Over at Smithsonian.com there’s a good write-up on the Chicago Fire. Today is the 142nd anniverary of the disaster. If you’re not aware of it, Mrs. O’Leary was very belatedly exonerated for starting the fire.
If somebody asked me (which nobody has), I’d say the real causes of the fire were too many wooden buildings, bad city layout, inadequate city services, and the weather. Without those, working synergistically, the fire which destroyed 2,000 acres of Chicago, would have been contained easily.
On the same night, the deadliest fire in U.S. history hit Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and Holland, Michigan was nearly burnt to the ground. In the days to come there was the Great Michigan Fire, the Port Huron Fire, and fires that decimated Urbana, Illinois and Windsor, Ontario.
Mrs. O’Leary was simply a stooge to distract from a clear pattern of events that could only have extraterrestrial origin.
There’s a handy table here of historic fires and changes in building codes.
Belatedly? I thought the original citation for Ms O’Leary was withdrawn a long, long time ago.
But hey, maybe people took it out on the cow, setting the stage for Chicago’s fine steak houses………
She was officially exonerated in 1997. More than 120 years later. I think that counts as “very belatedly”.
Dave
I thought the original accuser recanted perhaps a hundred years ago. Who is “official?”
Sorry, too lazy to look it up but you apparently have a source.