If your group is headed to the Windy City, any attendees who are history buffs can now get much more out of their visit than in the past. A new smart phone application, called "It Happened Here,” detects a user's location (through GPS) and reveals fascinating things that have happened nearby, such as historical events, memorable movie scenes, famous crimes, celebrity sightings and more.
“Think of it as a virtual walking tour in the palm of your hand,” said Aaron Watkins, co-founder of Appency, the company that created the app.
The company has a number of Chicago-area events geo-located and profiled, such as the former site of the Wigwam building, where Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 Republican nomination; the police station / former high school where Principal Vernon investigated a “ruckus” he heard in the 1985 film The Breakfast Club; the cathedral that still shows bullet holes from a 1926 shootout involving an Al Capone rival; the high school where Unabomber Ted Kaczynski graduated in 1958 at age 15; the strip mall where Michelle and Barack Obama shared their first kiss outside of a Baskin-Robbins in 1989; the pub where Matt Damon was recruited in the 2001 film Ocean’s Eleven, and the high school attended by Hugh Hefner (where a guidance counselor likely was WAY off in predicting his career).
