Word: peoria
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Relatively Unbiased. Similar arguments-and doubts-arise in the equally notorious case of Richard Speck, the accused killer of eight Chicago student nurses, whose Feb. 6 trial has been shifted 160 miles southwest to Peoria. To be sure, that city was once called "Nowheresville, U.S.A." But it now boasts the U.S.'s biggest exporter of machinery (Caterpillar Tractor Co.), and welcomes more foreign visitors than almost any U.S. town of its size (pop. 133,000). What makes Peoria a better place to try Speck than Chicago...
...hope at least of a relatively unbiased jury, plus pure practicalities. Peoria County has 91,715 potential jurors; the city has a new $4,500,000 courthouse. And according to Chicago Judge Herbert C. Paschen, who will handle the Peoria trial (though Speck's lawyer is demanding a Peoria judge), the city was chosen over Quincy, Rockford and Rock Island because "Peoria does not receive Chicago television, and it has less Chicago newspaper coverage than the rest." Peoria County (pop. 202,400) has a total Chicago weekend newspaper circulation of only 8,378, compared with the Sunday Peoria Journal...
SITTING contentedly on the banks of the Illinois River in the very heartland of America, Peoria has for years been the butt of jokes, the gagman's tag for Nowheresville. "How come you got married?" "Well, I was booked into Peoria and it was raining." Today that humor is as stale as the idea of Peoria as a backwater of national life. The Peoria of 1966 welcomes more foreign visitors than just about any other U.S. city of its size (pop. 133,000), and sends its citizens abroad to range the world. The bartender at the Pere Marquette Hotel...
...superior view of New York-or even of Chicago, St. Louis or San Francisco-Peoria was so long the butt of jokes because it seemed to embody that gibing epithet-provincial. The word was both an accusation and an insult, for everyone with a dictionary knew that it means "narrow, limited, insular, unsophisticated" and denotes "exclusive or overwhelming devotion to one's province." The description hardly fits modern Peoria-nor does it apply to the vast areas of the U.S. that once fell under its indictment. The cities and towns of America still maintain the pride of place that...
...WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 2:30-4 p.m.). The National Tourist Trophy Motorcycle Championships in Peoria, 111., and the World Roller Skating Championships in Essen, Germany...