Wayne's World stars Mike Myers as Wayne Campbell, who lives with his parents in Aurora, Illinois, and spends his free time "partying" with his friends in and around the popular rock/metal scene of the early 1990s. His best friend is Garth Algar with whom he hosts their late-night cable-access show broadcasting from the basement of Wayne's parents' house. The film's sequel, Wayne's World 2, is also set in Aurora.

The film is a fictionalized account of the Rockford Peaches who played from 1943 through 1954 in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

The soft-serve formula was first developed in 1938 by John Fremont "Grandpa" McCullough and his son Alex. Along with friend and loyal customer Sherb Noble, they went on to open the first Dairy Queen in 1940 in Joliet, Illinois. While this store has been out of operation since the 1950s, the building still stands at 501 N Chicago Street as a city-designated landmark.

Springfield's own Cozy Dog Drive-in claims to have been the first restaurant to serve corn dogs on a stick, on June 16, 1946. Though it took a little time to perfect the mounted rack that allows the hot dogs to be battered and fried vertically, the batter recipe has remained unchanged since 1946. The horseshoe sandwich, not well known outside of central Illinois, also originated in Springfield.

After a worldwide search in 1943, a moldy cantaloupe in a Peoria, Illinois market was found to contain the best strain of mold for producing large quantities of pharmaceutical-grade penicillin. The spores from this mold were then used to spawn nearly all the penicillin production at the time. Take that, streptococcal meningitis!

Elgin resident John Murphy invented the motorized streetsweeper in 1914 and later formed the Elgin Sweeper Corporation. The city of Boise, Idaho, purchased the first Elgin Sweeper in 1913, replacing its previous horse-drawn sweeper for a savings of $2,716.77 per year.