and not New Year's Day, though this was not always the case.

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McHistory: A Civil War Christmas

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In the early 1800s, supply chains were a lot shorter, but the lack of mechanized transportation sometimes made it tremendously difficult to bring goods to market. Yet, a regional — edging toward national — marketplace did thrive.

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This episode of McHistory chronicles a huge temperature drop in the winter of 1836 that unsettled settlers and led to stories and tall tales for generations.

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It takes a beloved or significant figure in the history of an institution to name a building after that person. Illinois State University ended up naming two libraries for Angeline Vernon Milner.

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