On this date in 1980…

Ted Turner launched CNN, the world’s first 24-hour television news network, signing on at 6 p.m. EST from its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. What started as a popular and dependable mainstream world and national news source degenerated into a left-wing propaganda machine over the years and seeped into irrelevance.

Other Years:

• 1792 – Kentucky became the 15th U.S. state.

• 1796 – Tennessee became the 16th U.S. state.

• 1825 – Confederate General John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama.

• 1831 – Confederate General John Bell Hood was born in Owingsville, Kentucky.

• 1864 – The three-day battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia began.

• 1868 – The Navaho signed the treaty of Bosque Redondo with General William Tecumseh Sherman allowing the Navajos to return to what land the government allowed them to retain in Arizona and New Mexico.

• 1921 – Twenty-one whites and sixty blacks were killed in race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

• 1926 – Southern humorist and actor Andy Griffith was born in Mt. Airy, North Carolina.

• 1968 – Alabama author and lecturer Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, died at Westport, Connecticut.

• 1979 – Chuck Berry performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter and other invited dignitaries.

• 2005 – The longest oil/natural gas explosion in the Houston, Texas area occured in Crosby, Texas on a rig owned by the Louisiana Oil and Gas Company.

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On this date in 2004…

Alberta Martin, the 97 year old widow of Confederate veteran William Martin, died. Mrs. Martin was at the time thought to be the last surviving Confederate widow.

Other Years:

• 1775 - Local leaders in North Carolina adopted the Mecklenburg Resolves, one of the boldest acts of resistance to British authority before independence

• 1861 - The New Orleans Mint closes

• 1862 – The Battle of Seven Pines, Virginia

• 1868 The supposed First Memorial Day parade held in Ironton, Ohio even though processions in the South had been held since the end of the War of Northern Aggression.

• 1893 - The body of Jefferson Davis was moved from New Orleans and re-buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, at Varina Davis’s request.

• 1919 – The first wedding held in an aircraft occurred over Houston, Texas.

• 1921 - A large-scale race riot breaks out in Tulsa, Oklahoma, later described as the worst incident of racial violence in American history.

• 1958 – Jerry Lee Lewis was forced to end a British tour and return to the U.S. when British fans learned of his marriage to his teenaged cousin.

• 1982 – “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in New York City and ran for 63 straight performances.

• 1985 - The New Orleans Saints football team sold for $70,204,000

• 1989 - US Speaker of US House of Representatives Jim Wright of Texas resigns after an ethics probe

• 2013 - Tim Samara and two others become the first tornado chasers to be killed by a tornado outside El Reno in Oklahoma

• 2019 - Twelve people are shot and killed by a disgruntled employee at a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia

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On this date in 1958…

Unidentified American soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflict were buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

Other Years:

• 1539 - Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto’s expedition of 10 ships and 700 men landed in Florida.

• 1806 - Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson accused Jackson’s wife of bigamy.

• 1848 – Mexico ratified the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo giving the U.S. ownership of New Mexico, California, parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Colorado in return for $15 million.

• 1854 – The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and set off the Kansas-Missouri border war.

• 1868 “Decoration Day,” later called Memorial Day, is first observed in Northern states after already becoming a Southern observance

• 1934 – The U.S. Congress established the Everglades National Park in Florida.

• 1965 – Vivian Malone became the first black student to graduate from the University of Alabama.

• 2019 - Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed new fetal heartbeat law, making it the fifth southern US state to ban abortion when fetal heartbeat detected.

• 2022 - Frontier becomes the world’s fastest supercomputer and first exascale computer at US’s Oak Ridge Tennessee National Laboratory.

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On this date in 1736…

Patrick Henry was born in Studley, Hanover County, Virginia colony. This also the day in 1765 that he gave his historic speech against the Stamp Act, answering a cry of “Treason!” with, “If this be treason, make the most of it!”

Other Years:

• 1677 – The Pamunkey, Roanoke, Nottaway and Nansemond Tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation establishing peace with the English settlers in Virginia colony.

• 1721 – South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony.

• 1765 – Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia‘s House of Burgesses.

• 1780 - the Battle of Waxhaw Creek ended with the massacre of 113 of Colonel Abraham Buford’s force by Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton’s British troops after the patriots surrendered

• 1787 – The “Virginia Plan” was proposed to the U.S. Constitutional Convention.

• 1886 - Southern pharmacist and Confederate veteran John Pemberton begins advertising his patented medicine, Coca-Cola, in Atlanta, GA.

• 1932 - The Bonus Army of World War I veterans begins to assemble in Washington, D.C. to request cash bonuses promised to them.

• 1945 - Amid cheers of Southern marines, Cpt. Julian Dusenbury of Columbia, SC raised the Confederate Battle Flag over the ruins of Shuri Castle on Okinawa to signal Japanese stronghold’s fall.

• 1956 - WESH TV channel 2 in Daytona Beach-Orlando, FL made its first broadcast.

• 1988 – NBC aired “To Heal A Nation,” the story of Marylander, Jan Scruggs’ effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

• 2004 - The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington DC.

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On this date in 1830…

President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law seizing the lands of the “Five Civilized Tribes.” Congress codified Jackson’s suggestion that the U.S. government renege on all of the previous peace treaties, which granted Indians their lands forever, and remove all Indians west of the Mississippi River.

Other Years:

• 1754 - Young George Washington led Virginia militia forces at Jumonville Glen in the Ohio Country opening the French and Indian War.

• 1774 – The first Continental Congress convened in Virginia.

• 1818 – Confederate General P. G.T. Beauregard was born at the “Contreras” sugar-cane plantation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana.

• 1888 – World-class Indian athlete Jim Thorpe was born in a one-room cabin near Prague in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

• 1971 – Audie Leon Murphy, the most decorated American soldier of WWII died at the age of 46 in a plane crash at Brush Mountain, Virginia.

• 1984 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan led a state funeral for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War. The remains were subsequently placed in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. There is a high probability that this soldier is a Southerner.

• 1977 – One hundred sixty-five people died in a fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky.

• 1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, were convicted of fraud

• 2019 - Johnson & Johnson go on trial in Oklahoma accused of deceptively marketing painkillers and downplaying risks of addiction helping create “opioid epidemic”

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On this date in 1863…

An enraged Abraham Lincoln ordered the arrest of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney after Taney issued ex parte Merryman to challenge the authority of the president and the military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland. He later rescinded the order due to outraged across the US government.

Other Years:

• 1607 – Virginia settles fought their first significant battle against Indians of the Powhattan Confederation.

• 1864 – The Battle of Pickett’s Mill, Georgia.

• 1896 – The Great St. Louis tornado killed more than 1000 people in and around St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1926 – Bronze statues of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were erected in Hannibal, Missouri.

• 1935 – The U.S. Supreme Court declared that President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.

• 1969 – Construction of Walt Disney World began outside Orlando, Florida.

• 1986 – Mel Fisher recovered a jar that contained 2,300 emeralds from the Spanish ship Atocha that sank off the Florida coast in the 17th century

• 1995 – In Culpeper, Virginia, “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve was paralyzed from the neck down after a fall from his horse in a riding competition.

• 1997 – The Supreme Court ruled that the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones could continue while U.S. President Bill Clinton was in office.

• 1998 – Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years prison for not warning anyone about the Oklahoma City bombing plot.

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On this date in 1933…

Favorite son of Mississippi, railroad brakeman, and Father of Country Music, Charles “Jimmie” Rodgers died at the age of 35 from a pulmonary hemorrhage due to tuberculosis while staying at the Taft Hotel in New York City.

Other Years:

• 1540 – The “Lady of Cofitachequi,” held hostage by the Spanish Conquistador Hernando de Soto’s expedition, escaped Spanish custody with a large quantity of the pearls that de Soto’s men took from her village.

• 1835 – A resolution was passed in Congress stating that Congress had no authority over state slavery laws.

• 1865 – Confederate General Simon B. Buckner surrendered the Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department.

• 1868 – The Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal as the Senate fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction on all charges.

• 1938 – The House Committee on Un-American Activities began searching for subversives in the United States.

• 1961 – The Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was established in Atlanta.

• 1984 – Tulsa Oklahoma got 13″ of rain in 24 hours, 14 people died in the flooding.

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On this date in 1861…

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus enabling him to imprison any critics for as long as he pleased without charge. One of the first uses Lincoln put the suspension to was to imprison any Maryland legislators that supported their state’s secession without a warrant, including Frank Key Howard, the grandson of Francis Scott Key who was hauled from his home in a midnight raid by federal troops just because he ‘might’ vote for secession.

Other Years:

• 1539 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto started his exploration of the American South at present-day Tampa Bay, Florida.

• 1816 – Confederate General Henry H. Sibley was born.

• 1856 – Northern terrorist John Brown led the Pottawatomie Massacre of Southern settlers in Kansas.

• 1863 – Ohio Democrat leader Clement Vallandigham was banished to the Confederate States for violating a U.S. General Order banning public criticism of the War of Northern Aggression.

• 1864 – Battle of New Hope Church, outside Dallas, Georgia.

• 1878 – Performer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia.

• 1925 – John T. Scopes was indicted in Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.

• 1943 – A riot occurred at a Mobile, Alabama, shipyard when it was learned that 12 black workers would be promoted ahead of whites.

• 1953 – The first non-commercial educational television station began broadcast in Houston, Texas.

• 1959 – A U.S. Supreme Court decision declared that a Louisiana law prohibiting black-white boxing was unconstitutional.

• 1961 – In a speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas U.S. President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

• 2011 - Oprah Winfrey of Kosciusko, MS aired her last show, ending twenty-five years of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

• 2019 - A tornado tore through El Reno, Oklahoma killing two and injuring dozens.

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On this date in 1539…

On a search for wealthy cities rumored to be north of Mexico, Friar Marcos de Niza recorded in his journal that he finally sighted Cibola, though he never actually reached the city. His report will lead to future doomed expeditions looking for the “Seven Cities of Gold” throughout Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and as far as Missouri.

Other Years:

• 1513 – While exploring the Gulf Coast of Florida, Spanish Conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon engaged in a fight with Calusa Indians near Charlotte harbor. De Leon’s troops capture four Calusa warriors.

• 1818 – General Andrew Jackson’s troops captured Pensacola, Florida.

• 1844 – The first telegraphed news dispatch sent from Washington, DC appeared in the Baltimore “Patriot.”

• 1861 – Invading federal troops occupied Alexandria, Virginia.

• 1925 – John Scopes was indicted for teaching Darwinian theory in a Tennessee high school.

• 1935 – Jesse Owens of Oakville, Alabama tied the world record for the 100-yard dash at 9.4 seconds.

• 1961 – Twenty-seven Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi for disturbing the peace and inciting to riot.

• 1968 – The Gateway Arch was dedicated as part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1997 – South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond became the longest-serving senator in U.S. history at 41 years and 10 months.

• 2020 - Millions of cicadas emerge in a once in 17-year event across the US south endangering crops and causing noise issues.

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On this date in 1934…

Rangers Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, Dallas County (TX) deputies Ted Hinton and Bob Alcorn along with Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan and Chief Deputy Prentiss Oakley killed bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in a police ambush as they drove a stolen Ford Deluxe along a dirt road outside Arcadia in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

Other Years:

• 1609 – The Second Charter of Virginia Colony was officially ratified.

• 1788 – South Carolina ratified the U.S. Constitution and became the 8th U.S. state.

• 1838 – This was the deadline under the New Echota Treaty for the Cherokee to voluntarily emigrate to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Any Cherokees still east of the Mississippi River past this date were to be forced to leave.

• 1843 - The first large organized wagon trains departed from Independence, Missouri beginning the great westward expansion

• 1861 – Virginia citizens voted 3 to 1 in favorand Virginia officially seceded from the Union.

• 1862 – General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s troops routed federals at Battle of Front Royal, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley campaign.

• 1864 – The four-day Battle of North Anna River, Virginia began.

• 1867 – The James-Younger gang was blamed for a bank robbery in Richmond, Missouri. Two people were killed and $4,000 taken.

• 1873 - G. Barbee aboard Survivor won the first Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course, Baltimore, MD

• 1960 - WGTV TV channel 8 in Athens-Atlanta, GA began broadcasting

• 2011 - A massive EF5 tornado struck Joplin, Missouri and killed more than 150 people, destroying thousands of homes and businesses

• 2019 - The wreck of the last ship to smuggle slaves to America from Africa, the Clotilda (sunk 1860), is found in Mobile river, Alabama.

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On this date in 1856…

South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner senseless with his walking stick on the floor of the U.S. Senate after Sumner delivered repeated personal insults and sexual innuendos against Brooks’ family in a speech during the session. Despite newspaper hysteria, most who heard the speech believed Brooks’ attack and even his choice of weapon was justified. Senator Brooks was crippled and required his cane to even stand.

Other Years:

• 1807 - Former US Vice President Aaron Burr was tried and aquitted for treason in Richmond, Virginia.

• 1819 - The SS Savannah sets sail from Savanah Harbor in Georgia and become the first steam propelled vessel to cross the Atlantic

• 1843 – The first wagon train to depart for Oregon left Independence, Missouri with more than 1,000 travelers.

• 1865 – Federal authorities imprisoned Confederate President Jefferson Davis in a dark, damp cell at Fort Monroe, Virginia.

• 1802 – The first U.S. First Lady, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, died of a severe fever.

• 1926 – Congress established the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

• 1931 – Canned rattlesnake meat went on sale in Florida.

• 1946 – The WAC Corporal became the first U.S. rocket to reach edge of space when it launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

• 2002 – A Birmingham, Alabama jury convicted former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

• 2003 – In Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Sörenstam became the first woman to play on the men’s PGA Tour in 58 years.

• 2011 – A mile-wide F-5 tornado destroyed much of Joplin, Missouri and killed 159 people. It is the single deadliest U.S. tornado since modern record keeping began in 1950.

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On this date in 1542…

Spanish Conquistador Hernando de Soto died of a fever near present day Lake Village, Arkansas. Before his death, he appointed Luis de Moscoso his successor. De Soto’s body was later weighted and buried in the Mississippi River to prevent desecration of his remains by hostile natives. Because of the changing course of the river, some believe his actual burial site to now be in Lake Chicot, Arkansas, the largest oxbow lake in the world.

Other Years:

• 1822 – Confederate General and founder of the Southern Historical Society, Dabney H. Maury was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

• 1832 - The first Democratic Party National Convention was held in Baltimore

• 1861 - Richmond, Virginia, was designated as the Confederate States Capital

• 1863 – The siege of the Confederate citadel at Port Hudson, Louisiana began. Port Hudson remains the longest siege in U.S. military history.

• 1906 - The US and Mexico sign an agreement over distribution of the waters of the Rio Grande for US crop irrigation

• 1917 - Leo Pinckney, a black man from Charleston, SC was the first American drafted during WWI.

• 1961 – Governor Patterson declared martial law in Montgomery, Alabama.

• 1966 - Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) of Louisville, KY beat Henry Cooper by TKO in 6 rounds to win the heavyweight boxing title

• 1971 - The National Guard mobilized to quell riot a in Chattanooga, Tennessee

• 1986 - Atlanta Brave Rafael Ramirez hit 4 doubles in one game

• 1987 – Operation of the Xignals computer bulletin board system (BBS) began in Alabama.

• 1998 - Five abortion clinics in Miami, Florida, were targeted by a butyric acid attack.

• 2022 - US Navy posthumously awards Navy and Marine Corps Medal to Charles J. French of Foreman, AR known as ‘the Human Tugboat’ for heroic actions in the South Pacific in 1942

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On this date in 1942…

Carlos “White Feather” Hathcock was born at Little Rock, Arkansas. Hathcock was already a noted marksman, having won the Wimbledon Rifle Matches for the U.S. He would score 93 confirmed kills and more than 600 probables as a marine sniper in the jungles of Vietnam (including a 2,500 yard shot) though his tour was cut short by wounds. Hathcock was awarded the Silver Star not for his sniper work, but for pulling seven Marines from a burning AMTRAC he was riding in that had struck a land mine though suffering severe burns to most of his body before himself jumping to safety. Hathcock returned to active duty to found of the elite U.S. Marine Corps scout sniper school.

Other Years:

• 1702 – Apalachicola Indians attack the Spanish and mission Indians at the Franciscan Mission of Santa Fe de Toluca at one of the largest Timucua villages in northern Florida. Both sides suffer heavy losses.

• 1734 - The first Jockey Club formed in South Carolina

• 1775 – North Carolina became the first American colony to declare its independence and secede from the British Empire via the Mecklenburg Declaration.

• 1861 – The Confederate States capitol officially moved from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia.

• 1861 – North Carolina seceded from the Union.

• 1961 – A bus load of “Freedom Riders” met resistance in Montgomery, Alabama, prompting the federal government to send in U.S. marshals for the activist’s protection.

• 1964 - Buster Mathis of Sledge, MS beat Joe Frazer of Beaufort, SC on points at trials in Flushing, NY to qualify for US Olympic boxing team, but injured his thumb and was replaced by Frazier who won the gold medal.

• 1985 – Radio Marti began broadcasting into Cuba from Miami, Florida.

• 1999 – At Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, a 15-year-old student shot and injured six others, then surrendered to an assistant principal.

• 2013 - 25 people are killed and over 200 injured by a EF-5 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma

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On this date in 1863…

Federal General Ulysses Grant attempted unsuccessfully to storm the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, Mississippi by direct frontal assault. . His troops were repulsed with staggering losses and settled in for a long siege.

Other Years:

• 1585 - Spain confiscated English ships in Spanish harbors and began the Anglo-Spanish War

• 1795 – Johns Hopkins, founder of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, was born at Anne Arundel, Maryland.

• 1796 – The first U.S. game law provided penalties for hunting or destroying game within Cherokee and Creek territory.

• 1828 U.S. President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828/Tariff of Abominations into law to protect industry in the North and milk Southern states of their wealth

• 1865 – The C.S.S. Stonewall lowered its Confederate banner while anchored off Cuba.

• 1891 - Rice Institute is chartered in Houston, Texas, becomes Rice University

• 1909 - Jack Johnson of Galveston, Texas fights Philadelphia Jack O’Brien to a no decision in 6 rounds in Philadelphia and retains his world heavyweight title.

• 1912 – The Associated Advertising Clubs of America held its first convention in Dallas, Texas.

• 1972 - WMAV TV channel 18 in Oxford, MS (PBS) began broadcasting

• 1988 – Carlos Lehder Rivas, of Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel, was convicted in a Florida court of smuggling more than 3 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

• 1990 - “Elvis” TV drama series about early life of Elvis Presley last episode aired on ABC

• 2019 - US billionaire Robert F. Smith announces he will pay off college loans of nearly 400 students graduating Morehouse College in Atlanta

• 2022 Oklahoma passes the most restrictive abortion ban in the country

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On this date in 1933…

The Tennessee Valley Authority was established to build hydro-electric stations at dams in the South for rural electrification and economic development when U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Act.

Other Years:

• 1798 – Benjamin Stoddert of Maryland was appointed the first Secretary of the U.S. Navy.

• 1839 – General Alexander Macomb announces the peace terms agreed to with the Seminoles. The Seminoles are able to remain in Florida, but only near Lake Okeechobee.

• 1863 – The Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi began.

• 1896 – The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Fergusonthat separate-but-equal facilities were sufficient to satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment which guaranteed political, not social equality.

• 1902 – A tornado killed more than 230 people and wiped out Goliad, Texas.

• 1917 – The U.S. Congress passed the Selective Service act, which drafted soldiers to fight in World War I.

• 1953 – Jacqueline Cochran of Muscogee, Florida became the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, piloting an F-86 Sabrejet an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour.

• 1955 – Educator and political leader Mary McLeod Bethune died in Daytona Beach, Florida.

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On this date in 1954…

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision when it issued its landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which declared that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal.

Other Years:

• 1527 – Spanish Adventurer Pánfilo de Narváez departed Spain to explore Florida with 600 men, by 1536 only 4 survive.

• 1673 – French voyageurs Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette began their exploration of the Mississippi River

• 1827 – At age 18, future U.S. President Andrew Johnson married 16 year-old Eliza McCardle in Warrenton, Tennessee.

• 1849 – Fire destroyed the Centrum in St Louis, Missouri.

• 1863 – The Battle of Big Black River Bridge, Mississippi occurred during the Vicksburg campaign.

• 1875 – Jockey Oliver Lewis rode H.P. McGrath’s thoroughbred Aristides to victory in the first Kentucky Derby at the Louisville Jockey Club.

• 1909 – White firemen on Georgia railroads strike to protest against hiring black workers to fill jobs formerly held by whites.

• 1967 – After 42 years, Tennessee repealed the Butler Act which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state’s public schools.

• 1980 – A major race riot occurred in Miami Florida. Sixteen are killed and more than 300 injured.

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On this date in 1771…

The Battle of Alamance, North Carolina was fought between royal militia and a group of patriots called “The Regulators” in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina. The Regulators lost the battle and twelve were condemned to death. Six were hanged at Hillsboro, North Carolina on 19 June 1771. Many historians consider Alamance, not Lexington, to be the REAL first battle of the first battle of the American War for Independence.

Other Years:

• 1760 – Creek Chief Handsome Fellow, a former English ally, led an attack on a group of English traders in Georgia in support of the Cherokee at the outbreak of the Cherokee war. Thirteen traders are killed in the fighting.

• 1817 – Steamboat service began on the Mississippi River.

• 1824 – Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith was born in St. Augustine, Florida.

• 1836 – At the age of 26, Edgar Allan Poe married his 13 year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm.

• 1861 – The Kentucky Legislature voted to remain neutral and reject Lincoln’s call for troops to subdue the Confederate States.

• 1861 – Tennessee was officially admitted to the Confederate States of America.

• 1868 – The United States Senate failed by one vote to convict U.S. President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him. (Johnson was subsequently acquitted of all charges.)

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On this date in 1972…

Anti-Southern zealot Arthur Bremer shot and paralyzed Alabama Governor and Democrat presidential front-runner George Wallace as Wallace campaigned in Laurel, Maryland. In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, which ended Wallace’s presidential aspirations, the usual gun-control proponents were strangely silent.

Other Years:

• 1716 – French commander Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville sent three Natchez allies to their village to bring back the head of a Chief Oyelape, the Natchez leader who ordered the killing of five Frenchmen.

• 1802 – Confederate General Isaac Trimble was born in Culpepper County, Virginia..

• 1846 – Texas Governor Pierce Butler, and Colonel M.G. Lewis (brother of Meriwether Lewis), and sixty-three representatives of the Aionai, Anadarko, Caddo, Comanche, Kichai, Lepan Apache, Longwha, Tahwacarro, Tonkawa, Waco, and Wichita tribes signed a peace treaty designed to protect both the Indians and Texas settlers.

• 1862 – Federal General Benjamin Butler issued his infamous General Order #28 stating that any woman of New Orleans who showed disrespect for occupying yankees should be treated as a prostitute plying her trade.

• 1862 – The Confederate cruiser Alabama was launched as the British ship Enrica at Birkenhead, England, where she had been built in secret.

• 1864 – The cadets of Virginia Military Institute fought at the Battle of New Market, Virginia.

• 1968 – A tornado struck Jonesboro, Arkansas at 10:00 PM, causing massive devastation and killing 36 people.

• 1976 – The song “Kentucky Moonrunner” by Cledus Maggard hit #85 on the charts.

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On this date in 1836…

Mexican president and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna signed the Treaties of Velasco, in which he agreed to withdraw his troops across the Rio Grande River and recognize the Republic of Texas in exchange for safe conduct back to Mexico.

Other Years:

• 1607 – The first permanent British settlement in North America and James’ Fort was established at Jamestown, Virginia.

• 1787 – Delegates began gathering in Philadelphia for a convention to draw up the U.S. Constitution.

• 1804 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition departed St. Louis, Missouri to explore the Louisiana Purchase.

• 1863 - The Battle of Jackson, Mississippi

• 1973 - America’s first space station, Skylab, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida

• 1980 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter established the Department of Health and Human Services.

• 1988 – A drunk driver going the wrong way on Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Kentucky, hit a church bus carrying a youth group. The crash and ensuing fire killed 27 children and adults.

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On this date in 1864…

The first soldier, a Confederate prisoner, was buried at what would become Arlington National Cemetery on the grounds of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s home. The reason for consuming the property with a cemetery was to prevent the Lee family from ever using the home as a dwelling again.

Other Years:

• 1540 – Spanish Conquistador Hernando de Soto and his men fled the Indian village of Cofitachequi taking the “Lady of Cofitachequi” with him as a hostage.

• 1607 – English colonists, led by Captain John Smith, landed near the site of Jamestown in Virginia.

• 1614 – The Viceroy of Mexico found Spanish Explorer Juan de Oñate guilty of atrocities against the Indians of New Mexico and banned him from ever entering New Mexico again.

• 1787 - Delegates began arriving in Philadelphia ahead of the US Constitutional Convention

• 1846 – The U.S. Congress as urged by President James Polk declared war on Mexico.

• 1861 – Confederate Brigadier General Benjamin McCulloch was appointed to the command of the district embracing Indian Territory and Confederate Major Douglas H. Cooper, of the Choctaw Nation was authorized to raise a mounted regiment of Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians.

• 1864 – The Battle of Resaca, Georgia began.

• 1865 – The Battle of Palmitto Ranch, near Brownsville, Texas ended. (Often called the last battle of the War of Northern Aggression.)A private of the 34th Indiana Infantry Regiment is the last man killed

• 1930 – The only known fatality due to hail, a farmer was killed in a Lubbock, Texas thunderstorm.

• 1955 – After a concert in Jacksonville, Florida, young female fans mob Elvis Presley and attempt to rip off his clothes. The riot causes moral outrage across the country.

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