Jordan Catholic School in Rock Island, IL celebrated Illinois' 200th birthday with a visit from Abraham Lincoln. The 4th graders held a party complete with cake and balloons.
Lincoln read a story about himself to the 4th graders. The class also had a visit from a representative of Governor Rauner's office.
What became the home not only of one of the nation's greatest presidents, Lincoln, but three successors — Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama — joined the Union as the 21st state on Dec. 3, 1818, upon the signature of President James Monroe. But the Mississippian culture had a sophisticated community of as many as 20,000 people in Cahokia at the turn of the last millennium. European settlers followed explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, who first laid eyes upon the vast expanse of unbroken prairie in 1673.