February 21 in Local History

2026

• On February 21, 1948 - While the stock ticker had been around for a while, it was on this day that the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) began using a new, high-speed ticker system that revolutionized how commodities (like the corn and wheat grown right here in Illinois) were traded. While Chicago was busy ticker-taping, the land that would become our modern DuPage subdivisions was still largely quiet farmland. Today, we trade stocks on our phones while sitting in traffic on I-88, but it all started with those clicking machines 78 years ago today.

  From the 2026-02-21 edition