Posted in On This Day, tagged duke power co, durham nc, durham recorder, great falls sc, james b. duke, southern power co on September 30, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
100 years ago today: James B. Duke’s Southern Power Co., forerunner of Duke Power Co., brings electricity to Durham. Among the bedazzled is a reporter for the Durham Recorder: “From the water driven generators on the Rocky Creek below Great Falls, S.C., the mysterious energy flashed over the lines or tower to tower, over hill [...]
Posted in History, On This Day, tagged charlotte elmwood cemetery, charlotte nc, circus elephants on September 28, 2012 | 2 Comments »
On this day in 1880: Shortly after being unloaded in Charlotte, The Chief, a circus elephant, turns on his keeper and crushes him to death against a rail car. “The man sank down without a groan,” reports The Charlotte Observer, “and the elephant turned and started up the railroad track, the excited crowd fleeing in [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged ackland art museum, duke chapel, duke university, rollins college, unc chapel hill, william hayes ackland on September 20, 2012 | 2 Comments »
On this day in 1958: Capping an 18-year legal struggle, the Ackland Art Museum is dedicated at the University of North Carolina. As specified in his bequest, the museum’s benefactor, William Hayes Ackland, is interred within the building with a recumbent statue on his marble sarcophagus. When he died in 1940, Ackland, a Washington lawyer, [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged george snuffy stirnweiss, newark bay, train accidents on September 15, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
On this day in 1958: New York stockbroker George “Snuffy” Stirnweiss, a former football and baseball star at the University of North Carolina, dies when a commuter train plunges through an open drawbridge into Newark Bay. He is 39 years old. Stirnweiss played second base on three New York Yankees’ world championship teams but is [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged american friends service committee, dunn high school nc, east carolina indian institute, eleanor roosevelt, harnett county nc, lumbee indians, nc segregation, sampson coujnty nc on August 31, 2012 | 1 Comment »
On this day in 1960: Denied admission to white Dunn High School, seven Lumbee Indian students, along with several parents, stage a sit-in and are charged with trespassing. A few N.C. counties operate separate school systems for whites, blacks and Indians. But Harnett County has no high school for Indians and instead buses them to [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged belhaven nc, carole king, eva narcissus boyd, gerry goffin, little eva, loco-motion on August 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
On this day in 1962: Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion” hits No. 1 on the charts, and doing the Loco-Motion becomes the latest dance fad. Eva Narcissus Boyd was born about 1945 in Belhaven. She had moved to New York to get into music but was working as a babysitter for songwriters Carole King and Gerry [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged fort fisher, nc civil war, Private D.L. Day on August 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
On this day in 1863: Private D.L. Day, Co. B, 25th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, writes in his journal while on duty at Hill’s Point: “We were marched out and paraded, and [the inspecting officer] commenced his job. He found right smart of fault, but didn’t find a really good subject until he came to me. [...]
Posted in On This Day, Tar Heelia, tagged james mcracken, mayenne france, red springs nc on August 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
On this day in 1944: As Allied troops advance toward Paris, Pfc. James McRacken of Red Springs single-handedly disarms the explosives with which retreating Germans expected to blow up the last remaining bridge in Mayenne, a city of 18,600. Had the bridge been demolished, the Allies would have had to use heavy aerial bombardment on [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged gov dan k moore, ku klux klan, martin luther king, nash square, raleigh nc on July 31, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
On this day in 1966: The same day that Martin Luther King Jr. addresses without incident a crowd of 4,500 at Raleigh’s Reynolds Coliseum, Ku Klux Klansmen in boots and helmets jeeringly remove blacks from a Klan rally at Nash Square. The incident will force Gov. Dan K. Moore, who has tried to treat the [...]
Posted in On This Day, tagged cessna 210, rocky mount nc, thomas root on July 13, 2012 | 1 Comment »
On this day in 1989: Lawyer Thomas Root blacks out while flying his Cessna 210 on a business trip from Washington to Rocky Mount. Tailed by 19 military planes for four hours, Root winds up ditching in the Atlantic Ocean near the Bahamas and is rescued, suffering from a mysterious gunshot wound in the abdomen. [...]
