Eugene Walker Baker was born in Davenport on June 15, 1925. He attended Davenport High School, where he starred in basketball and track for the Blue Devils. In his senior year, he was an all-state basketball player. First team.

Following his graduation from West Point, Lieutenant Napoleon Buford surveyed the Rock Island and Des Moines rapids on the Mississippi River in the late 1820s. The rapids were a major obstacle for steamboats navigating the river above St. Louis. According to a U.S. Corps of Engineers report, “His maps, though general, were quite accurate, considering that he made his surveys in February, with a foot of ice and nine inches of snow covering the river.”

On November 25, 1872, Rock Island became the first city in Illinois to open a public library. The library was housed in Room 17 of the Post Office Building, located northwest of Second Avenue and 17th Street. The room was rented for $25 a month.

One of the people who shaped Davenport was a Hungarian nobleman. What were the odds? Count Nicholas Fejervary (Miklós Fejérváry) came to Davenport when he was 41 years old. He left his native Hungary to escape the imposed martial law that followed the failed revolutions that swept Europe in 1847 and 1848. Friends had been exiled, imprisoned, even executed. He chose to settle in Davenport because it reminded him of his home on the Danube.

While living in Rock Island, Benjamin Dann Walsh published more than 800 notes and scientific papers on insects. Recognized as America’s first important entomologist, he was also America’s first strong advocate for Charles Darwin’s theories on the origin of species and natural selection.

In 1921, the school at 1414 East Locust Street in Davenport was renamed Sudlow Intermediate School. It was renamed in honor of a teacher and administrator who broke multiple glass ceilings for women: Phebe Sudlow.

The Quad Cities are graced with vast rolling lawns that stretch for acres under magnificent, stately trees: our cemeteries. Here are some of the region’s finest statues and architecture, with a breadth of symbolism drawn from ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, Medieval and Victorian Europe. Family names on the cemetery’s monuments and mausoleum – such as Davenport, Bettendorf, Deere, Fejervary, Sudlow – are cornerstones of our communities. The name “Oberholtzer” isn’t as immediately familiar as these, but this environmentalist, writer, musician, photographer, and explorer’s impact is still felt today.

Painted on the east wall of the building at 2104 Fourth Avenue in Rock Island, the mural jolts us out of our familiar world – plunging us into an underwater world populated with beautiful, mysterious, mythical, and dangerous creatures.

The Swedish rock band Ghost will be performing at the TaxSlayer Center on October 8. Coming off a European stadium tour with Metallica, the group has headlined summer festivals and has embarked on a massive North America tour that includes New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Boston … and Moline.

Cassini stands in isolation in a wooded area on Beacon Harbor Parkway in East Moline near the Mississippi River. The sculpture is approximately 20’ in height, but feels even larger when standing near it. Its mathematically-inspired forms and rhythms are hypnotic. The sculpture’s curved strips form a whole. Yet in regarding the whole, one is drawn back to its interlocking elements or to the interior space created by these forms.

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