National Geographic and NPR have fascinating story on Paris catacombs:

• Interactive Map of Paris Catacombs
• Jacki Lyden's story on NPR

Chicago's got it's own underground historyOf course there's the CTA's subways, but there's a lot more going on underneath us. Some of us learned about the Chicago Tunnel Company's 60 mile underground freight network 40 feet below ground in the 1992 Chicago Flood. The photo above is from tunnels at the corner of Randolph and State Streets.

And then there's the ginormous Deep Tunnel project of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, one of the largest civil engineering projects ever.

Like the Paris catacombs, Chicago has a story to tell of what we do with our dead, which reveals much about the city's history, development, politics. There's the mass grave of Camp Douglas POWs from the Civil War, the Couch mausoleum still in Lincoln Park from when it was a main cemetery for the city, and the current controversy over the cemetery where a new O'Hare runway is planned...For more on Illinois graveyards, visit graveyards.com.

Video: Mollison Elementary & CUIP video honors MLK

King's legacy in Chicago is complicated. Forty-five years ago this month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. moved into an apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood on the west side. He worked with local leaders for open housing. Chicago challenged him in new ways.  Of his time in Chicago, he said: "I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hostile and as hateful..."

• Video: Dr. King - Housing March in Gage Park Chicago, 1966
• Tribune coverage of march in Marquette Park
• Tribune video from 2006
  
• Encyclopedia of Chicago Entry on King in Chicago