If it plays in Peoria is a cliché type of phrase on whether a movie or a play will be any good. Stone to the bone Chicagoan, but a great point noted..."just outside Chicago is a place called Illinois".
It became a popular phrase during the era of Vaudeville. It's not necessarily whether or not it will be any good, but whether it will appeal to dull, mainstream Americans. Supposedly if they like it, anyone will like it.
Maybe you could add a question about the four governors who were sentenced to prison in a span of less than 40 years. Good times. Also, the official state nickname is actually the Prairie State. Nobody calls it that though...
Added that one! I've been watching the Illinois/Chicago slow motion trainwreck with great interest. I personally believe that the state should cut taxes by a large amount. Its inevitable that both Illinois and Chicago will have to declare bankruptcy or get bailed out by the Federal Reserve. The sooner this happens, the better. Before even more people leave the state....
I'm not sure they CAN cut taxes very much. It's literally in the Illinois state constitution that they can't reduce pensions for state, local government, or school district workers, and the Illinois Supreme Court upholds that pretty strongly. So between the fact it would require a constitutional amendment to even make it possible to address their pension crisis, and the fact that voters shot down a progressive tax rate that would have at least helped some, the Illinois government's hands are pretty well tied on this.
I was about to disagree, as I also live in Illinois, but it occurs to me I've spent the last eight years in Chicago, where nobody discusses Illinois as a state, and all my experience before that was in the northeast. So I should say...everybody in the northeast calls it "the Land of Lincoln" and nobody in Chicago seems to call it anything because we're transfixed with our tiny little world here.
The Army Corps of Engineers considered Cairo, population 3000, important enough to blow the Bird's Point Mississippi River levee in 2011 which flooded out 130,000+ acres of the richest farmland in Missouri and over 100 homes plus grain bins and outbuildings. I suppose it all depended on the perspective of which side of the levee you were on, but they wiped out a lot of valuable property because of a likelihood - but not certainty - the levees would be breached around Cairo. I had compassion for the fears of the people of Cairo, too, but they had the Corps to protect them. We live 60 miles from Cairo beyond a ridge and the blast rattled windows here. The conspiracy theories were that the Corps knows they will eventually lose the battle with the weather for the southern Miss. River ports, and they want to someday build a new major port at Cairo, situated at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi. Who knows? I only know I wept that night for what those farm families went through.
Grew up near the town. Heard it pronounced both ways. But it's never "ki-ro" like the city in Egypt. Southern Illinois is nicknamed Little Egypt, so hence the name. Always found it strange, being at the confluence of two major rivers (Mississippi & Ohio), that it never really grew. Though in the mid-19th century it was bustling.
I remember reading somewhere it was a dinosaur, but when I tried that it didn't work so I moved on. Looking back, I see that species was the important word in the clue I missed.
Come check out this quiz I made! This is my first quiz, and I would really appreciate it if you checked out my quiz! https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/1372750/30-most-populated-cities-in-illinois
"Land of Lincoln" is NOT the official state nickname. That would be the "Prairie State"