23 August 1305
On this date in 1305…
William Wallace was racked, hanged, drawn, quartered, and beheaded. English executioners salted and hung his body parts at different locations in Scotland as a warning for other Scot patriots, many of whose descendants would migrate the South in the 1700’s. The English later learned at the Battle of Bannockburn that an oppressor’s intimidation didn’t work against Scots any more than it does against their descendants.
Other Years:
1784 – – Eastern Tennessee settlers established the short-lived and extra-legal state of Franklin in what is now eastern Tennessee on lands ceded by North Carolina to pay off debts owed to the federal government. A year later the U.S. Congress rejected and abolished Franklin.
1864 – Federal troops supported by a naval fleet occupied Fort Morgan at the mouth of Mobile Bay in Alabama.
1917 – Two blacks and eleven whites were killed when blacks rioted in Houston, Texas.
1952 - Nashville native Kitty Wells becomes the first woman to reach #1 on the Billboard Country chart with “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” a position held for 15 weeks
1982 – North Carolina Major Leaguer Gaylord Perry while playing for the Seattle Mariners was tossed out of a game for throwing an illegal spitball.
1984 – South Fork Ranch, the home of the fictitious Ewing clan of the CBS-TV show, “Dallas,” was sold to be transformed from a tourist site into a hotel.
2005 - Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas and later became a Category 5 storm and devastated the Gulf coast
2011 – A 5.8 magnitude earthquake occurred in Mineral, Virginia and was felt as far north as Ontario, Canada and as far south as Atlanta, Georgia.
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