Three things about Chicago's new downtown Millennium Park are well known: It's spectacular, way over budget (original estimate: $150 million, final cost: $475 million) and four years overdue.

You and I might not agree on the best American governors of recent years, but we would probably agree on what makes a governor effective. Mostly, it's a matter of having a coherent program and finding ways to get it enacted.

Inventories of artwork in public schools reveal surprisingly valuable collections.

The animal-rescue cliche may be a firefighter clambering up a ladder to retrieve a cat stuck in a tree or on a rooftop. But in reality, firefighters more often find themselves rescuing felines and other pets from burning buildings.

Billy the Kid, the notorious Old West outlaw, was buried in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, about 150 miles southeast of Santa Fe. That is, unless he was buried in the middle of Texas. Or, possibly, northern Arizona.