Posted in DigitalNC, History on November 9, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Flipping through some issues of the Roanoke Beacon (Plymouth, N.C.) from 1898, I found their endorsements for the coming election, which were given entirely in verse. I don’t recall see anything like this in other papers. What a shame that it didn’t catch on. From the Roanoke Beacon issue published November 4, 1898.
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged blackout babies, hurricane sandy, richard udry, unc chapel hill on November 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“ ‘It is evidently pleasing to many people,’ said Richard Udry, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina who studied post-blackout birth rates, ‘to fantasize that when people are trapped by some immobilizing event which deprives them of their usual activities, most will turn to copulation.’ “Udry’s [1970] study found that the blackout babies [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged david copperfield, hotel charlotte on November 6, 2012 | 5 Comments »
On this day in 1988: Taping a TV special, magician David Copperfield, handcuffed and locked in a safe, escapes from the old Hotel Charlotte moments before its implosion. The 12-story hotel has been closed since 1973, but in its heyday it was Charlotte’s finest. Among its guests: Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and [...]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Just A Bite, On This Day, Tar Heelia on November 6, 2012 | 1 Comment »
Edenton kicks off its anniversary celebrations today at noon with the ringing of the Chowan County Courthouse bells 300 times. The town dates its beginning to the passage of an act in the colonial Assembly calling for “building a Court house to hold the Assembly in, at the fork of Queen Ann’s Creek commonly called [...]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk on November 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
While paper ballots haven’t gone the way of the Edsel, you’d be hard pressed to find ones like those used in North Carolina’s elections in the 19th century. As Douglas W. Jones, co-author of Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count notes in his “Brief Illustrated History of Voting”, the first paper ballots were slips provided [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged cape fear rising, george rountree iii, johannes lichtman, mrs hugh mcrae, philip gerard, unc wilmington, wilmington 1898 on November 2, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“When Philip Gerard was writing Cape Fear Rising as an untenured professor in the early ‘90s, he was called in for a meeting with the Chancellor of UNC Wilmington. “ ‘I walk in and it’s not just the Chancellor,’ Gerard said, ‘it’s every Vice Chancellor and Dean sitting around this conference table. And the Chancellor [...]
