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Baseball is happening and all is right with the world. Today, though, let's hear about another bat and ball game — softball. It was big in Central Illinois for many decades with lots of semi-pro teams and even industrial leagues for men and women. it also offered an outlet for young women before they had opportunities to play other organized sports.
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By now, most people know the Rivian story in which a scrappy startup electric automaker brought a mothballed Mitsubishi plant back to life, hired 8,000 people, and has now gone on to make more than 100,000 vehicles. Fewer may know Rivian was not the first electric automaker in Bloomington-Normal.
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The struggling Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts and Grossinger Motors Arena came under new shared management over a year ago. Director of Arts and Entertainment Anthony Nelson was given a strict mandate to start turning a profit. Recent sellouts at the BCPA are signs of a turnaround.
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The chess teams at Evans Junior High School in Bloomington have done something that has never been done before in state history. Its sixth, seventh, and eighth graders have all won state championships in the same year.
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Domestic violence, experimental theater, the corrections system, the environment, municipal government — you name it, Carol Reitan made it better. She was also the first female mayor of Normal.
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The Catholic Diocese of Peoria has backed off a proposal to close Holy Trinity Church in Bloomington, relieving several community members who submitted a lengthy report in the hope the proposed closure would be reversed.
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McLean County had a huge shift to work-from-home employment during the pandemic. In fact, a bigger percentage change than in all but two other counties in Illinois.
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Alpheus Pike campaigned in the eastern theater of the war and, after two years and nine months of service, was captured in May 1864 at a battle near Drewry’s Bluff in the Bermuda Hundred campaign and was sent to a notorious Confederate prison camp.
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Illinois high school basketball teams are grinding through the late parts of their seasons as the state tournament approaches early next month. In this episode of our series McHistory, we learn about the longest-running annual basketball tournament in the state — 112 years and counting.
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Longtime Bloomington-Normal leader Betty Kinser has died. The educator, political activist, and community servant shed a bright light for decades, one she cast as much with her energy as she did her personal warmth and vivid personality.