Chicago has been celebrating after the Cubs beat the Los Angeles Dodgers, taking the team into the baseball World Series for the first time since 1945.

They partied outside Wrigley Field stadium after the Curse of the Billy Goat - supposedly placed on the Cubs by a disgruntled fan - was finally lifted.

The team's decades in the wilderness had become the stuff of legend.
In the 1989 film Back to the Future II, a 2015 World Series win for the Chicago team was dubbed a "long shot".

That long shot became a reality on Saturday when the Cubs beat the Dodgers in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series. Most of the fans celebrated peacefully, with many taking selfies in front of the stadium, but one person was arrested after climbing a traffic pole, and several others were detained after letting off fireworks.

The win is a boost for a city with a more sombre reputation in recent years, overtaking Los Angeles and New York in terms of gang murders.

On social media, people jokingly thanked President Barack Obama, a former Illinois senator who lived and worked in Chicago, for gifting the city a Cubs breakthrough "on his watch".

The Cubs had not won a World Series since 1908 but had some near-misses up until 1945.
They will now meet the American League champions, the Cleveland Indians, for the first game of the World Series on Tuesday.

BBC