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Jan. 3, 2014

New Year’s newlyweds

Fernando Chaidez and Ricca Rivera became the first couple to be wed in Cook County in the new year after getting in line at the Daley Center downtown at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday, the Chicago Tribune reported. Cook County Clerk David Orr officiated the first marriage ceremony of the year, continuing an annual Chicago tradition that is more than two decades old. Since 1991, a judge has waived the 24-hour waiting period for the years’ first marriage licenses so the couples can get married on New Year’s Day. Chaidez and Rivera beat Rocky Martinez and Laura Villanueava to the aisle by a matter of minutes, but Orr agreed to wed Martinez and Villanueava on Wednesday morning as well.

Divvy’s on ice

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Richard Roeper tweeted an image of a snow-covered Divvy bike station on Friday morning, proclaiming, “Now how am I gonna get to work?” Divvy’s operators shut down bike rentals at 12 p.m. on Thursday due to the snowy, frigid weather and on Friday announced that rentals would not resume until 12 p.m. Saturday, weather permitting.

Chinatown wears the crown

Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood won Curbed Chicago’s Curbed Cup 2013, an award for the neighborhood of the year that is voted on by readers of the real estate and development blog. Chinatown received 1,553 votes in the final, beating East Village, which got 1,327 votes. The blog credited the new Ping Tom Park Memorial Park field house, an array of Chinese restaurants and forthcoming development projects for the popularity of the neighborhood.

Mystery solved

Researcher Stacy Pratt McDermott, associate editor of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, has identified the author of a letter fragment found inside of Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield over 25 years ago as newspaper editor Andrew Johnston, according to The Associated Press. The letter from Johnston was sent on March 10, 1846 and was a reply to a poem he received from Lincoln. The State Journal-Register reported that Lincoln and Johnson corresponded regularly about politics and poetry.

-Tom Butala