The Great Chicago Fire Of 1871
Paul Bennie
Strangely enough, the little house of Patrick and Catherine O''Leary was still standing after the Great Fire. Their barn, of course, had been the first structure to fall, but then the fire headed north and east. The irony of their house being spared was wasted on no one, and the newspapers quickly picked up on it, adding it to the broader narrative of the O''Leary''s guilt. The New York Tribune sneered, “There it stood safe, while a city had perished before it and around it. . . . And there to this ...