Can you imagine Saturday afternoons in autumn without college football in Georgia? It almost happened. On this day in 1897, UGA player Richard Von Gammon was fatally injured in a game with the University of Virginia. There had been a nationwide call for a ban on the violent sport, and Von Gammon’s death galvanized football’s […]
On this day in 1735, a group of Scottish Highlanders sailed from Inverness, Scotland, aboard the Prince of Wales, bound for Georgia. They disembarked on the northern bank of the Altamaha River, where they founded New Inverness – later named Darien – 60 miles south of Savannah. The Scots were among the finest soldiers in […]
He was billed as the world’s strongest man and, during the Cold War, a convenient symbol of American power. Paul Anderson was born in Toccoa, Georgia, and overcame Bright’s Disease as a child. A football scholarship got him to Furman University, but he quit and began lifting weights instead. Anderson discovered that he had extraordinary […]
He made history when he flew solo across the Atlantic. On this day in 1927, just months after his historic flight, Charles Lindbergh arrived in Atlanta for Lindbergh Day. The “Lone Eagle” came to Atlanta thanks to city alderman and aviation enthusiast William Hartsfield. Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis – the same plane […]
He came from Poland to fight in the American Revolution and is one of only seven people to be granted honorary U.S. citizenship. Casimir Pulaski was born an aristocrat in Warsaw in 1745. He first led men in battle as a freedom fighter in Poland. After meeting Ben Franklin in France, he came to America […]
When James Oglethorpe and the English colonists arrived in Georgia in 1733, Tomochichi was here to greet them. It was his artful diplomacy between the English settlers and the native population that ensured Georgia’s peaceful beginnings. Tomochichi was chief of the Yamacraw tribe, which he created from a group of Creek and Yamasee natives. They […]
It killed more Americans than all of our twentieth century wars combined. When 138 soldiers at Camp Gordon in Atlanta were hit with it this day in 1918, the Spanish Flu epidemic had spread across Georgia. The flu hit just as World War I ended. That war took ten million lives over four years. The […]
He’s the only Georgian to ever be elected president of the United States, Jimmy Carter was born in Plains and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He’s the only Georgian ever elected President of the United States. Jimmy Carter was born in Plains and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. To his wife Rosalynn’s dismay, […]
Long before Plymouth, or Jamestown, or even St. Augustine, there was another settlement in North America: the very first European attempt to establish a permanent colony on the mainland since the Vikings 500 years earlier. Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon and 600 Spanish colonists landed on Georgia’s coast on this day in 1526, over 200 years […]
Three Georgians died on the Titanic. One of them was Archibald Butt. He was born in Augusta on this day in 1865. Archie Butt became a journalist for the Macon Telegraph. The Atlanta Constitution made him its Washington correspondent. The U.S. State Department appointed him Secretary of the American Embassy in Mexico. He was there […]
