Articles

By Bill Kemp. Published on January 6, 2019.

Three months after Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, Normal residents found their attention momentarily turned to an u...

By Bill Kemp. Published on March 3, 2019.

With Major League Baseball’s spring training well underway in the warmer, sunnier climes of Florida and Arizona, thoughts of this write...

By Bill Kemp. Published on March 24, 2019.

Regarded as one of the greatest pound-for-pound boxers of his era, world bantamweight champion Harry Forbes lived and trained in Bloomi...

By Bill Kemp. Published on April 14, 2019.

Today marks the 38th anniversary of the death of Dr. Clifford E. Horton, one of the titans of Illinois State University athletics. Toda...

By Bill Kemp. Published on June 2, 2019.

Bloomington-Normal’s ties to the national pastime are long and deep. Most famously, National Baseball Hall of Fame induct...

By Bill Kemp. Published on July 28, 2019.

In the fall of 1875, at a shooting tournament in Bloomington, champion marksman Adam H. Bogardus killed 25 of 28 pigeons in 2 minutes a...

By Bill Kemp. Published on October 20, 2019.

World War II still loomed large over American life during the Halloween season of 1945. The surrender of Japan marking the war’s end ha...

By Bill Kemp. Published on October 27, 2019.

Football, it’s been clear for several decades now, is the national pastime, having assumed the mantle long held by that most American o...

By Bill Kemp. Published on November 24, 2019.

Sixty-six years ago this week—Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 26, 1953—a disappointingly small crowd was on hand to watch the last Corn Bowl in ...

By Bill Kemp. Published on October 20, 2020.

A single photograph can open a door into a lost world. This Bloomington Bloomers team photo, for instance, taken at Fans Field during t...

By Bill Kemp. Published on November 21, 2021.

The not-for-profit McLean County Museum of History recently celebrated a remarkable milestone: The posting of the 100,000th digitized P...

Articles about Sports