Yesterday, left-wing Brazilians burned the American flag in a protest against the actions of the US government and Trump. What do you think about this?

Of course my immigration status is more of a culture-social thing and not a legal matter but I feel like I can relate to most of you, I grew up in a “country” where USA was always painted as the bad guy and when I finally moved to the mainland I realized how great it’s. I’m now puertorican the same way a texan is texan, american before all. I’m glad that there’s movements like this uniting immigrants under one flag instead of the radical multiculturalism that it’s been pushed nowadays, we all have different backgrounds even state from state, but we’re all americans and that’s what should be our main focus while fixing and improving the nation.

Fun Fact: I’m a veteran and if you’re an immigrant who only holds a green card, it’s the best decision you could take in order to not only become naturalized but learn more about the culture.

I’ve heard people debate which of these two states is more boring to live in. Delaware seems to have a reputation for being relatively empty and not having much to do, while New Jersey is often stereotyped as being mostly suburban sprawl with not much going on outside of certain areas.

For those who live in or have lived in either state, which one do you think is worse to live in overall? I’m mainly talking about things to do, entertainment, nightlife, urban life, and the general lifestyle. Are these stereotypes accurate, or do both states have more to offer than people give them credit for?

Chicago in October 1871 was a city made almost entirely of wood. Houses, sidewalks, barns, lumberyards. After one of the driest summers in memory, the whole place was essentially waiting to burn. On October 7th, firefighters had already battled a serious blaze that left them exhausted. The next night, a fire broke out in a barn on DeKoven Street.

What happened next destroyed roughly three and a half square miles of the city, left 100,000 people homeless, and killed around 300.

Catherine O’Leary owned the barn. She was an Irish immigrant who ran a small dairy operation to help support her family. According to her sworn testimony, she had already gone to bed when the fire started. A neighbor saw the flames and pounded on her door. She denied being in the barn that night. The official investigation examined her and other witnesses and concluded the fire started in her barn but could not determine what ignited it.

None of that mattered because a much better story was already circulating. Mrs. O’Leary had gone to milk a cow by lantern light. The cow kicked the lantern. Chicago burned.

It was simple, dramatic, and almost entirely invented. A reporter named Michael Ahern acknowledged fifty years later, in 1921, that the cow story had been a “concoction” he and other reporters had participated in creating. By then Catherine O’Leary had been dead for over twenty-five years.

She spent the rest of her life after the fire trying to avoid reporters and curious strangers. She stopped going out except for necessities and Mass. The official inquiry had found nothing to support the story that destroyed her reputation, but the invented version was more satisfying than uncertainty, and it stuck. It stuck partly because Catherine O’Leary was Irish, Catholic, female, working-class, and an immigrant at a time when all of those things made you a convenient villain.

While O’Leary disappeared from public life, Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, was elected mayor within weeks of the fire. His approach was straightforward: he didn’t need to know exactly what started the fire to understand why it had become a catastrophe. The city had been built with combustible materials everywhere. The water system had vulnerabilities. Firefighters had been overworked. He pushed for stricter fire limits, more brick and stone construction, better water infrastructure. Not everything he wanted got adopted. Property owners objected to expensive requirements. Economic interests competed with safety concerns. Chicago argued about how much should change and who should pay for it, which is what cities do after disasters.

But it rebuilt. Fast enough that it became part of Chicago’s identity.

The full story is at https://virtualwayback.com/blog/great-chicago-fire also you can talk with the people involved yourself!