Lincoln the 1st president to use electronic communications

Editor's note: The Illinois Bicentennial series is brought to you by the Illinois Associated Press Media Editors and Illinois Press Association. More than 20 newspapers are creating stories about the state's history, places and key moments in advance of the Bicentennial on Dec. 3, 2018.

10 African Americans named Rhodes scholars, most ever

In this Monday, Aug. 14, 2017, file photo, Cadet Simone Askew, of Fairfax, Va., who has been selected first captain of the U.S. Military Academy Corps of Cadets for the upcoming academic year, answers questions during a news conference, in West Point, NY. Askew earned another prestigious honor Sunday, Nov. 19, when she was one of 32 Americans awarded Rhodes scholarships to study at Oxford University in England.

Puerto Rico votes for statehood

Puerto Rico's governor is vowing to make the U.S. territory the 51st state after statehood won in a non-binding referendum hit by a boycott and low turnout that raised questions about the vote's legitimacy. Gov. Ricardo Rossello told a couple hundred supporters waving U.S. flags late Sunday that he will soon create a commission to appoint two senators and five representatives to demand statehood from the U.S. Congress, which has to approve any changes to the island's political status.

Health care for illegals: $18.5 billion per year

Writing in the Huffington Post , Leah Zallman -- a research scientist at the Institute for Community Health, a primary care doctor at Cambridge Health Alliance, and an instructor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School -- and Steffie Woolhandler -- an internist in the South Bronx, professor at the City University of New York School of Public Health at Hunter College, and lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School -- attempt to take Donald Trump to task for his claims about the health care costs from illegal immigrants: Throughout the primary season, leading Republican presidential candidates vied over who could bash immigrants the hardest. And they were promising more than border walls.

Small WWII-era plane crashes in Hudson River; body recovered

A small World War II vintage plane taking part in celebrations of its 75th anniversary flew a partial loop while smoke spewed from it and then crashed in the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey on Friday, and divers recovered a body from its sunken wreckage, police and witnesses said. The single-seat plane, a P-47 Thunderbolt, crashed on a part of the river near where a US Airways commercial jet carrying 155 people splash-landed safely in 2009 in what became known as the Miracle on the Hudson.