Oct 08
On this day in history the great Chicago fire started. It may not have been started by Mrs O’Leary’s cow as legend states. But we do know that a couple of hundred people were killed and 90,000 people lost their homes.
What I did not know was that on the same day the largest forrest fire in U.S. history broke out.
Peshtigo Fire,. Oct. 8, 1871, in which 1,182 people were killed by a wildfire that ultimately consumed more that 1 million acres (400,000 hectares) of forest. Peshtigo—at the time an important lumbering center—and several villages were destroyed. Because the disaster occurred in a remote area and on the same night as the Great Chicago Fire, it is little remembered.
October 10th, 2005 at 3:35 am
If you lived in Wisconsin, you would know that historical fact. See what your missing.
October 10th, 2005 at 11:54 am
I find that there is some controversy over which fire is the largest. Other sources say the 1910 fire in Idaho.
http://www.idahoforests.org/fires3.htm