[1] In the years since the construction of the bridge, the town of Cairo has experienced an 81% population decline (1930 to 2010), the most dramatic decrease of any principal city in the United States.

[4] At the start of the Civil War in 1861, this area was the southern extreme of American land in which slavery was prohibited (other than the disjoint portion of California).

[3] On April 15, 1865, the morning after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the steamboat Sultana was docked near Fort Defiance where 12,000 Union troops were stationed.

[4] Less than two weeks later the steamboat, carrying in excess of 2,000 released Union prisoners of war, exploded near Memphis en route back to Cairo, remaining the deadliest ship disaster in American history.

[2] Legend has it that in 1956, a student pilot from southern Missouri's Malden Air Base was alone in a T-28 Trojan aircraft when he decided to fly under the bridge.

He returned to the air base where he allegedly attributed the damage to a "rough running engine," his eventual confession leading to his removal from the flight training program.

[2] On November 29, 2010, in an attempt to slow the deterioration of the aging structure, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) reduced the bridge's weight limit to 15 tons.

[8] In January 2011, the bridge was finally shut down for the entire year, engineers identifying 25 of 108 deck beams suffering significant rust and degradation.