Timeline Georgia
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The Etowa Indian Mounds was a ceremonial
center for thousands of American Indians.
http://www.gastateparks.org
(WSJ, 7/9/99, p.W2)
Stone Mountain was carved with depictions of Robert E. Lee,
Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B6)
77 Million BP In 2005 it was
reported that paleontologists had identified a new dinosaur species,
an early relative of Tyrannosaurus rex that roamed what is now the
Southeastern US about this time. The scientists made the
identification from hundreds of fossilized fragments collected
mostly in Montgomery County, Ala., and southwestern Georgia. They
named the new dinosaur Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis, which means
"the Appalachian lizard from Montgomery County." The 25-foot-long
creature roamed the earth 10 million years before T. rex and was
smaller and more primitive, with a narrower snout.
(AP, 4/16/05)
1540 Mar 9, Hernando de Soto
reached southern Georgia. He found the Indians there raising tame
turkeys, caged opossums, corn, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers and plums.
(ON, 4/01,
p.5)(www.floridahistory.com/inset7.html)
1541 May 8, Spanish explorer
Hernando de Soto discovered and crossed the Mississippi River, which
he called Rio de Espiritu Santo. He encountered the Cherokee
Indians, who numbered about 25,000 and inhabited the area from the
Ohio River to the north to the Chattahoochee in present day Georgia,
and from the valley of the Tennessee east across the Great Smoky
Mountains to the Piedmont of the Carolinas.
(NG, 5/95, p.78)(AP, 5/8/97)(HN, 5/8/99)
1606 Dona Maria, a Timucuan
Indian woman, inherited the position of chief of San Pedro de Mocama
on Cumberland Island, Georgia. She had been chief of Nombre de Dios,
a Spanish Franciscan mission town in Florida.
(AM, 7/01, p.22)
1696 Dec 22, James Oglethorpe,
General, author, colonizer of Georgia, was born in England.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1732 Jun 9, Royal charter for
Georgia was granted to James Oglethorpe.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1733 Feb 12, English colonists
led by James Oglethorpe founded Savannah, Ga. Gen. James Edward
Oglethorpe sailed up the Savannah River with 144 English men, women
and children and in the name of King George II chartered the Georgia
Crown Colony. He created the town of Savannah, to establish an ideal
colony where silk and wine would be produced, based on a grid of
streets around six large squares.
(SFC, 6/25/95, p.T-7)(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T4)(AP,
2/12/98)
1742 Jul 7, A Spanish force
invading Georgia ran headlong into the colony's British defenders. A
handful of British and Spanish colonial troops faced each other on a
Georgia coastal island and decided the fate of a colony.
(HN, 5/3/98)(HN, 7/7/99)
1742 General James Edward
Oglethorpe led a victory over the Spanish at Bloody Marsh on St.
Simons Island off the coast of Georgia.
(SFC, 4/28/96, p.T-7)
1743 Gen’l. James Oglethorpe of
England departed Georgia following some small scandal.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T4)
1749 Oct 26, The Georgia Colony
reversed itself and ruled slavery to be legal.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1763 A Crown grant was made to
Henry Laurens of Georgia, who later succeeded John Hancock as
president of the Continental Congress in 1777. Laurens obtained
control of the South Altamaha river lands and named it New Hope
Plantation.
(AP, 8/30/09)
1778 Dec 29, British troops,
attempting a new strategy to defeat the colonials in America,
captured Savannah, the capital of Georgia.
(HN, 12/29/98)
1779 Feb 14, American Loyalists
were defeated by Patriots at Kettle Creek, Ga.
(HN, 2/14/98)
1779 Oct 11, Polish nobleman
General Casimir Pulaski was killed while fighting for American
independence during the Revolutionary War Battle of Savannah, Ga.
Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski had come to America in 1777. In 2005 an
attempt to confirm his remains using DNA was inconclusive.
(AP, 10/11/97)(AH, 10/04, p.15)(AP, 6/24/05)
1785 The University of Georgia
was the first state university chartered, in 1785, but was not
established until 1801. The University of North Carolina was
chartered in 1789 and was the first state university in the U.S. to
begin instruction, in 1795.
(HNQ, 12/3/01)
1786 Jun 19, Gen. Nathanael
Greene died of sunstroke at his Georgia plantation. In 1960 Theodore
Thayer authored “Nathanael Greene, Strategist of the American
Revolution.” In 1973 William Johnson authored “Life and
Correspondence of Nathanael Greene.”
(ON, 12/01, p.12)
1788 Jan 2, Georgia became the
fourth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AP, 1/2/98)
1788 Jan 20, The pioneer
African Baptist church was organized in Savannah, Ga.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1801 Mar 3, 1st US Jewish
Governor, David Emanuel, took office in Georgia.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1812 Feb 11, Alexander Hamilton
Stephens (d.1883), Vice Pres (Confederacy), was born near
Crawfordville, Georgia. Stephens, who served in the U.S. House of
Representatives from 1843 to 1859, was a delegate at the Montgomery
meeting that formed a new union of the seceded states. He was
elected vice president to Jefferson Davis on February 9, 1861.
Stephens was later elected governor of Georgia in 1882 but died
after serving just a few months.
(HNQ, 5/24/98)(MC, 2/11/02)
1817 Dec 16, The Georgia
legislature enacted laws that defined the common boundary with
Tennessee and created a boundary commission to jointly survey and
mark the state border.
(www.profsurv.com/archive.php?article=1215&issue=86)
1818 Jun 1, Mathematician James
Camak demarcated the border between Georgia and Tennessee. Due to a
faulty sextant and bad astronomical charts he drew the line a mile
south of the intended boundary, the 35th parallel.
(Econ, 3/15/08,
p.42)(www.profsurv.com/archive.php?article=1215&issue=86)
1819 May 26, The first
steam-propelled vessel to attempt a trans-Atlantic crossing, the
Savannah, departed from Savannah, Ga., May 26 and arrived in
Liverpool, England, Jun 20.
(AP, 5/22/97)
1819 Jun 20, The paddle-wheel
steamship Savannah arrives in Liverpool, England, after a voyage of
27 days and 11 hours--the first steamship to successfully cross the
Atlantic.
(HN, 6/20/01)
1819 In Savannah Chatham
Artillery Punch was served to Pres. James Monroe. It was a
concoction of Catawba, rum, gin, brandy, rye whiskey, strong tea,
brown sugar, Benedictine, juices of oranges and lemons, Maraschino
cherries and champagne.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T4)
1823 Dec 19, Georgia passed the
1st US state birth registration law.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1825 Feb 12, Creek Indian
treaty signed. Tribal chiefs agreed to turn over all their land in
Georgia to the government and migrate west by Sept 1, 1826.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1831-1892 The 16 1/2 mile Savannah-Ogeechee
Canal was built by slaves and Irish workers to transport cotton and
timber between the 2 rivers. Plans for restoration of the canal were
made in 1998.
(SFEC, 8/23/98, p.T3)
1835 Dec 30, Cherokees were
forced to move across the Mississippi River after gold was
discovered in Georgia. A minority faction of Cherokee agreed to the
emigration of the whole tribe from their lands by signing the Treaty
of New Echota. The Treaty of New Echota resulted in the cession of
all Cherokee land to the U.S. and provided for the transportation of
the Cherokee Indians to land beyond the Mississippi. The removal of
the Cherokee was completed by 1838.
(NG, 5/95, p.86)(HNQ, 6/21/98)(MC, 12/30/01)
1840 The US state of Georgia by
this time had over 280,000 slaves with many working as field hands.
By the start of Civil War slaves made up over 40% of the
state’s population.
(SFC, 1/4/11, p.E2)
1842 Sidney Lanier (d.1881),
poet, was born in Macon.
(WSJ, 3/13/00, p.A24)
1845 Dec 27, Ether was 1st used
in childbirth in US at Jefferson, Ga.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1848 Dec 21, William Craft and
his wife Ellen, slaves to separate masters, escaped under disguise
from Macon, Georgia, and made there way to Philadelphia. In 1860
Craft authored “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom.”
(ON, 10/04, p.10)
1848 The Andrew Low House was
built on Abercorn St. of stuccoed brick, elaborate iron-caste
railings and shuttered piazzas.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)
1851 Aug 14, Doc Holliday was
born in Griffin, GA.
(MesWP)
1857 Sep 12, A wooden-hulled
steamship, the SS Central America under Capt. William L. Herndon,
sank off the coast of Georgia. The ship carried 21 tons of gold from
California to New York and 425 of 528 passengers were drowned. The
wreck was in 8,000 feet of water and in 1987-1988 salvage operations
were begun by Tommy Thompson. He hauled in $500 million worth of
gold bars, coins and nuggets. After a court battle he was awarded
92% of the gold. The story is told in the 1998 book “Ship of Gold in
the Deep Blue sea” by Gary Kinder. The loss of the gold sparked “The
Panic of 1857.” The SS Central America sank off Cape Romain, SC.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.W3)(WSJ, 6/19/98, p.W9)(SFEC,
6/28/98, BR p.3)(WSJ, 12/3/99, p.W16)(WSJ, 1/28/00, p.B1)(ON, 7/01,
p.2)(MC, 9/12/01)
1857 Nov 9, Atlantic Monthly
magazine was 1st published.
(MC, 11/9/01)
1860 Nov, Abraham Lincoln won
the US presidential elections with a majority of the electoral votes
in a 4-way race. Following his election South Carolina seceded from
the Union followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana and Texas.
(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)
1861 Jan 3, US Ft. Pulaski
& Ft. Jackson, Savannah, were seized by Georgia.
(MC, 1/3/02)
1861 Jan 19, Georgia became the
5th state to secede from the Union.
(AP, 1/19/98)(HN, 1/19/99)
1861 Feb 4, Delegates from six
southern states met in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate
States of America. They included Mississippi, Florida, Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. They elected Jefferson Davis as
president of Confederacy.
(AP, 2/4/97)(ON, 11/00, p.1)
1862 Apr 10, Union forces began
the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.
(HN, 4/10/99)
1862 Apr 11, Rebels surrendered
Ft Pulaski, Georgia.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1862 Apr 12, Union volunteers
from Ohio, led by Lt. James J. Andrews, stole a Confederate train
near Marietta, Ga. They were caught 89 miles up the track. 8 of the
24 raiders were hanged that summer. 8 others escaped and made their
way north. The episode inspired Buster Keaton’s 1927 comedy "The
General." In 1956 Disney retold the story in “The Great Locomotive
Chase” with Fess Parker. In 2006 Russell S. Bonds authored “Stealing
the General.”
(AP, 4/12/00)(WSJ, 11/10/06, p.W4)(ON, 8/08,
p.10)
1862 Apr 12, Union troops
occupied Fort Pulaski, Georgia.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1862 Jun 7, James J. Andrews
(b.1829), civilian Union spy, was hanged in Atlanta for leading the
April 12 Union raid in Georgia that stole the locomotive “General”
in an effort to disrupt Confederate transport. On June 18 seven
other Union men were hanged for the raid.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Andrews)
1862 Jul 20-Sep 20, A guerrilla
campaign in GA (Porter's & Poindexter's) left US 580 and CS
2,866 casualties.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1862-1864 The C.S. Arsenal at Findlay Iron Works
in Macon manufactured about 80 1,500-pound bronze canon.
(SFC, 5/30/00, p.A6)
1863 Feb 28, Four Union
gunboats destroyed the CSS Nashville near Fort McAllister, Ga.
Popular during the Crimean War, the floating battery was revived by
hard-pressed Confederates because the popular gunboats were not
capable of doing the things that the batteries could do.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1863 Mar 3, Federal ironclad
ships bombed Fort McAllister, Georgia.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1863 Aug 16, Chickamauga
campaign took place in GA. Union General William S. Rosecrans moved
his army south from Tullahoma, Tennessee to attack Confederate
forces in Chattanooga.
(HN, 8/16/99)(MC, 8/16/02)
1863 Sep 9, The Union Army of
the Cumberland passed through Chattanooga as they chased after the
retreating Confederates.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1863 Sep 18, Union cavalry
troops clashed with a group of Confederates at Chickamauga Creek.
(HN, 9/18/99)
1863 Sep 19, In Georgia, the
two-day Battle of Chickamauga began as Union troops under George
Thomas clashed with Confederates under Nathan Bedford Forrest.
(HN, 9/19/98)
1863 Sep 20, Union troops under
George Thomas prevented the Union defeat at Chickamauga from
becoming a rout, earning him the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga.”
Thomas stayed and fought even after his commander, William
Rosecrans, retreated to Chattanooga. President Abraham Lincoln later
appointed Thomas as Rosecrans‘ successor. Armed with their new,
lethal seven-shot Spencer rifles, Wilder’s Lightning Brigade was all
that stood between the Union Army and the looming disaster at
Chickamauga Creek. The bloody battle of Chickamauga was the
costliest two-day battle of the entire war.
(HN, 9/20/98)(HN, 11/4/98)(HNQ, 9/29/00)
1864 Feb 22-27, Battle at
Dalton, Georgia.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1864 Feb 24-25, Battle of
Tunnel Hill, GA (Buzzard's Roost).
(MC, 2/24/02)
1864 Feb 27, The 6th and last
day of battle at Dalton, Georgia, (about 600 casualties).
(MC, 2/27/02)
1864 Feb 27, The first Union
prisoners arrived at Camp Sumter prison near Andersonville, Georgia.
It was designed for 6,000 prisoners but by summer’s end held 33,000.
After enduring the hardship of being held in the South's
Andersonville and Cahaba prison camps, A terrible disaster befell
hundreds of Union soldiers who were being shipped home on the
steamer Sultana at the end of the Civil War. The setting was made
into a film for TV by John Frankheimer in 1996 based on an original
script by David Rintels. Of the 45,000 Union prisoners of war that
were brought to Andersonville, 29% i.e. 12,914, died there. In 1971
it became a National Park Service site.
(WSJ, 2/26/96, p.A-10)(SFC, 4/28/96, p.T-10)(HN,
2/27/98)(AH, 10/02, p.20)
1864 Apr 17, There was a bread
revolt in Savannah, Georgia.
(MC, 4/17/02)
1864 May 1, Atlanta campaign,
GA.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1864 May 5, Atlanta Campaign: 5
days fighting began at Rocky Face Ridge.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1864 May 6, General Sherman
began to advance on Atlanta.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1864 May 8, The Atlanta
Campaign saw severe fighting at Rocky Face Ridge.
(HN, 5/8/98)
1864 May 9, Battle of Dalton,
GA.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1864 May 13, Battle of Resaca
commenced as Union General Sherman fought towards Atlanta.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/98)
1864 May 16, In the Atlanta
Campaign, the battle of Resaca, begun May 13, ended.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1864 May 17, The Battle of
Adairsville, Georgia, resulted in a Confederate retreat.
(HN, 5/17/98)
1864 May 25, Battle of New Hope
Church, Ga. Joseph E. Johnston tried to halt Sherman’s advance on
Atlanta at the Hell Hole.
(SC, 5/25/02)(AM, 11/04, p.28)
1864 Jun 4, With Gen. Sherman
again flanking them, Confederates under General Joseph Johnston
retreated to the mountains before Marietta, Georgia.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1864 Jun 9, Battle of Kenesaw
Mountain, GA (Pine Mt, Pine Knob, Golgotha).
(MC, 6/9/02)
1864 Jun 14, At the Battle of
Pine Mountain, Georgia, Confederate General Leonidas Polk was killed
by a Union shell.
(HN, 6/14/98)
1864 Jun 17, General John B.
Hood replaced General Johnston as head of CSA troops around Atlanta.
(MC, 6/17/02)
1864 Jun 19, Skirmish at Pine
Knob, Georgia.
(DTnet, 6/19/97)
1864 Jun 27, General Sherman
was repulsed by Confederates at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in
the Atlanta Campaign.
(HN, 6/27/98)(SC, 6/27/02)
1864 Jul 3, Battle of
Chattahoochee River, GA, began and lasted until Jul 9.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1864 Jul 4-9, Battle at
Chattahoochee River, Georgia.
(MC, 7/4/02)
1864 Jul 6, Battle of
Chattahoochee River, GA.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1864 Jul 8, Confederate General
Joseph E. Johnston retreated into Atlanta to prevent being flanked
by Union General William T. Sherman.
(HN, 7/8/98)
1864 Jul 17, Confederate
President Jefferson Davis replaced General Joseph E. Johnston with
General John Bell Hood in hopes of defeating Union General William
T. Sherman outside Atlanta.
(HN, 7/17/98)
1864 Jul 20, Confederate
General John Bell Hood attacked Union forces under General William
T. Sherman outside Atlanta. Gen. Hood lashed out against the Union
right wing north of the city. Repulsed but undaunted, Hood turned to
strike the Federal left wing, Major General James B. McPherson’s
Army of the Tennessee, east of Atlanta. He deployed Major General
Benjamin F. Chatham’s corps northeast of the city and sent
Lieutenant General William J. Hardee's corps around McPherson’s left
flank with orders to crush the Army of the Tennessee on the morning
of July 22. Both corps were then to assail the rest of Sherman’s
host. Battle of Peachtree Creek was part of the Atlanta Campaign.
(HN, 7/20/98)(HNQ, 7/19/01)(MC, 7/20/02)
1864 Jul 18, Confederate Brig.
Gen. John Bell Hood (33), commanding a corps under Gen. Johnston,
was promoted to the temporary rank of full general, and given
command of the Army of Tennessee just outside the gates of Atlanta.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_Hood)
1864 Jul 22, The Battle of
Atlanta reached its peak when Confederate General John Bell Hood
launched an all-out attack on Union General William T. Sherman's
Army. Union General James McPherson was killed repulsing a
Confederate attack. The Federal officer who sent his men naked
against the enemy was Colonel James P. Brownlow of the 1st (Union)
Tennessee Cavalry. Casualties numbered 8449 conf, 3641 US.
(HN, 7/22/98)(MC, 7/22/02)
1864 Jul 26, Battle at Ezra
Chapel (Church), Georgia [Hood's Third Sortie].
(MC, 7/26/02)
1864 Jul 26-31, Riots took
place at McCook's to Lovejoy Station, and Stoneman's to Macon,
Georgia.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1864 Jul 28, Atlanta
Campaign-Battle of Ezra Church.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1864 Jul 29, Battle of Macon,
GA (Stoneman's Raid).
(MC, 7/29/02)
1864 Aug 10, Confederate
Commander John Bell Hood sent his cavalry north of Atlanta to cut
off Union General William Sherman's supply lines.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1864 Aug 14-16, Confederate
General Joe Wheeler besieged Dalton, Georgia.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1864 Aug 18, Union General
William T. Sherman sent General Judson Kilpatrick to raid
Confederate lines of communication outside Atlanta. The raid was
unsuccessful. Union General William Sherman considered Judson
Kilpatrick, his cavalry chief, 'a hell of a damn fool.'
(HN, 8/18/98)
1864 Aug 31, Atlanta
Campaign-Battle of Jonesboro Georgia, 1900 casualties.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1864 Sep 1, Confederate forces
under General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta in anticipation of
the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman's troops.
(HN, 9/1/99)
1864 Sep 1, 2nd day of battle
at Jonesboro, Georgia, left some 3,000 casualties.
(MC, 9/1/02)
1864 Sep 2, During the Civil
War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman's forces occupied Atlanta.
(AP, 9/2/97)
1864 Sep 11, A 10-day truce was
declared between generals Sherman and Hood so civilians could leave
Atlanta, Georgia.
(HN, 9/11/98)
1864 Sep 28, Union General
William Rosecrans blamed his defeat at Chickamauga on two of his
subordinate generals. They were later exonerated by a court of
inquiry.
(HN, 9/28/98)
1864 Oct, Georgia’s Camp Lawton
opened to replace the Andersonville Confederate prison. The new
Confederate camp lasted barely 6 weeks before Sherman’s army arrived
and burned it. In 2010 A Georgia Southern Univ. graduate student
found the site and associated artifacts.
(SFC, 8/19/10, p.A8)
1864
Nov 10, Kingston, Ga., was burned as the first act of Sherman's
March to Sea. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman had made the city his
headquarters as he planned to lay waste the south over the next six
weeks.
(www.ourgeorgiahistory.com/chronpop/2606)
1864
Nov 11, Sherman's troops destroyed Rome, Georgia. Gen. Sherman
(1820-1891) ordered Gen. John Murray Corse’s (1835-1893) troops to
destroy Rome, Georgia, and “everything that could be useful to an
enemy.”
(www.civilwarhome.com/shermangeorgia.htm)
1864 Nov 15, Union Major
General William T. Sherman’s troops set fires that destroyed much of
Atlanta.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1864 Nov 16, Union Gen. William
T. Sherman and his troops departed Atlanta and began their "March to
the Sea" during the Civil War.
(AP, 11/1697)(HN, 11/16/98)
1864 Nov 21-22, Battle at
Griswoldville, Georgia.
(MC, 11/21/01)
1864 Nov 22, Battle at
Griswoldville, Georgia, ended after 650 casualties.
(MC, 11/22/01)
1864 Nov 23-25, The Battle at
Ball's Ferry, Georgia, left 30 casualties.
(MC, 11/23/01)
1864 Nov 25, Confederates
retreated at Sandersville, Georgia.
(MC, 11/25/01)
1864 Nov 26, Skirmish at Sylvan
Brutal and Waynesboro, Georgia.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1864 Nov 27, 2nd day of Battles
at Waynesboro, Georgia.
(MC, 11/27/01)
1864 Nov 28, 3rd day of Battles
at Waynesboro and Jones's Plantation, Georgia.
(MC, 11/28/01)
1864 Nov 29, 4th and last day
of skirmishes took place at Waynesboro, Georgia.
(MC, 11/29/01)
1864 Dec 1, Skirmish at Millen
Brutal, Georgia.
(MC, 12/1/01)
1864 Dec 2, Skirmish at Rocky
Creek Church, Georgia.
(MC, 12/2/01)
1864 Dec 4, Battle of
Waynesborough (Brier Creek) Ga.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1864 Dec 10, General Sherman's
armies reached Savannah and a 12 day siege began.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1864 Dec 13, Battle of Ft.
McAllister, Ga.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1864 Dec 20, Confederate forces
evacuated Savannah, Ga., as Union Gen. William T. Sherman continued
his "March to the Sea."
(AP, 12/20/97)
1864 Dec 22, During the Civil
War, Gen’l. Sherman telegraphed Pres. Lincoln from Georgia, saying:
"I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah
with 150 guns and plenty of ammunition." In 2008 Noah Andre Trudeau
authored “Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the
Sea.”
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T4)(AP, 12/22/97)(WSJ, 8/4/08,
p.A11)
1864 During the Battle of
Dunlap Hill a Union cannonball lodged into the side of a house in
Macon that later became known as the Cannonball House and Museum.
(SFC, 5/30/00, p.A6)
1865 Jan 16, General Sherman
began a march through the Carolinas. Sherman issued an order that
set aside land in Georgia and South Carolina for freed slaves.
(HN, 1/16/99)(SFC, 6/20/00, p.A6)
1865 Feb, Major General William
Tecumseh Sherman had made a swift and steady advance through Georgia
and South Carolina, and by late February 1865, his army was
approaching Charlotte, North Carolina.
(HN, 2/8/98)
1865 Mar 22, Raid at Wilson's:
Chickasaw, AL, to Macon, GA.
(MC, 3/22/02)
1865 Apr 13, Union forces under
Gen. Sherman began their devastating march through Georgia.
Overconfident and overextended, the Union Army of the Cumberland
advanced into the deep woods of northwest Georgia.
(HN, 4/13/98)
1865 May 10, Confederate Pres.
Jefferson Davis was captured by Union troops in Irwinville, Georgia.
(HN, 5/10/98)(AP, 5/10/08)
1865 May, The Confederate
prison at Camp Sumter, Georgia, was shut down, but stories about it
sparked outrage in the North.
(AH, 10/02, p.71)
1865 Aug, A national military
cemetery was dedicated at Andersonville, Georgia, by Clara Barton
and the Red Cross for the 13,000 men who died at Camp Sumter.
(AHHT, 10/02, p.22)
1865
Nov 10, Captain Henry Wirz (b.1822), commandment of Camp Sumter,
Ga., (known as “Andersonville” by the North) was hanged outside
Washington, D.C., after being found guilty of war crimes.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USACWwirz.htm)(AHHT, 10/02, p.22)
1866 Apr 2, Pres. ended war in
Ala, Ark, Fla, Ga, Miss, La, NC, SC, Ten & Va.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1868 Jun 25, Florida, Alabama,
Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina were
re-admitted to the Union.
(AP, 6/25/97)
1870 Jul 15, Georgia became the
last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.
(AP, 7/15/97)
1872 A brick lighthouse was
erected on St. Simons Island off the US coast of Georgia. The island
is one of 4 barrier islands called the Golden Isles.
(SSFC, 2/11/07, p.G7)
1875 Amos G. Rhodes opened his
first retail furniture store in Atlanta, Ga. The company expanded to
80 stores in 13 states, but went bankrupt in 2005.
(SFC, 9/19/06, p.G3)
1876 The state capital was
moved from Milledgeville, originally designed to be the state
capital, to Atlanta.
(SFEC, 7/16/00, Z1 p.2)
1881 Aug 13, The first
African-American nursing school opened at Spelman College in
Atlanta, Georgia.
(HN, 8/13/98)
1882 Alexander Hamilton
Stephens was elected governor of Georgia but died after serving just
a few months.
(HNQ, 5/24/98)
1885 Nov, Atlanta, Georgia,
voted to become a dry city effective July, 1886.
(www.sodamuseum.bigstep.com/generic.jhtml?pid=1)
1885 "Pemberton’s French Wine
Coca" made its premier In Dr. Jacob's pharmacy in Atlanta. John
Stith Pemberton refined the wine-based drink and Coca-Cola, the
future symbol of "the American way of life," made its debut in 1886.
(AP, 5/3/03)(http://cocaine.org/coca-cola/)
1886 Mar 29, Coca-Cola was
advertised for the first time in the Atlanta Daily. Its inventor,
Dr. John Pemberton, claimed it could cure anything from hysteria to
the common cold. John Stith (Doc) Pemberton, pharmacist, concocted a
bath of a dark, sugary syrup meant to be mixed with carbonated water
and sold at the city’s soda fountains. This was the beginning of
Coca Cola, which then contained enough cocaine to give the a drinker
a buzz and more caffeine than the drink contains today. Sales at the
soda fountain of Jacob‘s Pharmacy averaged 9 drinks a day in the
first year. The story is told by Frederick Allen in his book “Secret
Formula.” The drink was named by Frank Robinson and he created its
signature script logo. [see May 8]
(www.sodamuseum.bigstep.com/generic.jhtml?pid=1)
1886 May 8, Atlanta pharmacist
John Stith Pemberton invented the flavor syrup for Coca-Cola, which
contained cocaine. The name for the soft drink came from his
bookkeeper, Frank Robinson. Sales of Coca-Cola at the soda fountain
of Jacob‘s Pharmacy averaged 9 drinks a day in the first year. [see
Mar 29]
(AP, 5/8/97)(HN,
5/8/98)(www.sodamuseum.bigstep.com/generic.jhtml?pid=1)
1889-1973 Conrad Potter Aiken, American poet, was
born (Aug 5) and died (Aug 17) in Savannah, and was buried in the
Boneventure Cemetery.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)
1892 Jan 18, Oliver Hardy,
member of Laurel and Hardy comedy duo who starred in numerous films,
was born in Harlem, Ga.
(HN, 1/18/99)(MC, 1/18/02)
1893 Oct 27, Hurricane hit the
US coast between Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, SC.
(MC, 10/27/01)
1893 Dec 20, The 1st state
anti-lynching statute was approved in Georgia.
(MC, 12/20/01)
1895 Mar 18, Some 200 blacks
left Savannah, Ga., for Liberia.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1899 Apr 23, Some 2000 people
gathered to watch the lynching Sam Hose, a black man questionably
accused of murdering a white planter and raping his wife. His ears,
fingers, and genitals were cut off and his face was skinned before
he was burned in kerosene soaked wood. His and other stories were
later told in the 1998 book: “Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in
the Age of Jim Crow” by Leon F. Litwack.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, BR p.4)
1901 Apr 5, Melvyn Douglas,
[Hesselberg], actor (Hud, Ghost Story), was born in Macon, Ga.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1904 Dec 28, Farmers in Georgia
burned two million bales of cotton to prop up falling prices.
(HN, 12/28/98)
1905 Sep 22, Race riot in
Atlanta, Georgia killed 10 blacks and 2 whites.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1905 Alonzo Herndon, a former
slave, purchased two black benevolent associations for $140 and
created Atlanta Mutual, which sold burial insurance to Atlanta’s
black community. The company grew to become Atlanta Life Financial
Group.
(WSJ, 5/3/08, p.A8)
1906 Sep 22, Race riots in
Atlanta, Georgia, killed 21 people. In 2001 Mark Bauerlein authored
“Negrophobia,” an account of the riots.
(HN, 9/22/98)(WSJ, 6/12/01, p.A20)
1908 Oct, Georgia’s nearly
all-white electorate voted by a 2 to 1 margin to abolish its system
of peonage as of March 1909.
(WSJ, 3/29/08, p.W8)
1909 May 17, White firemen on
Georgia RR struck to protest the hiring of blacks.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1909 Nov 18, John Herndon
Mercer [Johnny Mercer] (d.1976), songwriter, was born in Savannah,
Ga. John Herndon Mercer died on Jun 25, 1976, and was buried in
Boneventure Cemetery in Savannah, Ga.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)(HN, 11/18/00)
1911 The will of Sen Augustus
Bacon called for a whites-only park on donated land. In 1970 a court
ruled that the park should revert to Bacon's heirs.
(SFC, 12/4/99, p.A3)
1912 Mar 12, Juliette Gordon
Low organized the Girl Guides, which later became the Girl Scouts of
America, at the 1848 Andrew Low House in Savannah, Ga. The US
Congress chartered the Girl Scouts in 1950.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)(USAT, 3/23/04, p.1D)(AP,
3/12/08)
1913 Apr 14, Mary Phagan (13)
was found killed at an Atlanta pencil factory. She had stopped to
pick up her check on her way to Peachtree Street to see a
Confederate Memorial Day Parade. Leo Frank (29), a Jewish factory
manager, was falsely accused of raping and murdering the young girl.
Georgia Gov. John M. Slaton later commuted Frank’s sentence to life,
but a vigilante crowd dragged him out of prison and lynched him on
Aug 17. In 1968 Leonard Dinnerstein authored “The Leo Frank Case.”
The story is covered in the 1997 novel "The Old Religion" by David
Mamet. In 1998 the musical "Parade" was produced based on the Frank
lynching.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.6)(WSJ, 12/22/98, p.A16)(WSJ,
6/9/00, p.A12)(WSJ, 1/17/09, p.W8)
1913 Aug 9, Herman Eugene
Talmadge (d.2002), later state governor and US Senator, was born.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1914 Dec 30, Bert Parks,
[Jacobson], TV host (Miss America), was born in Atlanta, Ga.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1915 Aug 17, Leo Frank, a
Jewish factory manager, was lynched by a mob of anti-Semites in Cob
County, Georgia. He had been convicted in the killing of Mary
Phagan, a 13-year-old girl who worked at his pencil factory. The
governor believed him innocent and commuted his death sentence in
June. The state of Georgia pardoned Frank in 1986. In 2000 Stephen
Goldfarb posted the names of some 2 dozen men believed to have
participated in the murder.
(WSJ, 6/9/00, p.A1)(AP, 8/17/02)(AP, 3/11/06)
1915 Sep 30, Lester Garfield
Maddox, (Gov-D-Ga) restaurant owner and ax handle wielder
segregationist, was born.
(MC, 9/30/01)
1915 Dec 4, Ku Klux Klan
received a charter from Fulton County, Ga.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1915 Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941)
signed on about this time with the United Daughter of the
Confederacy to carve a memorial at Stone Mountain in Georgia and
soon rose to the high ranks of the newly resurgent KKK. The project
started in 1918 but was postponed by WWI and resumed in 1922. He was
fired from the project in 1925. His carving was later removed and
replaced by sculptor Augustus Lukeman. In 1927 Borglum began the
Mount Rushmore presidential memorial.
(SSFC, 9/9/07, p.C4)(ON, 2/11, p.10)
1915 The Knights of Mary Phagan
set fire to a cross atop a granite mountain 16 miles east of
Atlanta. The event became a rallying cry for the KKK.
(WSJ, 6/9/00, p.A12)
1915 Ku Klux Klansmen held a
formative assembly at the town of Stone Mountain.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B6)
1916 Oct 7, In the most
lopsided victory in college football history, Georgia Tech defeated
Cumberland University of Lebanon, Tennessee, 222-0 in Atlanta.
(http://gtalumni.org/Publications/magazine/spr98/div11.html)
1917 Sep 8, Eugene Bullard,
aviator, was born in Columbus, Georgia. He emigrated to France and
became the first African-American combat aviator when he flew a
reconnaissance mission over the city of Metz, France. He was
credited with one confirmed "kill," a German Pfalz he shot down over
Verdun.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1917 Dec 18, Ossie Davis,
actor, playwright (Hot Stuff, Man Called Adam), was born in Cogdell,
Ga.
(MC, 12/18/01)
1920s In the early 1920s Col.
J.G. Boswell, a cotton farmer from Georgia whose business was ruined
by the boll weevil, arrived in California and began to acquire land
in the central valley. The Boswell family took advantage of federal
programs to stop droughts and floods and helped get the Army Corps
of Engineers to drain Lake Tulare. In 2003 Mark Arax and Rick
Wartzman authored "The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the
Making of a Secret American Empire."
(Econ, 10/18/03, p.82) (SFC, 11/11/03, p.D1)
1922 Oct 3, Rebecca L. Felton,
D-Ga., became the first woman to be seated in the U.S. Senate. (Mrs.
Felton had been appointed to serve out the remaining term of Sen.
Thomas E. Watson.)
(AP, 10/3/97)
1922 Nov 21, Rebecca L. Felton
of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S.
Senate.
(AP, 11/21/97)
1924 Oct 1, Jimmy Carter (James
Earl), 39th president of the U.S. (1977-1981), was born in Plains,
Georgia.
(SFEC, 1/12/97, Z3 p.3)(HN, 10/1/98)(MC,
10/1/01)
1924 The 600-room Biltmore
Hotel in Atlanta opened. It was developed by William Candler, the
youngest son of Coca Cola founder Asa Candler. It was designed in a
neo-Georgian style by New York architect Leonard Schultze. It closed
in 1982 and was planned for renovation as an office complex in 1998.
It was listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.
(WSJ, 2/4/98, p.B8)
1924 The electric chair
replaced hanging as the means of execution.
(SFC, 2/22/00, p.A5)
1925 Feb 8, Marcus Garvey
entered federal prison in Atlanta.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 Mar 25, Flannery O'Connor
(d.1964), novelist and short story writer, was born in Savannah,
Georgia.
(www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-498)(WUD, 1994
p.997)
1926 Feb 9, Teaching theory of
evolution was forbidden in Atlanta, Georgia, schools.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1927 Aug 18, Rosalynn Smith
Carter, 1st lady (1977-1981), was born in Plains, Georgia.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1927 Alonzo Herndon, black
Atlanta businessman, died. In 2002 Carole Merritt authored “The
Herndons: An Atlanta Family.”
(WSJ, 8/28/02, p.D8)
1928 May 3, James Brown, "The
Godfather of Soul," was born in Augusta, Georgia. The singer is best
remembered for the song "I Feel Good." [see May 3, 1933]
(HN, 5/3/99)(MC, 5/3/02)
1929 Jan 15, Martin Luther King
Jr. (d1968), American Baptist Minister and Civil Rights leader, was
born in Atlanta, Georgia. He won the Nobel Peace prize in 1964 and
was assassinated in 1968. Dr. King began his involvement in the
civil rights movement in 1955 with his leadership of the Montgomery
bus boycott, which ended segregated seating on city buses. Adopting
Mohandas K. Gandhi's principles of nonviolence, King led
demonstrations, sit-ins and boycotts in cities throughout the South
to show the injustice of racist policies. He explained his belief in
nonviolence in a letter written during one of his many
incarcerations: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a
crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has
constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It
seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be
ignored...." King's efforts helped to bring about the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Dr. King's leadership of the
civil rights movement brought many threats against his life and on
April 4, 1968, he was killed by a sniper's bullet in Memphis,
Tennessee. Martin Luther King Day was established by President
Ronald Reagan in 1986, for the third Monday in January. "Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." "A man can't ride your
back unless it's bent."
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AHD, p.721)(AP, 4/3/97)(AP,
1/15/98)(HNPD, 1/15/99)
1929 Aug 7, Ruth
Carter-Stapleton, Pres. Carter’s sister, evangelist, was born in
Plains, Ga.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1930 Sep 23, Ray Charles
(d.2004), rhythm ‘n’ blues piano player and singer best known for
"Hit the Road Jack" and "Georgia on My Mind" was born in Albany,
Georgia. Stuart Gorrell wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Georgia
on My Mind" in 1930 with music by Hoagy Carmichael. It was declared
the state song of Georgia on April 24, 1979.
(HN, 9/23/98)(WSJ, 2/2/00,
p.W8)(www.promotega.org/vsu00011/georgia_book.htm)
1932 Feb 2, Al Capone was sent
to prison at Atlanta, Georgia, for "tax evasion."
(MC, 2/2/02)
1932 May 4,
Mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the
federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Capone was later transferred to
Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
(AP, 5/4/08)
1932 Jun 2, George W. Perry
(19), a Georgia farmer, caught a record 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth
bass with a Chubb Wiggle Fish lure. The record still stood in 2001.
(WSJ, 5/18/01, p.A1)
1933 May 3, James Brown,
American singer and songwriter, was born. [see May 3, 1928]
(HN, 5/3/01)
1933 Sep 25, 1st state
poorhouse opened in Smyrna, Georgia.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1934 The Augusta National Golf
Club in Augusta, Georgia, began hosting the Masters Tournament.
(Econ, 4/10/10, p.70)
1936 Feb 17, Jim Brown, NFL
fullback (Cleveland Browns), actor (Dirty Dozen), was born in Ga.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1936 Apr 6, A tornado killed
203 and injures 1,800 in Gainesville, Georgia.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1937 Mar 20, Jerry Reed,
singer, actor (Bat 21, Smokey & the Bandit), was born in
Atlanta, GA.
(MC, 3/20/02)
1937 Mar 29, Billy Carter,
brother of Pres Carter, was born in Plains, Georgia.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1937 Dr. Leroy Burney set up
the country’s first mobile venereal disease clinic in Brunswick, Ga.
(SFC, 8/5/98, p.A17)
1939 Mar 18, Georgia finally
ratified the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the
federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other
states to hold out, also accepted the Bill of Rights in this year.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1939 Dec 15, The motion picture
"Gone With the Wind" had its world premiere in Atlanta.
(AP, 12/15/97)
1940 Oglethorpe Univ. planted a
time capsule called the "Crypt of Civilization" that was scheduled
to be opened May 28, 8113. Souvenir medals were sold for $1 granted
holders free admittance to the 8113 opening. Dr. Thornwell Jacobs,
the "father of the modern time capsule,” and president of
Oglethorpe, calculated this date from the first fixed date in
history, 4241 B.C. when most historians believe the Egyptian
calendar was established. Exactly 6177 years had passed between 4241
B.C. and 1936 A.D., when Dr. Jacobs 1st proposed the project. He
projected the same period of time forward from 1936, arriving at the
year 8113 A.D. for the Crypt's opening.
(www.oglethorpe.edu/about_us/crypt_of_civilization/international_time_capsule_society.asp)
(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.D4)(WSJ, 1/5/05, p.B1)
1941 Jun 2, William Guest,
singer (Gladys Knight Show), was born in Atlanta, Ga.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1941 Jun 2, Stacy Keach, actor
(Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer), was born in Savannah, Ga.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1941 Sep 9, Otis Redding, rock
bassist (Sitting on the Dock of the Bay), was born in Dawson, Ga.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1945 Apr 12, Pres.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt the 32nd president of the United States,
died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Ga., at age 63.
Roosevelt, a polio victim confined to a wheelchair, spent a great
deal of time in the soothing waters of the resort. He succumbed to a
cerebral hemorrhage while posing for a portrait by Elizabeth
Shoumatoff at what came to be known as the Little White House in
Warm Springs, where the unfinished portrait remains on display. Lucy
Rutherford Mercer, his secret companion, was at his bedside. He was
succeeded by his Vice-President, Harry S. Truman. The 63-year-old
president had been at Warm Springs, Georgia, since March 28, resting
from the rigors of leading a nation at war. Roosevelt, left
paralyzed by polio in 1921, was elected to the nation's highest
office four times and is judged by historians to be among the
greatest American presidents. He was buried at the Roosevelt family
home in Hyde Park, New York. The period is covered in "Mr. Truman’s
War" (1996) by Robert Moskin. In 2001 "The New Dealer’s War,"
the 5th and last volume of the Roosevelt biography by Thomas Fleming
(d.1999) was published. In 2001 Kenneth S. Davis authored "FDR: The
War President." In 2003 Conrad Black, aka Lord Black of
Crossharbour, authored "Franklin Delano Roosevelt." In 2008 H. W.
Brands authored “”Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and
Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
(A & IP., ESM, p.167)(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A8)(SFC,
9/6.96, p.A10)(AP, 4/12/97)(HN, 4/11/99)(HNQ, 6/16/00)(WSJ, 4/26/01,
p.A18)(WSJ, 12/3/03, p.D12)(Econ, 11/1/08, p.95)
1945 Sep 11, Leo Kottke,
guitarist (Ice Water, Greenhouse), was born in Athens, Ga.
(MC, 9/11/01)
1945 Oct 26, Pat Conroy,
American writer (Great Santini, Prince of Tides), was born in
Atlanta, Georgia. His work included "Conrack" (1973; film, 1974;
stage musical, 1987); "The Great Santini" (1976; film, 1979); "The
Lords of Discipline" (1980; film, 1983); "The Prince of Tides"
(1986; film, 1991); and "Beach Music" (1995; film, 1997).
(www.patconroy.com/patconroy/biography.htm)
1945 Georgia denied clemency
and executed Lena Baker (44), a black maid, for the murder of E.B.
Knight. Knight had held her against her will in a grist mill and
threatened to shoot her if she tried to leave. She had been
sentenced to die following a one-day trial before an all-male jury.
In 2005 the Georgia Board of Pardons decided to pardon her.
(SFC, 8/16/05, p.A4)
1946 Jul 25, In Monroe,
Georgia, 2 black couples were killed by Ku Klux Klansmen. Pres.
Truman ordered an FBI investigation and 55 suspects were named in
the lynching of Roger and Dorothy Malcolm and George and Mae Murray
Dorsey, but no one was ever charged. Dorothy Malcolm was pregnant.
(SFC, 7/26/05, p.A5)
1946 Dec 7, A fire broke out at
the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, killing 119 people,
including hotel founder W. Frank Winecoff.
(AP, 12/7/04)
1946 Herman E. Talmadge took
over as state governor following the death of his father, a strident
racist.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1946 Lawrence D. Duke Sr.
(d.1999 at 86), ass't. state attorney general, successfully
campaigned against the state charter for the KKK and the Columbians
Inc., a virulent anti-black and anti-Jewish Klan offshoot.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.D6)
1947 May, Sam Turner shot and
killed Charlie Lipford and was sentenced to 5 years for voluntary
manslaughter. He was paroled after a year and jailed again for
burglary. In 1951 he walked off a work camp and never looked back
until a routine check rounded him up in 1997.
(SFC,12/10/97, p.A3)
1948 Herman E. Talmadge, was
elected governor.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1948 Herman E. Talmadge, was
re-elected governor to a full 4-year term.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1950 Nov 5, Billy Graham’s
“Hour of Decision” was first broadcast as a live radio program from
Atlanta, Georgia.
(http://www.billygraham.org/HOD_Index.asp)
1950s Marvin Griffin was the
governor in the late 50s.
(SFC,11/5/97, p.C5)
1953 Feb 19, Georgia approved
the 1st US literature censorship board.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1953 Dec 13, Ben Bernanke,
later head of the US Federal Reserve (2006), was born in Augusta,
Ga.
(SSFC, 1/29/06, p.J1)
1956 Artist George Beattie
painted a collection of 8 works depicting an idealized version of
Georgia farming. The murals included depictions of slaves harvesting
sugarcane and were hung in the lobby of the Georgia Dept. of
Agriculture. In 2011 a new agriculture commissioner ordered the
murals depicting slavery to be removed.
(SFC, 1/4/11, p.E2)
1956 The Georgia state flag
with its Confederate emblem was adopted under Gov. Marvin Griffin.
The emblem was added in part to protest federal attacks on
segregation.
(http://tinyurl.com/9b6pd)
1956 Herman E. Talmadge, former
governor, 1st ran for the US Senate and proclaimed: “God advocates
segregation.”
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1956 Lake Lanier (officially
Lake Sidney Lanier), a reservoir in the northern portion of the U.S.
state of Georgia, was created by the completion of Buford Dam on the
Chattahoochee River. It is also fed by the waters of the Chestatee
River. US Congress had authorized the construction of Buford Dam in
the mid-1940s.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lanier)(Econ,
9/18/10, p.44)
1957 Feb 14, The Georgia Senate
approved Sen Leon Butts' bill barring blacks from playing baseball
with whites.
(HN, 2/14/98)(MC, 2/14/02)
1958 Feb 5, A B-47 accidentally
dropped an unarmed thermonuclear bomb at the mouth of Georgia’s
Savannah River. It was never found.
(SFEC, 11/22/98, Par p.22)
1959 Levi Strauss set up a
jeans factory in Blue Ridge. It closed in 2002 and 400 jobs were
lost.
(SSFC, 6/16/02, p.G1)
1959 S. Ernest Vandiver began
serving as governor of Georgia (1959-1963). His campaign motto was
“No, not one,” meaning not one black child in a white school.
(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A3)
1960 Aug 7, Students staged
kneel-in demonstrations in Atlanta churches.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1960 Oct 19, Martin Luther King
Jr. was arrested in an Atlanta sit-in.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1960 Ray Charles made a hit
with "Georgia on My Mind."
(SSFC, 7/28/02, Par p.20)
1960 In Georgia the Cathedral
of the Holy Spirit began as a small church in the Little Five Points
neighborhood of Atlanta. Membership peaked at about 10,000 in the
1990s. By 2007 membership had fallen to about 1,500 in the wake of
sex scandals associated with founding Archbishop Earl Paulk (80).
(SFC, 11/20/07, p.A7)
1961 Jan 11, There was a race
riot at the University of Georgia.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1961 May 26, Civil rights
activist group Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was established
in Atlanta.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1961 Dec 12, Martin Luther King
Jr & 700 demonstrators were arrested in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1962 Feb 12, A bus boycott
started in Macon, Georgia.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1962 Jul 10, Martin Luther King
Jr. was arrested during a demonstration in Georgia.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1962 Jul 21, 160 civil right
activists were jailed after demonstration in Albany, Ga.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1962 Jul 27, Martin Luther King
Jr. was jailed in Albany, Georgia.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1962 Aug 15, Shady Grove
Baptist Church was burned in Leesburg, Georgia.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1962 Aug 22, Savannah, world's
1st nuclear powered ship, completed here maiden voyage from
Yorktown, Va., to Savannah, Ga.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1962 Sep 25, A Black church was
destroyed by fire in Macon, Georgia.
(MC, 9/25/01)
1962-1970 Ivan Allen Jr. (d.2003 at 92) served as
mayor of Atlanta following the retirement of William Hartsfield.
Allen desegregated city government the day he took office.
(SFC, 7/3/03, p.A25)
1963 Georgia Gov. S. Ernest
Vandiver Jr. (d.2005) left office. His decision not to defy federal
courts cleared the way for a peaceful integration of state schools.
(SFC, 2/24/05, p.B7)
1964 Jan 26, Eighty-four people
were arrested in a segregation protest in Atlanta.
(HN, 1/26/99)
1964 Aug 3, Flannery O'Connor
(b.1925), novelist and short story writer, died in Georgia of lupus,
an incurable, autoimmune disease. In 2009 Brad Gooch authored
“Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor.”
(www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-498)(Econ,
2/28/09, p.89)
1965 Dec 20, In the largest
U.S. drug bust to date, 209 lb. of heroin was seized in Georgia.
(HN, 12/20/98)
1966 Jan 10, Julian Bond was
denied a seat in Georgia legislature for opposing Vietnam War.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1966 Sep 6, A race riot took
place in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta, Ga., from Sep 6-11.
Blacks rioted after a suspected car thief is shot escaping a white
cop and 138 people were arrested with 35 injured. Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC's) Stokely Carmichael is
indicted for inciting a riot, and Julian Bond resigns from SNCC.
(www.theprimeone.com/archives/000113.html)
1966 Lester Maddox (d.2003) ran
for governor of Georgia against incumbent Howard H. Callaway. The
legislature voted 182-66 to give Maddux the governor's job after
neither received a majority.
(BS, 6/26/03, 5A)
1967 Jan 10, Segregationist
Lester Maddox was inaugurated as governor of Georgia.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1969 Apr 7,
The US Supreme Court in Stanley v. Georgia unanimously struck down
laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
(AP, 4/7/07)
1969 Jul 4, Some 140,000
attended the Atlanta Pop Festival featuring Led Zeppelin & Janis
Joplin.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_International_Pop_Festival_(1969))
1970 May 12, In Augusta,
Georgia, an overnight riot left 6 black men dead. Autopsies
confirmed that the six men killed were all shot in the back with
police-issued shotguns.
(www.socyberty.com/History/Augusta-Georgia-Riot-of-1970.237549)
1970 Ted Turner (b.1938) bought
an Atlanta UHF station and built it into the Turner Broadcasting
System. He had inherited his father’s billboard business in 1962.
(WSJ, 10/21/04,
p.D8)(www.wordiq.com/definition/Ted_Turner)
1971 Jan 12, Jimmy Carter
(b.1924) was sworn in as the 76th governor of Georgia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter)
1972 Mar 3, Sculpted figures of
Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, and Stonewall Jackson were completed
at Stone Mountain, GA.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Mountain)
1972 Jun 29, The US Supreme
Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty could
constitute "cruel and unusual punishment." The ruling prompted
states to revise their capital punishment laws. Four years later,
the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty for murder cases.
{USA, Supreme Court, GeorgiaUS}
(AP,
6/29/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furman_v._Georgia)
1972 Oct 23, Cumberland Island
off the coast of Georgia was established as a National Seashore.
(SFC, 4/28/96,
p.T-8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_Island_National_Seashore)
1973 Oct 16, Maynard Jackson
(1938-2003) was the elected 1st black mayor of Atlanta.
(www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/jackson-jr-maynard-1938-2003)
1973 Oct 18, Walt Kelly
(b.1913), US comic strip artist, died. He was notable for his comic
strip Pogo featuring characters that inhabited a portion of the
Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Kelly)
1973 The Atlanta school system
agreed to desegregate and Alonzo A. Crim (d.2000 at 71) became its
first African-American superintendent.
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.D5)
1973 The 6 members of the Alday
family were killed on their farm during a robbery in southwest
Georgia. In 2003 Carl Isaacs (49) was executed for his role in the
killings.
(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A7)
1973 In Georgia Ray Anderson
(1934-2011) left Milliken Carpet in LaGrange and founded his own
carpet firm, Interface, to produce the first free-lay carpet tiles
in America. In 1994, inspired by Paul Hawken’s book “The Ecology of
Commerce,” he shifted the company toward sustainability and soon
became known in environmental circles for his advanced and
progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability.
(Econ, 9/10/11, p.99)
1974 Apr 3, A series of 148
deadly tornadoes struck wide parts of the South and Midwest before
jumping across the border into Canada; some 330 people were killed
in 13 states: Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Total property damage was
estimated at $600 million. In 2007 Mark Levine authored “F5:
Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the
20th Century.”
(AP, 4/3/99)(WSJ, 9/13/01, p.B11)(SSFC, 9/4/05,
p.A7)(WSJ, 6/16/07, p.P10)
1974 Apr 4, Hank Aaron of the
Atlanta Braves tied Babe Ruth's home-run record by hitting his 714th
round-tripper in Cincinnati.
(HN, 4/4/98)(AP, 4/4/99)
1974 Apr 8, Hank Aaron of the
Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run in a game against the
Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth's record. The round-tripper
was off pitcher Al Downing.
(HN, 4/8/98)(AP, 4/8/07)
1974 Jun 30, Alberta King
(b.1903), mother of Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated in
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia by Marcus Chenault, a
twenty-one year old from Ohio who claimed that "all Christians are
my enemies."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Williams_King)
1976 Jan 6, Ted Turner
purchased the Atlanta Braves for reported $12 million.
(www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/S-Z/Turner-Ted-1938.html)
1976 Jun 25, John Herndon
Mercer [Johnny Mercer] (b.1909), songwriter, died. He was buried in
Boneventure Cemetery in Savannah, Ga. In 2004 Gene Lees authored the
biography “Portrait of Johnny.”
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.T5)(HN, 11/18/00)(WSJ,
11/26/04, p.W4)
1976 Nov 2, Former Georgia Gov.
(James Earl) Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald R.
Ford, becoming the 39th president and the first from the Deep South
since the Civil War.
(AP, 11/2/97)(HN, 11/2/98)
1976 The B-52 band formed in
Athens, Georgia. Cindy Wilson, Keith Strickland, Fred Schneider,
Kate Pierson and Ricky Wilson formed the band following a rum-buzzed
jam session.
(SSFC, 8/10/03, p.C10)
1976 Ronald Spivey killed an
off-duty Columbus police officer during a robbery. Spivey was
executed by injection in 2002.
(SFC, 1/25/02, p.A3)
1976 Bennigan’s, an
Irish-themed restaurant was founded in Atlanta. During the 1990s it
expanded across the country and became part of the Metromedia
Restaurant Group. In 2008 Metromedia filed for bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 7/30/08, p.B1)
1977 Nov 6, In Georgia, USA, 39
people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of
water through Toccoa Falls Bible College.
(AP, 11/6/97)
1978 Mar 6, Larry Flynt,
founder of “Hustler Magazine,” was shot and wounded outside a
Georgia courtroom. His story was told in a 1996 film “The People vs.
Larry Flynt.”
(SFEC, 12/15/96, DB p.41)(MC, 3/6/02)
1979 Jan 10, Billy Carter, the
brother of US Pres. Jimmy Carter, made allegedly anti-Semitic
remarks. Billy eventually registered as a foreign agent of the
Libyan government and received a $220,000 loan. This led to a Senate
hearing over alleged influence peddling which some in the press
dubbed "Billygate."
(http://tinyurl.com/2krnv2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Carter)
1979 Apr 24, The hit song
"Georgia on My Mind," written in 1930 with lyrics by Stuart Gorrell
and music by Hoagy Carmichael, was declared the state song of
Georgia. Georgia-born singer Ray Charles (1930-2004) made the song
famous.
(www.promotega.org/vsu00011/georgia_book.htm)
1979 Jul 6, The B-52s, a New
Wave band based in Athens, Georgia, released "Planet Claire."
(SFEC, 1/3/99, DB
p.29)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_B-52's_(album))
1980 Jul 23, The US Senator
Judiciary Committee was reported to be officially joining those
investigating allegations of misconduct in Billy Carter's
relationship with Libya.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1980-7/1980-07-23-ABC-2.html)
1980 Oct 10, The Martin Luther
King, Jr. Historic Site, a 23 acre area in Atlanta, Ga., listed as a
National Historic Landmark on May 5, 1977, was made a National
Historic Site by the US Department of the Interior. The area where
Dr. King was entombed is located on Freedom Plaza and surrounded by
the Freedom Hall Complex of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for
Nonviolent Social Change, Inc.
(www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs218.html)
1980 Nov 19, T.J. Palmer and
her husband Bill opened the first Applebee’s restaurant in Atlanta,
Georgia. T.J. Applebee’s Rx for Edibles & Elixirs became popular
and they soon opened a second one. In 1983 they sold them to W.R.
Grace which passed the brand in 1988 to franchisees in Kansas City,
who took the chain public.
(WSJ, 6/28/07,
p.A13)(http://applebees-founder.com/history2.htm)
1980 Sen. Herman E. Talmadge
lost his bid for 5th term as US Senator. He lost to Republican Matt
Mattingly.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1980 Sue Savage-Rumbaugh in
1998 wrote “Apes, Language, and the Human Mind.” It was based on her
work with Kanzi, a bonobo ape, that began in 1980 at the Georgia
State Univ. Language Research Center.
(SFEC, 7/19/98, BR p.8)
1981 May 2, In Savannah, Ga.,
Jim Williams shot and killed his younger, redneck boyfriend. Clint
Eastwood based his 1997 film “Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil” on this event.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.C14)
1981 Mar 13, Pres. Reagan
granted Atlanta $1.5 million to search for the murderer of some 20
black children.
(http://tinyurl.com/3ytusv)
1981 Dec, Evelyn Joy Ludlum
(19) of Perry, Ga., was raped and murdered. Her body was found after
2 weeks. In 1996 Ellis Wayne Felker was executed for the murder.
Felker maintained his innocence and DNA evidence was available but
not used. In 2000 a judge authorized DNA testing.
(SFC, 7/27/00, p.A2)
1981 An official memorial to
Rev. Martin Luther King opened in Atlanta, Ga.
(WSJ, 1/14/06, p.A1)
1981-1997 Mike Bowers was the state
Attorney-General.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A14)
1982 Feb 27, Wayne B. Williams
was found guilty of murdering two of the 28 young blacks whose
bodies were found in the Atlanta area over a 22-month period.
(AP, 2/27/99)
1982 In 1982 Jimmy Carter
became University Distinguished Professor at Emory University in
Atlanta, and founded The Carter Center. With a permanent staff of
approximately 160, The Carter Center works to resolve conflict,
advance democracy and human rights, and prevent disease and hunger.
The Carter Center Conflict Resolution Program was founded and helped
Jimmy Carter win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
(Econ, 7/2/11,
p.50)(www.whitehousediarybook.com/legacy-post-presidency.html)
1983 Apr, The first Black
College Spring Break festival was held in Atlanta.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, p.A17)
1983 May, A 40 million year-old
whale fossil of this age was found along the Savannah River in
Georgia during the building of the Plant Vogtle nuclear power
facility.
(SFC, 10/2/98, p.A10)
1983 Sep 25, Leslie Michelle
English (2) was raped and murdered in Griffin, Georgia. Her uncle,
Eddie Albert Crawford was convicted of the murder and sentenced to
death. After 20 years on death row Crawford was executed July 19,
2004.
(SFC, 7/19/04, p.A4)
1983 Nov, Calvin Johnson Jr.
(25) was convicted of rape by an all-white jury in Clayton Ct. In
1999 DNA evidence proved he was innocent.
(SFC, 6/16/99, p.A3)
1983 The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co.
was formed with the purchase of the Ritz-Carlton in Boston. In 2001
the Atlanta-based company owned 26 city hotels and 12 resorts.
Host-Marriott held a 49% ownership.
(SSFC, 3/25/01, p.B6)
1983-1998 Georgia tape recorded 23 prison
executions over this period.
(SFC, 5/3/01, p.A3)
1984 Nov 11, The Rev. Martin
Luther King Sr. (84), father of slain civil rights leader Martin
Luther King Jr., died in Atlanta.
(AP, 11/11/04)
1984 The US Army School of the
Americas, a training center for Latin American military officers,
was moved from Panama to Fort Benning, Ga.
(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.B10)(SFC, 9/21/96,
p.A3)(SFC,11/17/97, p.A3)
1986 Mar 4, Aleta Carol Bunch
(16) was kidnapped, raped and murdered in Augusta, Georgia, by
Alexander E. Williams IV (17). Williams was convicted and sentenced
to death. In 2000 the state Supreme Court stayed the execution to
see if electrocution violated the state constitution. Williams, a
chronic paranoid schizophrenic, was kept synthetically sane with
forced medication. His execution, set for Feb 20, was stayed on Feb
19. Williams was granted clemency Feb 25 and his sentence was
commuted to life in prison.
(SFC, 8/23/00, p.A7)(SFC, 2/19/02, p.A3)(SFC,
2/20/02, p.A7)(SFC, 2/26/02, p.A5)
1986 Mar 11, The state of
Georgia pardoned Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who had been
lynched in 1915 for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan.
(AP, 3/11/06)
1986 Jun 30, In a 5-4 decision,
the Supreme Court ruled that states could outlaw homosexual acts
between consenting adults. The Georgia sodomy law upheld by Supreme
Court.
(AP, 6/30/97)(MC, 6/30/02)
1986 Oct 1, Former President
Jimmy Carter's presidential library and museum were dedicated in
Atlanta with help from President Reagan.
(AP, 10/1/97)
1986 Mike Bowers successfully
defended the state’s anti-sodomy law before the US Supreme Court.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A14)
1987 Jan 24, About 20,000 civil
rights demonstrators marched through predominantly white Forsyth
County, Ga., a week after a smaller march was disrupted by Ku Klux
Klan members and supporters.
(AP, 1/24/98)
1987 Jan 16, Lita McClinton
Sullivan was shot to death at her home in Atlanta by a man with
roses posing as a delivery person. Florida millionaire James Vincent
Sullivan paid a man $25,000 to kill Lita McClinton Sullivan to avoid
losing property in a divorce. In 2003 a Thai court ruled to
extradite Sullivan (61). In 2004 James Vincent Sullivan arrived in
Atlanta, Ga., for prosecution. In 2006 he was convicted of murder
and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 2/15/03)(WSJ, 4/13/04, p.A1)(SFC, 3/15/06,
p.A3)
1987 Apr 11, Erskine Caldwell
(83), Georgia-born novelist (Tobacco Road), died.
(www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-497)
1987 Nov 23, Two days after a
riot by Cuban inmates erupted at a detention center in Oakdale, La.,
Cuban detainees at a federal prison in Atlanta also rioted, seizing
hostages in a drama that was not resolved until Dec. 4.
(AP, 11/23/97)
1987 Nov 26, Cuban detainees
concerned about the possibility of being sent back to Cuba continued
to hold hostages at a prison in Atlanta and a detention center in
Oakdale, La.
(AP, 11/26/97)
1987 Dec 4, Cuban inmates at a
federal prison in Atlanta freed their 89 hostages, peacefully ending
an 11-day uprising. The agreement provided for a nationwide
moratorium on deportations of Mariel detainees.
(AP, 12/4/97)
1987 Dec 5, FBI agents searched
a federal prison where Cuban inmates had peacefully ended an 11-day
hostage siege the day before. The agents reported finding bottle
bombs and homemade machetes, but no booby-traps or bodies.
(AP, 12/5/97)
1987 Herman Eugene Talmadge
(1913-2002), former state governor and US Senator, authored his
biography “Talmadge.”
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
1987 Billy Payne founded the
Georgia Amateur Athletic Foundation to bid for the 1996 Olympic
Games. He later sold to the foundation his collection of Olympics
memorabilia for $975,000.
(SFC, 4/28/00, p.A11)
1987 Some 13,000 people fell
ill in Carrollton, Ga., from the cryptosporidium parasite in
contaminated tap water.
(SFC, 6/24/98, Z1 p.5)
1988 Jul 16, The Rev. Jesse
Jackson arrived in Atlanta for the Democratic national convention,
telling cheering supporters he was seeking "shared responsibility"
with nominee-apparent Michael Dukakis.
(AP, 7/16/98)
1988 Jul 17, Michael Dukakis
arrived in Atlanta to claim the Democratic nomination for president,
saying, "We're working hard to make sure we have a good convention,
a strong and united party."
(AP, 7/17/98)
1988 Jul 18, Texas Treasurer
Ann Richards delivered the keynote address at the Democratic
national convention in Atlanta, needling Republican nominee-apparent
George Bush as having been "born with a silver foot in his mouth."
(HN, 7/18/98)
1988 Jul 21, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at
the party's convention in Atlanta, declaring, "this election isn't
about ideology; it's about competence."
(AP, 7/21/98)
1988 Sep 25, Former first
brother Billy Carter died in Plains, Ga., at 51.
(AP, 9/25/98)
1989 Aug 19, Mark MacPhail, an
off duty police officer was killed in Savannah, Georgia. Troy Davis
was convicted and sentenced to death in 1991 for killing MacPhail.
In 2008 his execution was reprieved for a 3rd time after 7 of 9
witnesses had recanted their testimony. In 2011 his execution was
rescheduled for a 4th time.
(SFC, 10/25/08,
p.A3)(www.fop9.net/markmacphail/)(Econ, 11/29/08, p.35)(SFC, 9/7/11,
p.A6)
1989 Dec 18, Robert E.
Robinson, an attorney and alderman in Savannah, Ga., was killed by a
mail bomb similar to a device that had claimed the life of a federal
judge in Alabama two days earlier. Walter Leroy Moody Junior was
later convicted of both bombings, and is on Alabama's death row.
(AP, 12/18/99)
1990 Sep 18, The city of
Atlanta was named the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics.
(AP, 9/18/97)
1990 Jun, Rev. Eugene Marino
(d.2000 at 66) resigned as archbishop of Atlanta following a scandal
in which he admitted to a sexual relationship with parishioner Vicki
Long. He had led the diocese for 26 months and was the 1st black
Roman Catholic archbishop in the US.
(SFC, 11/17/00, p.D7)
1990 The Atlanta-based
International Time Capsule Society was established at Oglethorpe
Univ. to promote the study of time capsules. It held a time capsule
from 1940 that was scheduled to be opened in 8113.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.D4)
1991 Swamp Gravy, the Official
Folk Life Play of Georgia, began when Joy Jinks was at a meeting in
NYC. She was talking about how she wanted to preserve Colquitt's
heritage and record stories about the community. Richard Geer, a
student who was working on his doctorate degree, overheard this
conversation, and he approached Joy Jinks and said that he wanted to
be involved in the project. The group produced plays with universal
appeal steeped in Southern tradition.
(www.swampgravy.com/index.cfm/id:21)
1991 Mike Bowers withdrew a job
offer from a lesbian who planned to marry another woman. He held
that the marriage would violate Georgia’s anti-sodomy laws.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A14)
1991 Coca-Cola established a
corporate museum in Atlanta.
(WSJ, 4/30/98, p.A1)
1992 Oct 18, The visiting
Toronto Blue Jays defeated the Atlanta Braves in game two of the
World Series, 5-to-4, evening the series at one game apiece. The
pre-game ceremony was marred by a U.S. Marine Corps color guard that
mistakenly presented the Canadian flag upside-down.
(AP, 10/18/97)
1992 Oct 24, The Toronto Blue
Jays became the first non-U.S. team to win the World Series as they
defeated the Atlanta Braves, 4-3, in game six.
(AP, 10/24/97)
1993 Feb 4, A jury in Atlanta
found General Motors negligent in the fuel-tank design of a pickup
truck and awarded $105.2 million to the parents of a teen-ager
killed in a fiery 1989 crash. The negligence verdict was later
overturned, and the parents of Shannon Moseley reached an
out-of-court settlement with GM.
(AP, 2/4/03)
1994 Jul 13, President Clinton
visited flood-stricken Georgia, where he announced more than $60
million in aid for Georgia, Alabama and Florida.
(AP, 7/13/99)
1994 John Berendt published
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” his personal impressions
on the city of Savannah, Ga.
(SFEC, 3/23/97, p.T8)
1994 The Christian Sportsmen's
Fellowship was founded in Atlanta with the motto "On target to catch
men for Christ."
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.A10)
1994 Georgia state legislators
adopted a law banning people from publicly advertising suicide.
(SFC, 2/7/12, p.A9)
1995 Jan, In Georgia Andrew
Cook (21) shot and killed Michele Cartagena (19) and Grant
Hendrickson (22) in a lover’s lane. Cook, the son of a former FBI
agent, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998.
(SFC, 3/20/98, p.A3)
1995 Mar 3, In Georgia Glenn
Turner (31) was discovered dead in bed by his wife. A Cobb medical
examiner ruled that he died from an irregular heartbeat. Lynn Turner
murdered her police officer husband, Glenn Turner, to get his life
insurance money. In 2001 she killed her boyfriend, Randy Thompson,
by poisoning him with antifreeze. In 2007 Turner (38), convicted in
2004 for her husband’s death, was convicted again for the Thompson’s
murder. Turner (42) died in prison on Aug 30, 2010.
(www.ajc.com/news/lynn-turners-death-still-603086.html)(SSFC,
3/25/07, p.A3)(SFC, 8/31/10, p.A7)
1995 Aug 21, A commuter plane
crashed near Carrollton, Georgia. Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight
529 enroute to Gulfport, Miss., crashed with 29 people aboard. 10
died. In 2001 Gary M. Pomerantz authored "Nine Minutes, Twenty
Seconds: The Tragedy & Triumph of ASA Flight 529."
(AP, 8/21/00)(SSFC, 10/21/01, p.R4)
1995 Sep 27-Oct 6, Hurricane
Opal caused at least 50 deaths in Guatemala and Mexico and 20 deaths
in the United States. The storm hit Central America before striking
Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina.
(AP, 9/11/04)(www.wunderground.com)
1995 Oct 14, The Atlanta Braves
won the National League pennant by beating the Cincinnati Reds,
6-to-0, to complete a four-game sweep.
(AP, 10/14/00)
1995 Oct 22, The Atlanta Braves
defeated the Cleveland Indians, 4-3, to win the first two games of
the World Series.
(AP, 10/22/05)
1995 Oct 28, The Atlanta Braves
defeated the Cleveland Indians, 1-0, to win the World Series in Game
6.
(AP, 10/28/00)
1996 Jul 19, The 26th
summer Olympics opening ceremonies began in Atlanta, Georgia. The
photo finish was computerized and in color for track and field
events. Beach volleyball was inaugurated as an Olympic sport.
(WSJ, 7/19/96, p.A1)(AP, 7/19/97)(SFC, 8/23/04,
p.C3)(NG, 8/04, Geographica)
1996 Jul 27, A pipe bomb was
set off at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. One person, Alice
Stubbs Hawthorne (44), was killed and 111 injured. Eric Rudolph was
later charged with the bombing. He was arrested May 31, 2003.
Rudolph later pleaded guilty to the bombing.
(WSJ, 7/29/96, p.A1,3)(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A10)(SSFC,
6/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 7/27/08)
1996 Jul 28, Federal
investigators reported "very good leads" in the hunt for the Olympic
bomber, a day after the explosion in Centennial Olympic Park in
Atlanta.
(AP, 7/28/97)
1996 Jul 30, A federal law
enforcement source said security guard Richard Jewell had become a
focus of the investigation into the bombing at Centennial Olympic
Park. Jewell was later cleared as a suspect, and Eric Rudolph
eventually pleaded guilty.
(AP, 7/30/06)
1996 Dec 9-1996 Dec 10, David
Coffin Jr., heir to a Connecticut family that founded the Dexter
Corp., was killed. In 2005 Scott Winfield Davis (40), was arrested
in Palo Alto, Ca., for the Atlanta shooting death of David Coffin
Jr. Initial charges against Davis were dropped in 1998 due to
insufficient evidence.
(SFC, 11/19/05, p.B3)
1996 The funeral of the Bailey
family, killed in a tragic auto accident, was held at the all-white
Southern Baptist church, the first black funeral there since slave
members departed to form their own congregation in 1862.
(WSJ, 6/23/97, p.A1)
1997 Feb 21, There was a
bombing at an Atlanta lesbian nightclub that injured five people. It
was similar to the previous recent bombings at an abortion clinic
and at the Olympics. Eric Rudolph was later charged with the
bombing. He was arrested May 31, 2003.
(WSJ, 2/21/97, p.A12)(SSFC, 6/1/03, p.A1)
1997 Apr 20, In Atlanta Timmie
Sinclair (27) was beaten by police officers in a scene that was
captured on videotape and showed excessive use of force and baton
beating.
(SFC, 5/13/97, p.A6)
1997 Nov 16, Some 600
protestors at Fort Benning, Ga., called for the closing of the
Army’s School of the Americas, which trains Latin American soldiers.
(SFC,11/17/97, p.A3)
1997 Dec 4, In Santa Claus
Jerry Scott Heidler (20) was arrested for the murder of a couple and
their two children and the kidnapping of three foster children.
(SFC,12/5/97, p.A3)
1997 Mike Bowers admitted to
having had an affair with a woman he once employed for more than ten
years. He planed to run for state governor.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A14)
1997 The town of Stone Mountain
elected its first black mayor, Chuck Burris.
(SFC,11/28/97, p.B6)
1998 Feb 9, It was reported
that Steuart and Jane Dewar were attempting to set up a Gorilla
Haven for retired gorillas in the area of Morgantown on part of 275
acres they owned in Fannin County. There was substantial neighbor
opposition.
(SFC, 2/9/98, p.A11)
1998 Mar 20, A twister killed
11 people in northeast Georgia and 2 people in North Carolina.
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 4, Two small planes
collided over Marietta and at least 5 people were killed.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, p.A10)
1998 Apr 8, A line of storms
struck the southeast and killed at least 41 people. 32 were left
dead in Alabama, 8 in Georgia and 1 in Mississippi.
(SFC, 4/9/98, p.A3)(SFC, 4/10/98, p.A1)(WSJ,
4/10/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 12, Mark O’Meara won
the Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Ga. with a 9-under-par score
of 279.
(WSJ, 4/13/98, p.A1)
1998 Sep 7, In Atlanta the
4-day Million Youth Movement ended with a march of less than 10,000
black youths.
(SFC, 9/8/98, p.A3)
1998 Oct 12, In Tucker 3 men
were found shot inside a parked van. A drug deal was suspected.
(SFC, 10/19/98, p.A6)
1998 Oct 14, The San Diego
Padres won the National League championship over the Atlanta Braves
in 4 games to 2.
(WSJ, 10/15/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 18, In Atlanta 3 men
were found shot to death, execution-style, on the 24th floor of the
Atlanta Hilton & Towers.
(SFC, 10/19/98, p.A6)
1998 Oct 20, State Senator
Ralph David Abernathy III (39) was indicted by a grand jury for
stealing some $13,000 from Georgia taxpayers by billing for false
expenses.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A3)
1998 Nov 23, The state Supreme
Court invalidated Georgia’s anti-sodomy law.
(SFC, 11/24/98, p.A4)
1998 The new Cousins Properties
tower in Atlanta was scheduled to be completed. It was designed by
Jon Pickard and featured a sweeping glass bonnet on the roof over a
rooftop garden.
(WSJ, 1/6/98, p.B10)
1999 Jan 25, Robert Shaw, the
dean of American choral conducting, died in Atlanta at age 82. He
was the musical director and conductor of the Atlanta Symphony from
1967-1988.
(SFC, 1/26/99, p.A24)
1999 Feb 5, The Dupont Co.,
based in Wilmington, Del., agreed to a $90 million settlement with
environmentalists to abandon plans to mine titanium along the edge
of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
(SFC, 2/6/99, p.A9)
1999 May 20, In Conyers, Ga., a
15-year-old boy shot and wounded 6 fellow students at Heritage High
School. In 2000 the boy was sentenced to 40 years in prison and 65
years of probation.
(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A1)(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A4)
1999 Jul 12, In Atlanta 7
people, 5 adults and 2 children, were found shot to death with one
11-year-old boy as the only survivor.
(SFC, 7/13/99, p.A2)
1999 Jul 24, In Austell, Greg
Smith, shot and killed 2 SWAT officers when they stormed his house
following a fight with neighbors. Smith was in turn killed by a
police sniper.
1999 Jul 29, In Atlanta Mark O.
Barton (44) shot and killed 9 people in 2 day-trading offices in the
Buckhead district of Atlanta. Police also found the dead bodies of
his wife Leigh Ann Barton (27) and 2 children, Matthew (11) and
Elizabeth Mychelle (7) in suburban Stockbridge. Barton had been a
suspect in the 1993 murders of his first wife and mother-in-law.
(SFC, 7/30/99, p.A1)
1999 Aug, The new $325 million
Mall of Georgia at Mills Creek was due to open. It was to feature a
1.4 million-sq.-foot mall curving around a 300,000 sq.-foot open-air
“village.”
(WSJ, 11/25/98, p.B12)
1999 Oct 28, Two Navy Blue
Angel aviators, Kieron O'Connor (35) and Kevin Colling (32), were
killed when their F/A-18 Hornet crashed during a training flight
near Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.
(SFC, 10/29/99, p.A3)
1999 Nov 5, Two Chinese pandas,
Lun-Lun and Yang-Yang, arrived in Atlanta for a 10 year visit. They
were part of a project to study mating problems related to
captivity.
(SFC, 11/6/99, p.A6)
1999 Nov 21, Some 3,000 of
8,000 demonstrators crossed onto the Fort Benning army base in
Georgia to protest against the School of the Americas and the 10
year anniversary of Jesuit priests killed in El Salvador by soldiers
trained at the school.
(SFC, 11/22/99, p.A2)
1999 Dec 22, In Atlanta,
Georgia, federal drug police seized $72 million worth of cocaine in
"Operation Juno," a 3 year sting operation that also netted $10-26
million laundered through a fake brokerage firm. 5 people were
arrested in Tucker and another 47 nationwide.
(SFC, 12/23/99, p.A2)(WSJ, 12/23/99, p.A1)
2000 Feb, In Georgia tornadoes
struck the southwest part of the state and 22 people were killed.
(SFC, 2/15/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 16, In Georgia a
gunman shot and wounded 2 sheriff's deputies while being served a
warrant in Atlanta at the home of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly
known as H. Rap Brown. The gunman was later identified as Brown.
Deputy Ricky Kinchen (35) died the next day. Al-Amin (56) was
arrested in Alabama on Mar 20. he was convicted of murder on Mar 9,
2002.
(SFC, 3/17/00, p.A5)(SFC, 3/18/00, p.A3)(SFC,
3/21/00, p.A3)(SSFC, 3/10/02, p.A6)
2000 Mar 28, Jordan with US
intelligence help indicted 28 followers of Osama bin Laden for
plotting attacks against American tourists in Dec.
(SFC, 3/29/00, p.A14)
2000 Mar, The
IntercontinentalExchange was founded in Atlanta, Ga., as an
Internet-based trading platform for OTC precious metals and oil.
(www.duke-energy.com/news/releases/2000/Jul/2000072601.htm)
2000 Apr 26, Sparkle Rai (22),
a black woman, was found dead in her Georgia apartment. She had
recently married Ricky Rai (20), the manager of a grocery store in
which she worked. In 2008 Chiman Rai (68) was convicted of felony
murder. Prosecutors charged that Rai teamed up with Willie Fred
Evans and Herbert Green to serve as middlemen. The two men passed
along $10,000 to brothers Cleveland and Carl Clark. Carl Clark
allegedly drove the car and Cleveland Clark, a 300-pound ex-con who
also faces the death penalty, carried out the killing.
(http://newsfeedresearcher.com/data/articles_n26/idn2008.06.25.13.17.14.html)
2000 Jul 14, Attorney Warren
Bailey (88) died and left $60 million to St. Mary’s United Methodist
Church. The fortune came from the Camden Telephone Co. The
715-member congregation used $40 million to set up a foundation to
award grants to nonprofit groups.
(SSFC, 12/10/00, p.C8)
2000 Jul 18, Sen. Paul
Coverdell (Republican, Georgia) died in Atlanta at age 61 from a
cerebral hemorrhage.
(SFC, 7/19/00, p.A3)(AP, 7/18/01)
2000 Jul 24, Georgia’s
Democratic Governor Zell Miller was appointed to the late Republican
Paul Coverdell’s Senate seat. In 2003 Miler authored "A National
Party No More."
(AP, 7/24/01)(WSJ, 11/4/03, p.D8)
2000 Nov 16, Hosea Williams,
civil rights leader and Lt. to Martin Luther King Jr., died in
Atlanta at age 74.
(SFC, 11/17/00, p.A18)
2000 Dec 14, Police shot Devin
Grant at least 16 times following a car chase from Atlanta to
Douglasville. Grant survived the shooting that began at a roadblock
over a minor traffic warrant.
(SFC, 12/31/00, p.A16)
2000 Dec 15, The US Army
planned to hold closing ceremonies for the School of the Americas in
Fort Benning, Ga. The school planned to reopen in January as the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
(SFC, 12/13/00, p.B8)
2000 Dec 15, Derwin Brown (46),
the sheriff-elect of DeKalb County, Georgia, was gunned down
in what police called an assassination. Brown had promised to clean
up the sheriff’s dept. and fire 38 employees. Former Sheriff Sidney
Dorsey and 2 other men were charged for the murder on Nov 30, 2001.
2 other men involved in the slaying were given immunity for
testifying. A 19-count indictment against Dorsey was handed down Feb
22, 2002. Melvin Walker and David Ramsey were acquitted Mar 25,
2002. Dorsey was convicted Jul 10. Dorsey was sentenced to life in
prison on Aug 15, 2002. In 2005 a federal jury found Melvin Walker
and David Ramsey guilty of conspiracy.
(SSFC, 12/17/00, p.A2)(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A3)(SFC,
2/23/02, p.A5)(SFC, 3/26/02, p.A5)(SFC, 7/11/02, p.A3)(SFC, 8/16/02,
p.A7)(SFC, 8/4/05, p.A3)
2000 Bruce Wilkinson, Georgia
preacher, authored “The Prayer of Jabez,” a 93-page, $10 tract based
on a passage from the Bible. Sales made him a rich man and in 2002
he embarked on a mission to save children in Swaziland orphaned by
AIDS.
(WSJ, 12/19/05, p.A1)
2001 Jan 30, Georgia lawmakers
agreed to downsize the Confederate emblem on the state flag to a
small symbol.
(SFC, 1/31/01, p.A3)
2001 Feb 17, Khalid Abdul
Muhammad (born as Harold Moore), national chairman of the New Black
Panther Party and former Nation of Islam official, died at age 53 in
Marietta, Ga. He was known for his harsh rhetoric about Jews and
whites
(SSFC, 2/18/01, p.A2)(AP, 2/17/02)
2001 Mar 3, A US National Guard
C-23 Sherpa plane crashed in Georgia and 21 people were killed.
(SSFC, 3/4/01, p.A5)
2001 Mar 13, A BP Amoco
chemical plant explosion near Augusta killed 3 workers.
(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A1)
2001 May 14, In Atlanta the
federal government began its racketeering case against The Gold Club
owned by Steve Kaplan and 6 associates. The club grossed some $20
million annually off of business travelers.
(SFC, 5/14/01, p.A2)
2001 Jul 5, The US spy plane
from China arrived at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia aboard a
Russian Antonov-124 transport plane.
(SFC, 7/6/01, p.A9)
2001 Aug 11, A woman (71) who
lived near downtown Atlanta died of the West Nile virus, the first
reported death from the disease outside the Northeast since the
virus emerged on the East Coast in 1999. Tests done by the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the cause of
death. The virus, which can cause deadly swelling of the brain, has
killed nine people in New York and New Jersey since 1999.
(AP, 8/17/01)(SFC, 8/18/01, p.A6)
2001 Oct 5, Georgia’s Supreme
Court ruled that electrocution is an unconstitutionally cruel and
unusual punishment. 441 Georgia inmates had died in the electric
chair since 1924.
(SFC, 10/6/01, p.E1)
2001 Oct 25, Terry Mincey (41),
convicted of killing a convenience store clerk in 1982, became the
1st Georgia inmate to die by lethal injection.
(SFC, 10/26/01, p.D6)
2001 Nov 18, Thousands
demonstrated outside Fort Benning during the annual march to the
post to protest the School of the Americas training for Latin
America soldiers.
(SFC, 11/19/01, p.A15)
2001 Shirley Franklin was
elected mayor of Atlanta, Ga.
(Econ, 8/27/05, p.27)
2002 Feb 16, In Noble, Ga.,
officials found 334 decomposing bodies at the Tri-State Crematory,
where the furnace had not worked for years. Ray Brent Marsh (28),
manager of the family operation, was arrested and charged with 5
counts of theft by deception. In 2004 families of the dead settled a
class-action suit for $80 million. Marsh pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to twelve years in prison, with credit for the time he had
served before making bond, plus seventy-five years of probation.
(SSFC, 2/17/02,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory#Criminal_prosecution)
2002 Mar 8, The parents and
sister of Ray Brent Marsh were arrested for signing death
certificates even though they were not licensed. The number of
corpses found at the Tri-State Crematory rose to 339.
(SFC, 3/9/02, p.A3)
2002 Mar 9, Jamil Abdullah
al-Amin, aka H. Rap Brown (58), was convicted by an Atlanta jury for
the murder of a sheriff’s deputy on Mar 16, 2000. Brown was
sentenced to life in prison without parole on Mar 13.
(SSFC, 3/10/02, p.A6)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A4)(AP,
3/9/07)
2002 Mar 14, A 125-vehicle
pileup left 4 people dead on foggy I-75 near Ringgold.
(SFC, 3/15/02, p.A3)
2002 Mar 20, In Valdosta Bobby
Blake (44), assistant dean at Valdosta State Univ., was found dead
in the trunk of his car. Charles Anthony Pascal (18) and Shimon
Sanders (23) were soon arrested and charged with murder.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A5)
2002 Mar 21, Herman Eugene
Talmadge (b.1913), later state governor and US Senator, died in
Hampton.
(SFC, 3/22/02, p.A27)
2002 Apr 17, Erika Greene (20)
collected $58.9 million in the Big Game lottery.
(USAT, 4/18/02, p.3A)
2002 Jun 9, A Georgia woman
(63) shot to death 2 sons dying of Huntington’s disease at a nursing
home. She was charged with murder.
(WSJ, 6/11/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 1, In Atlanta,
Georgia, a 35,000 pound billboard collapsed at a suburban shopping
center and 3 construction workers were killed.
(SFC, 8/2/02, p.A6)
2002 Nov 5, In Georgia
Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes (b.1948) was voted out of office. He had
been the main sponsor for legislation to make it easier to sack
incompetent teachers.
(Econ, 3/3/07, SR
p.11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Barnes)
2003 Mar 20, Tornadoes hit
rural Georgia and 6 people were killed.
(SFC, 3/21/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 23, Adrian O’Neill
Robinson (25) allegedly shot and killed his father (56) in Hamilton,
Georgia. He then kidnapped 2 nuns, one of whom was found 3 days
later, mutilated in a Norfolk, Va., parking lot. The other nun was
found ok. Robinson was arrested Mar 27.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A7)(SFC, 3/28/03, p.A20)
2003 May 8, Georgia's governor
signed legislation redesigning the state flag without a Confederate
emblem.
(WSJ, 5/9/03, p.A1)
2003 Jun 23, Maynard Jackson
Jr. (65), former black mayor of Atlanta (1973-1993), died.
(SFC, 6/24/03, p.A21)
2003 Jun 25, Lester Maddox
(87), segregationist and former Georgia governor (1967-1970), died
in Atlanta.
(BS, 6/26/03, 5A)(AP, 6/25/08)
2003 Sep 19, Five of six
children riding on an all-terrain vehicle in Coffee County, Ga.,
were killed when they were hit by a motorist.
(AP, 9/21/04)
2003 Oct 5, In Atlanta,
Georgia, Shelia Chaney Wilson (43), shot and killed her mother,
minister and herself in the sanctuary of the Turner Monumental AME
Church.
(SFC, 10/6/03, p.A3)
2003 Former Pres. Jimmy Carter
authored his novel "The Hornet's Nest," set in Georgia and the
Carolinas during the US war for independence.
(WSJ, 11/7/03, p.W9)
2004 Jan 7, In Georgia Jerry
William Jones (31) killed 3 former in-laws and his infant daughter
and fled with 3 girl hostages. The girls were found safe and Jones
shot himself following a police chase.
(SFC, 1/9/04, p.A3)
2004 Apr 22, Malachi York (58),
master teacher of the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, was sentenced to
135 years in prison for molesting boys and girls at the group's
476-acre compound. The sect, founded as a Muslim commune in NY,
moved to Eatonton in 1993.
(SFC, 4/23/04, p.A2)
2004 Jun 9, G-8 Summit leaders
at Sea Island Resort near Savannah, Georgia, called for Middle East
reform and a broader role for NATO in Iraq.
(WSJ, 6/11/04, p.A7)
2004 Jun 10, A G-8 summit at
Sea Island Resort near Savannah, Georgia, ended without an agreement
on Iraq. The group agreed to extend through 2006 the Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.
(WSJ, 6/11/04, p.A7)
2004 Jun, In Georgia Chris
Griffin reportedly killed a 1,000-pound hog with 9-inch tusks at the
River Oak Plantation. Only a photo portrayed the “Hogzilla” kill. In
2005 experts from National Geographic confirmed the kill but reduced
the size to about 800 pounds.
(AP, 7/29/04)(SFC, 3/22/05, p.A2)
2004 Jul 16, George Busbee 76,
former Georgia Gov., died in Savannah.
(AP, 7/16/05)
2004 Sep 17, The violent
remains of Hurricane Ivan pounded a large swath of the eastern
United States, drenching an area from Georgia to Ohio. Ivan left 70
dead in the Caribbean and 40 dead in the US including 4 in Alabama,
16 in Florida, 4 in Georgia, 4 in Louisiana, 3 in Mississippi, and 8
in North Carolina.
(AP, 9/17/04)(SFC, 9/18/04, p.A16)
2004 Oct 25, The Georgia
Supreme Court unanimously threw out the state's hate crimes law,
calling it overbroad and "unconstitutionally vague."
(AP, 10/25/04)
2005 Jan 3, Victor Hill, the
newly elected Clayton County Sheriff, fired 27 mostly white officers
from his staff as the Georgia county opened the year with its 1st
black-majority government.
(SFC, 1/10/05, p.A6)
2005 Jan 30, In Georgia more
than 300,000 customers had no electricity as crews worked to repair
power lines snapped by an ice storm.
(AP, 1/30/05)
2005 Feb 21, S. Ernest Vandiver
Jr., former Georgia governor (1959-1963), died.
(SFC, 2/24/05, p.B7)
2005 Mar 11, In Georgia Brian
Nichols (33), on trial for rape, shot and killed Superior Court
Judge Rowland Barnes, court reporter Julie Ann Brandau and Deputy
Hoyt Teasley at the Fulton County Courthouse. He then killed
deferral agent David Wilhelm in Atlanta’s posh Buckhead
neighborhood. Nichols was captured the next day. In 2008 Nichols
pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. On Nov 7, 2008, Nichols
was convicted of murder. On Dec 13 he was sentenced to life in
prison without parole.
(AP, 3/12/05)(SFC, 3/12/05, p.A1)(SFC, 9/23/08,
p.A4)(SFC, 11/7/08, p.A5)(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A6)
2005 Apr 28, More than 100
volunteers joined police in Duluth, Ga., in searching for Jennifer
Wilbanks, a bride-to-be who had vanished two days earlier. Wilbanks
turned up in Albuquerque, N.M., having run away on her own.
(AP, 4/28/06)
2005 Apr 30, Jennifer Wilbanks
(32) of Duluth, Georgia, turned up in Albuquerque, NM, after being
missing for 4 days. She was scheduled to be married Apr 30, and got
“cold feet.”
(SSFC, 5/1/05, p.A2)
2005 Jul 4, The General Synod
of the United Church of Christ, meeting in Georgia, endorsed
same-sex marriage with a resolution that called for equal marriage
rights for all.
(SFC, 7/5/05, p.A3)
2005 Jul 5, At its Synod in
Georgia(US) the United Church of Christ voted to use "economic
leverage" to promote peace between Israel and Palestinians and to
call for the dismantling of the Jewish state's security fence.
(AP, 7/6/05)
2005 Jul 23, Kristina Miller
(27) of Peachtree City, Ga., was the only American killed in
the blasts at the Egyptian resort at Sharm el-Sheik.
(AP, 7/27/05)
2005 Aug 24, In Dublin, Ga., a
girl shot, killed and robbed Fredrick Williams (25) and Reante
Stanley (26) after they had given her and a 14-year-old friend a
ride to a motel. The girls stole about $200 from the men. Lakeisha
Davis (15) of Dublin was charged with murder and armed robbery. The
14-year-old, who was not immediately identified, was tried in
juvenile court on a charge of theft. In 2008 Davis was sentenced to
life in prison.
(SFC, 8/26/05,
p.A3)(www.prisontalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-143798.html)
2005 Sep 30, In Georgia 6 men
were killed in a string of robberies targeting Hispanic immigrants
at trailer parks in and around Tifton. Four suspects were arrested
and charged with murder and other offenses.
(AP, 9/30/06)
2005 Oct 15, Jason Collier
(28), Atlanta Hawks center, died, possibly of cardiac arrest.
(AP, 10/15/05)
2005 Nov 18, Scott Winfield
Davis (40), was arrested in Palo Alto, Ca., for the 1996 Atlanta
shooting death of David Coffin Jr., heir to a Connecticut family
that founded the Dexter Corp. Initial charges against Davis were
dropped in 1998 due to insufficient evidence. David Coffin Jr. On
December 4, 2006, a jury in Fulton County, Georgia, found Davis
guilty on all counts of malice murder and felony murder.
(SFC, 11/19/05,
p.B3)(www.atlantada.org/featuredarticle/ScottDavis.htm)
2006 Jan 30, Coretta Scott King
(78), the widow of Martin Luther King Jr, died in Mexico. She had
turned a life shattered by her husband's assassination into one
devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality.
(AP, 1/31/06)
2006 Feb 24, In Georgia Judge
T. Jackson Bedford Jr. of Fulton County Superior Court issued a
bench warrant for Kirk S. Wright (35), a hedge fund manager, for
fraud. Wright’s Int’l. Management Associates LLC was suspected of up
to $185 million in losses.
(WSJ, 3/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Mar 10, Bill Campbell
(52), former mayor if Atlanta, Georgia (1994-2002), was convicted of
tax evasion, but acquitted for corruption charges. In June he was
sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison and fined $6,300.
(WSJ, 6/14/06,
p.A1)(http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=nation_world&id=4267799)
2006 Mar 13, South Korea’s Kia
Motors Corp. said it will build a $1.2 billion factory in West
Point, Ga., its first in the US. Toyota said it will build a plant
in Lafayette, Ind.
(SFC, 3/14/06, p.D3)
2006 Apr 10, Tens of thousands
of immigrants spilled into the streets of Atlanta and other US
cities in a national day of action billed as a "campaign for
immigrants' dignity."
(AP, 4/10/06)
2006 Apr 17, Georgia's Gov.
Sonny Perdue signed a sweeping immigration bill that supporters and
critics say gives the state some of the toughest measures against
illegal immigrants in the nation.
(AP, 4/17/06)
2006 Apr 20, Georgia’s Gov.
Sonny Perdue signed a bill into law that offered
government-sanctioned elective classes on the Bible in public high
schools. He also signed a bill permitting the display of the Ten
Commandments at courthouses.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.A3)
2006 Apr 20, Scott Crossfield,
the hotshot test pilot who in 1953 became the first man to fly at
twice the speed of sound, was killed in the crash of his small plane
in Georgia.
(AP, 4/20/07)
2006 Apr 21, The US Justice
Dept. gave assent to a Georgia law requiring photo IDs to vote.
(WSJ, 4/22/06, p.A1)
2006 Jul 8, Georgia police
found the decomposed body of Carlnell Walker (23), a Morehouse
student from Richmond, Ca., in the trunk of his car in Riverdale. On
July 21, 2006, 3 men were arrested for his murder. In 2007 4 men
were indicted for the murder.
(SFC, 7/12/06, p.B1)(SFC, 7/22/06, p.A1)(SFC,
3/23/07, p.A2)
2006 Aug 28, Columbus, Ga.,
beat Kawaguchi City, Japan, 2-1 to win the Little League World
Series championship game.
(AP, 8/28/07)
2006 Sep 1, US federal agents
began rounding up illegal immigrants in Stillmore, Georgia. More
than 120 illegal immigrants were loaded onto buses bound for
immigration courts in Atlanta. Hundreds more fled Emanuel County.
The Crider poultry plant was left scrambling for workers.
(AP, 9/15/06)
2006 Sep 19, A Georgia judge
struck down the state’s photo ID requirement to vote.
(WSJ, 9/20/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 6, The US Centers for
Disease Control said 3 people from Washington County, Ga., had
experienced respiratory failure and remained hospitalized on
ventilators following a meal they shared on Sept. 7 that included
carrot juice made by Bolthouse Farms. A woman in Florida was
hospitalized mid-September and botulism toxin from bottled carrot
juice was suspected.
(AP, 10/7/06)
2006 Oct 17, Pres. Bush signed
into law a bill to provide grant money for the Gullah/Geechee
Cultural Heritage Corridor. In September Congress had declared a
swathe of coastline from North Carolina to Florida the
Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, in an effort to preserve
the region’s distinctive black culture and creole language.
(Econ, 2/2/08,
p.42)(www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6283153)
2006 Nov 1, In Lawrenceville,
Ga., Khalid Adem (30), an Ethiopian immigrant, was convicted of
genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter. He was sentenced to
10 years in prison.
(SFC, 11/2/06, p.A3)
2006 Nov 21, In Atlanta, Ga.,
Kathryn Johnston (92) was shot to death by police after she fired at
narcotics investigators as they stormed her house in a no-knock
raid. In 2007 2 officers pleaded guilty to killing Johnston. One of
the officers had planted marijuana there as part of a cover story.
In 2009 a judge sentenced 3 former Atlanta police officers to prison
for their role in the botched raid.
(AP, 11/22/06)(SFC, 4/27/07, p.A4)(SFC, 2/25/09,
p.A4)
2007 Feb 13, Charles Norwood
(b.1941), tobacco-chewing conservative Georgia congressman, died of
cancer and lung disease.
(SFC, 2/14/07, p.B9)
2007 Feb 14, ConAgra recalled
all Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter made at a Georgia plant
because of a salmonella outbreak.
(AP, 2/14/08)
2007 Feb 15, Scientists
gathered in Atlanta, Ga., to find a way to stop a fungus killing the
world’s frogs. Up to 170 species have gone extinct in the past
decade.
(WSJ, 2/16/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 2, A charter bus
carrying a college baseball team from Ohio’s Mennonite-affiliated
Bluffton University plunged off a highway ramp in Georgia and
slammed into the pavement below, killing six people, injuring 29 and
scattering sports equipment across the road. A 7th player died from
his injuries on Mar 9.
(AP, 3/2/07)(AP, 3/9/07)
2007 Mar 7, At least two people
woke on their way to becoming millionaires. Someone bought a winning
ticket for the record $370 million Mega Millions jackpot in Dalton,
Ga., and another winning ticket was purchased in Woodbine, N.J. Ed
Nabors (52), a Georgia truck driver, stepped forward to claim half
of a $390 million jackpot, the richest lottery prize in US history.
He elected to take his winnings in a lump sum instead of annual
installments, and will get over $80 million after taxes.
(AP, 3/7/07)(AP, 3/8/07)
2007 Apr 3, An ex-con shot and
killed his ex-girlfriend at the CNN headquarters complex in Atlanta
before being wounded by a security guard. Arthur Mann was later
convicted of murdering Clara Riddles and sentenced to life without
parole.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2007 May 25, Atlanta attorney
Andrew Speaker, infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis, was
quarantined by the federal government after returning from his
European wedding and honeymoon.
(AP, 5/25/08)
2007 Jun 25, Chris Benoit (40),
a professional wrestling superstar, was found dead alongside the
bodies of his wife and retarded son (7) in Fayetteville, Georgia.
Police treated the case as a possible murder-suicide. Anabolic
steroids thought to be a contributing factor. The Canadian-born
wrestler won the world heavyweight championship in 2004. Doctors
later reported that Chris Benoit had injected steroids not long
before he died.
(Reuters, 6/26/07)(SFC, 6/28/07, p.A4)(Reuters,
7/17/07)
2007 Jun 27, Under the banner,
"If another world is possible, another US is necessary," 10,000
civil society activists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, for the
beginning of the first US Social Forum (USSF).
(IPS, 6/30/07)
2007 Jul 20, On the Caribbean
island of St. Maarten Georgia state athletes Randy Newton and Bryan
Kilgore were killed. Michael Registe was later accused of the
murders and faced extradition.
(SSFC, 7/19/09, p.A6)
2007 Jul 23, The US FDA said
people should immediately throw away more than 90 different
products, from chili sauce to corned beef hash to dog food, produced
at a Castleberry plant in Augusta, Ga., linked to a botulism
outbreak.
(AP, 7/23/07)
2007 Aug 20, The lawyer for
Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick said Vick will plead guilty
to federal dogfighting conspiracy charges. Vick could spend the next
few American football seasons behind bars.
(AFP, 8/20/07)(WSJ, 8/21/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 24, Atlanta Falcons
quarterback Michael Vick admitted he participated in an illegal
dogfighting operation and was suspended indefinitely by the National
Football League.
(Reuters, 8/24/07)
2007 Aug 29, Richard
Jewell, the former security guard who was wrongly linked to the 1996
Olympic bombing, was found dead in his west Georgia home; he was 44.
(AP, 8/29/08)
2007 Sep 19, Julian Walker (34)
of Atlanta, Georgia, suspected in the slayings of his ex-wife and
his girlfriend’s father, shot and killed himself after he was
surrounded by police in Fairview Heights, Ill.
(SFC, 9/20/07, p.A8)
2007 Oct 20,
With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of
historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of
emergency for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush
to declare it a major disaster area. The 38,000-acre Lake Lanier
reservoir, which supplies more than 3 million residents with water,
was down to 3 months from depletion.
(AP, 10/20/07)(SSFC, 10/21/07, p.A3)
2007 Oct 26, Georgia's Supreme
Court ordered the release of a young man who has been imprisoned for
more than two years for having consensual oral sex with another
teenager. The court ruled 4-3 that Genarlow Wilson's 10-year
sentence was cruel and unusual punishment.
(AP, 10/26/07)
2007 Nov 16, US federal
biologists signed off on a plan to reduce the flow of water from
Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s main water source, as the southeast contends
with a historic drought.
(WSJ, 11/17/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 29, In Richmond
County, Georgia, Jeanette Michelle Hawes (22) fatally stabbed her
two young children in a Food Mart convenience store bathroom.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007-2008 Georgia issued bonds to fund a plan by
Gov. Sonny Perdue for a $19 million project to make the state the
most popular fishing destination in the country.
(WSJ, 1/5/09, p.A1)
2008 Jan 5, Georgia authorities
served a warrant charging Gary Michael Hilton (61) with the
kidnapping with bodily injury of Meredith Emerson (24). Emerson was
last seen on New Year's Day hiking with her black Labrador
retriever, Ella, in Vogel State Park. On Jan 7 he led investigators
to a spot in a wooded area in north Georgia where they found her
body. In March Hilton was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
(AP, 1/6/08)(AP, 1/8/08)(SFC, 3/24/08, p.A8)
2008 Jan 16, In Georgia 2
off-duty DeKalb County police officers were killed in what appeared
to be an ambush at an apartment complex in what residents described
as a high-crime neighborhood.
(AP, 1/16/08)
2008 Feb 1, In Loganville, Ga.,
Darryl Spearman (55) and Cherri Spearman (52) were found dead in
their home by relatives. Investigators said they were beaten to
death. The next day police arrested their son, Joshua Spearman (18),
on two counts of murder.
(AP, 2/3/08)
2008 Feb 5, A US Court of
Appeals rejected a decision giving Georgia a quarter of Lake
Lanier’s capacity over the coming decades. It said such changes
require congressional approval. Alabama and Florida had challenged
the initial 2003 agreement.
(WSJ, 2/6/08, p.A10)
2008 Feb 7, In Port Wentworth,
Georgia, an explosion and fire at a sugar refinery owned by Imperial
Sugar, based in Sugar Land, Texas, left 11 people dead. Imperial had
acquired Savannah Foods & Industries, the producer of Dixie
Crystals, in 1997. The acquisition doubled the size of the company,
making it the largest processor and refiner of sugar in the US.
(AP, 2/8/08)(SFC, 2/11/08, p.A10)(AP, 2/24/08)
2008 Mar 14, A tornado his
downtown Atlanta, Georgia, and left 27 people injured. Workers
cleaning debris found one dead body on March 22.
(SSFC, 3/23/08, p.A3)
2008 Mar 27, In Columbus,
Georgia, Charles Johnston (63) stormed a hospital and killed 3
people including a nurse he blamed for his mother’s death in 2004.
Johnston was wounded and taken into custody.
(SFC, 3/29/08, p.A2)
2008 May 6, In Georgia William
Earl Lynd (53) was executed for the murder of his live-in
girlfriend. He was the first inmate executed since the Supreme Court
upheld lethal injections on April 16.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A2)
2008 May 10, A tornado rumbled
through Picher, Okla., killing at least 7 people. The same storm
system then moved into southwest Missouri, where tornadoes killed at
least 15 others. The storms moved eastward and killed at least one
person the next day in Georgia.
(AP, 5/11/08)(SFC, 5/12/08, p.A2)
2008 May 14, In Georgia Gov.
Sonny Perdue signed a new law allowing permitted gun owners to carry
concealed weapons in restaurants that serve alcohol, aboard public
transportation and in parks.
(SFC, 5/15/08, p.A3)
2008 May 20, Hamilton Jordan
(b.1944), former strategist and chief of staff for Pres. Jimmy
Carter, died in Atlanta, Georgia.
(SFC, 5/21/08, p.A5)
2008 May 24, In Georgia Kirk
Wright (37), convicted of leading an investment scheme, hanged
himself in the Union City jail. He faced up to 710 years in prison
and a fine up to $16 million. An SEC suit had already hit him with a
$20 million judgment for fraud and money laundering related to the
2006 collapse of his Int’l. Management Associates hedge fund.
(WSJ, 5/27/08, p.C12)
2008 Jun 9, In Georgia Linda
Yancey (44) and Marcial Cax Puluc (20), a Guatemalan day laborer,
were shot and killed in Atlanta’s Stone Mountain suburban community.
In 2009 Linda’s husband Derrick Yancey (49), a former sheriff’s
deputy, fled Georgia in April and was captured in September in
Belize.
(http://tinyurl.com/mqavw6)(SFC, 9/22/09, p.A5)
2008 Aug 29, US banking
regulators shut down Integrity Bancshares Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga.,
and sold all deposits to Regions Financial Corp. of Birmingham, Ala.
This marked the 10th US bank to fail this year.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.B3)
2008 Nov 18, A judge in Georgia
sentenced 25-year-old Rico Todriquez Wright to spend the next 20
years in prison after his victim mentioned a hip hop confession to
police. Wright shot a man twice and felt so good about it, the
rapper wrote a song describing the shooting and calling out the
victim by name.
(AP, 11/20/08)
2008 Dec 2, Georgia Sen. Saxby
Chambliss trounced Democrat Jim Martin, winning his second term by a
margin of more than 10 percentage points. The victory in the runoff
denied Democrats a filibuster-proof majority and cemented the
state's reputation as a GOP bastion.
(AP, 12/3/08)
2008 Dec 19, In Atlanta,
Georgia, one worker died and at least 18 others were injured when a
walkway being built collapsed at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
(SFC, 12/20/08, p.A2)
2009 Jan 14, In Atlanta,
Georgia, a federal appeals court upheld the state’s voter ID law.
(WSJ, 1/30/09, p.A13)
2009 Jan 16, Kellogg Co. of
Battle Creek, Mich., recalled 16 products containing peanut butter
due to possible salmonella contamination as federal officials
confirmed contamination at a Georgia facility that ships peanut
products to 85 food companies. On Jan 21 federal health authorities
confirmed that peanut butter and paste made by a Virginia company
were the sole sources of the outbreak. The Blakely, Ga., facility
was owned by Peanut Corp. of America, based in Lynchburg, Va.
(SFC, 1/17/09, p.A2)(WSJ, 1/22/09, p.A4)
2009 Jan 28, Peanut Corp.
expanded its recall to all peanut products produced at its Blakely,
Ga., plant since Jan 1, 2007, due to a salmonella outbreak.
(SFC, 1/29/09, p.A3)
2009 Feb 17, In Atlanta,
Georgia, Eugenia Calle (57), a prominent researcher who studied
links between cancer and obesity, was found beaten to death in her
condominium. Jamal Thompson (22) was soon arrested and charged with
her murder.
(SFC, 2/20/09,
p.A10)(www.inquisitr.com/18407/dr-eugenia-calle-murder/)
2009 Apr 9, The SEC charged
Atlanta attorney Robert P. Copeland (48) for running a Ponzi scheme
from about 2004-2009. He was alleged to have raised over $35 million
from at least 140 investors and owed over $28 million to the
victims.
(WSJ, 4/10/09,
p.C3)(www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr20994.htm)
2009 Apr 25, In Athens,
Georgia, Prof. George Zinkhan (57) shot and killed his wife and 2
other people outside the Athens Community Theater. Zinkhan fled the
scene. Cadaver dogs found Zinkhan’s body "beneath the earth" in the
north Georgia woods on May 9, two weeks after police say he shot his
wife and two other people to death outside a community theater.
(SSFC, 4/26/09, p.A7)(SFC, 4/27/09, p.A4)(AP,
5/10/09)(AP, 5/10/09)
2009 Apr 27, Five members of
the US Congress were arrested while protesting the expulsion of aid
groups from Darfur in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington,
DC. The included Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Jim
McGovern of Massachusetts, John Lewis of Georgia, Donna Edwards of
Maryland and Lynn Woolsey of California.
(AP, 4/27/09)
2009 May 9, Federal drug
enforcement agents began seizing about 351 pounds of meth from two
houses in Duluth, in suburban Atlanta. The 2-day operation included
the arrest of four Mexican nationals, three of whom were in the US
illegally. It was the biggest seizure of Mexican crystal
methamphetamine ever recorded east of the Mississippi River.
(AP, 5/13/09)
2009 Jun 15, Georgia’s Supreme
Court ordered Expedia Inc. and its Hotwire.com subsidiary to collect
and pay hotel occupancy taxes to the west Georgia city of Columbus
in a possible precedent for cities across the country.
(SFC, 6/17/09, p.C1)
2009 Jun 26, In Georgia
regulators shut down the Community Bank of West Georgia, marking the
41st failure this year of a federally insured bank.
(SFC, 6/27/09, p.B1)
2009 Jul 17, In Douglas,
Georgia, federal authorities arrested Cecil Stephen Haire (51), the
so-called “limping bandit.” He was said to have robbed 23 banks
across the Southwest over the last 3 years.
(SFC, 7/22/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 12, In Atlanta,
Georgia, Ehsanul Islam (23) was convicted of aiding terrorist groups
by sending videotapes of US landmarks overseas and plotting to
support “violent jihad.” He faced a maximum of 60 years in prison.
(SFC, 8/13/09, p.A4)
2009 Aug 15, In Georgia former
college professor Lothar Karl Schweder (77) and his wife Sherry (65)
were found mauled to death by dogs near their home in Lexington.
(SFC, 8/18/09, p.A7)
2009 Aug 21, Guaranty Bank
became the 2nd-largest US bank to fail this year after the Texas
lender was shut down by regulators and most of its operations sold
at a loss of billions of dollars for the US government to a major
Spanish bank. Guaranty's failure, along with those of three small
banks in Georgia and Alabama, brought to 81 the number of US bank
failures this year.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Aug 29, In southeast
Georgia 7 people were found dead inside a dingy mobile home at a
trailer park built on the grounds of a historic US plantation near
Brunswick. One of two critically injured survivors died soon after.
Police arrested Guy Heinze Jr. (22), a family member who called 911
to report finding the people slain, but the charges were
drug-related and police wouldn't say if the man was a suspect in the
killings. On Sep 4 police Heinze on 8 counts of first-degree murder.
(AP, 8/30/09)(SFC, 8/31/09, p.A5)(SFC, 9/5/09,
p.A6)
2009 Aug, In Georgia Kristi
Cornwell (38), a former probation officer, disappeared in
Blairsville. Her bones were found on Jan 1, 2011. Scott Carringer,
the primary suspect in her disappearance, killed himself in the
spring of 2010 during a standoff with Atlanta police.
(SFC, 1/4/11, p.A5)
2009 Sep 22, In Georgia
washed-out roads and flooded interstate highways around Atlanta
added to the misery after days of torrential rain in the Southeast
claimed at least eight lives.
(AP, 9/22/09)
2009 Sep 25, US regulators shut
down Atlanta-based Georgian Bank, the 95th US bank to fail this year
as loan defaults rise in the worst financial climate in decades.
(AP, 9/25/09)
2009 Oct 23, US regulators shut
down 3 small banks in Florida and one each in Georgia, Illinois,
Minnesota and Wisconsin bringing the total for the year of failed US
banks to 106.
(SFC, 10/24/09, p.A6)
2009 Dec 1, Voters in Atlanta,
Georgia, selected former state Sen. Kasim Reed as mayor by a margin
of 715 votes over City Councilwoman Mary Norwood. With 84,383 votes
cast, the margin was less than 1% and a recount was expected. A Dec
9 recount confirmed Reed as the winner by a margin of 714 votes.
(SSFC, 12/6/09, p.A14)(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A13)
2009 Dec 11, Spc. Marc A.
Hall was jailed, two days before his brigade with the Army's
3rd Infantry Division out of Ft. Stewart, Georgia, was scheduled to
leave for Iraq. He was charged with the military offense of
communicating a threat after telling his battalion commander that he
might shoot or otherwise attack a fellow US soldier. Hall was
dismissed in April, 2010, and lost all military benefits earned over
at least four years of service, including an earlier tour in Iraq.
(AP, 4/17/10)
2009 Dec 25, Vic Chestnutt
(b.1964), singer and songwriter, died in Athens, Georgia, following
an intentional overdose. He had been paralyzed in a 1983 car
accident, but retained limited use of his arms and hands.
(SSFC, 12/27/09, p.C8)
2010 Jan 1, Damon Martin
(35) of Detroit was shot and killed in Hampton, Ga. Rap music
producer Demetrius Lee Stewart (28), aka Shawnty Redd, was arrested
for the murder.
(SSFC, 1/3/10,
p.A11)(www.rashaentertainment.com/blog/?p=5350)
2010 Jan 12, In Georgia a
disgruntled ex-employee stormed a Penske Truck Rental facility in
Kennesaw killing 2 people and critically wounding 3 others.
(SFC, 1/13/10, p.A11)
2010 Apr 12, Georgia’s
insurance commissioner, John Oxendine, said Georgia will not
participate in the first phase of the new federal health care law
that would offer subsidized premiums to people with health problems.
Oxendine, a Republican, was a candidate for the office of state
governor.
(SFC, 4/13/10, p.A4)
2010 May 3, Nick Rogers (30),
former NFL player and Georgia Tech star, died in a one-car accident.
He was killed about 1:30 a.m. when his car hit a utility pole in
College Park, near Atlanta, Georgia.
(AP, 5/4/10)
2010 Jun 2, Georgia’s Gov.
Sonny Perdue signed a comprehensive transport bill. It divided the
state into 12 regions and gave each one the power to decide on its
own transport projects.
(Econ, 6/19/10, p.33)
2010 Aug 12, Officials in
Atlanta, Georgia, arrested Elias Abuelazam (33), a suspect in a
string of 18 stabbings that left 5 people dead, at the
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Int’l. airport as he was about to board
an airplane to Tel Aviv. 14 of the stabbings had taken place in
Flint, Michigan. Abuelazam was extradited to Michigan where he faced
homicide charges.
(SFC, 8/13/10, p.A7)(SFC, 8/27/10, p.A6)
2010 Sep 21, In Georgia lawyers
for 2 men filed suit in DeKalb County against Bishop Eddie Long of
New Birth Missionary Baptist Church of Lithonia alleging coercion
into a sexual relationship. A 2nd suit was filed the next day by a
3rd man. A 4th suit was filed on Sep 24.
(SFC, 9/23/10, p.A13)(SFC, 9/24/10, p.A4)
2010 Sep 27, In Georgia Brandon
Joseph Rhode (31) was executed by lethal injection for the 1998
murders of a trucking company owner and his 2 children. He was
convicted in 2000 of the killings of Steven Moss (37), his
11-year-old son Bryan and 15-year-old daughter Kristin during a
burglary of their Jones County home in central Georgia.
(SFC, 9/28/10, p.A6)
2010 Oct 11, The San Francisco
Giants beat the Atlanta Braves 3-2 at Turner Field to clinch the
National League Championship Series.
(SFC, 10/12/10, p.A1)
2010 Oct 22, Ephren Taylor
resigned from City Capital and has since been replaced by Jeff M.
Smuda. Taylor allegedly took one million dollars from members at New
Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta. Smuda was elected
chairman of the failing company shortly after Taylor’s resignation.
According to their SEC, filing Jeff M. Smuda is an expert in
restructuring companies to profitability. Taylor was soon dubbed
“the black Bernie Madoff.”
(Econ, 1/28/12, p.63)(http://tinyurl.com/8a6vrqw)
2010 Nov 7, In Douglasville,
Georgia, Bobby Tillman (19) was shot and killed following a random
attack at a house party in an Atlanta suburb. 4 men were soon
charged with his murder.
(SSFC, 11/14/10, p.A14)
2010 Nov 19, Jack Camp (67), a
federal judge in Atlanta, pleaded guilty to two drug related
charges. He had been arrested on charges that he bought and used
drugs with a stripper.
(SFC, 11/20/10, p.A5)
2010 Nov 23, In Atlanta,
Georgia, Amador Cortes-Meza (36) of Mexico was convicted on federal
charges of orchestrating a sex trafficking scheme in which
prosecutors say he lured impoverished young Mexican women to the
Atlanta area with false promises of better lives, high-paying jobs
and even hints of romance. He was accused of bringing at least 10
women to the area between spring 2006 and June 2008.
(AP, 11/24/10)
2010 Dec 16, Prosecutors in
Atlanta, Georgia, said they have seized 700,000 tabs of Ecstasy and
charged Devon Samuels, a US Customs and Border Protection agent,
along with 13 others in a large scale drug trafficking scheme.
(SFC, 12/17/10, p.A10)
2011 Mar 22, In Georgia officer
Elmer Christian was shot and killed as he tried to apprehend Jamie
Hood (33) in connection with a carjacking and kidnapping in West
Athens. Hood released 5 hostages and was arrested on March 25 in an
operation that was broadcast live.
(SSFC, 3/27/11, p.A14)
2011 Apr 5, Storms pummeled the
US South with tornadoes. At least 8 people were reported killed in
the Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee.
(SFC, 4/6/11, p.A11)
2011 Apr 15, Storms marched
into Tennessee, Louisiana and later into Georgia. At least three
twisters touched down in Mississippi, where a state of emergency was
declared in 14 counties, causing widespread damage.
(AP, 4/16/11)
2011 Apr 27, Dozens of
tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system wiped out neighborhoods
across a wide swath of the South, killing at least 350 people in the
deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years. Alabama had 254 deaths, 34 in
Mississippi, 34 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, 8 in Arkansas, 5 in
Virginia and one in Kentucky.
(AP, 4/28/11)(AP, 4/29/11)(AFP, 4/30/11)
2011 Apr 28, Pres. Obama
declared a major disaster in Alabama. Declarations for Mississippi
followed on Apr 29, Georgia on Apr 30, and soon followed for
Tennessee and Arkansas.
(Econ, 5/7/11, p.28)
2011 May 13, Georgia’s Gov.
Nathan Deal signed HB 87, a new immigration bill, into law. On June
14 He proposed that unemployed probationers be given the jobs that
migrants would have typically filled.
(Econ, 6/18/11, p.37)(http://tinyurl.com/3wyckfu)
2011 Jun 27, A US federal judge
temporarily blocked parts of Georgia's strict new law targeting
illegal immigration from taking effect, including a provision that
authorizes police to check the immigration status of suspects
without proper identification and to detain illegal immigrants.
(AP, 6/27/11)
2011 Jul 2, Thousands of
marchers stormed the Atlanta, Georgia, to protest the state's new
immigration law, which they say creates an unwelcome environment for
people of color and those in search of a better life.
(AP, 7/2/11)
2011 Jul 5, Georgia Gov. Nathan
Deal said award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on
widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals. His office
released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that
named 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what's
likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history.
(http://tinyurl.com/3q26c6q)
2011 Jul 15, In Atlanta,
Georgia, security guard Nkosi Thandiwe (22) opened fire on 3 women
in a parking garage killing one and wounding two. He was arrested
and charged with murder.
(SFC, 7/16/11, p.A5)
2011 Jul 21, In Georgia Andrew
DeYoung (37) was executed by lethal injection for the 1993 murder of
his parents and sister. The videotaped execution was likely the
first in the nation in almost 2 decades.
(www.ajc.com/news/deyoung-executed-with-videographer-1033787.html)
2011 Aug 19, In Atlanta,
Georgia, Jullian Jones (22), a mother of four, was gunned down.
Police sought Javaris Crittenton, a former NBA player, for the
murder. Authorities said Jones likely not the intended target when
Crittenton fired shots from an SUV, retaliating for an April robbery
in which he was a victim.
(AP, 8/28/11)
2011 Sep 21, The US state of
Georgia executed convicted murderer Troy Davis on in a case that
drew international attention because of claims by his advocates that
he may have been innocent.
(Reuters, 9/21/11)
2011 Sep 27, In Georgia 2 men
were arrested for stealing over $2.8 million worth of jewels at
Milano’s Fine Jewelry in Cuming over the last weekend.
(SFC, 9/29/11, p.A8)
2011 Oct 3, Kathy Scruggs (44)
of Atlanta, Georgia, claimed the cash option and will receive
$15,124,017 before taxes in the $25 million prize. She matched all
of the winning numbers in the Sep 14 multistate Powerball drawing.
She said she had requested a Mega Millions ticket but wound up with
that and the Powerball ticket and accepted both of them.
(AP, 10/4/11)
2011 Oct 23, In Georgia
Christopher Michael Hodges (26), a Tennessee National Guardsman
training at the Fort Gordon military post, shot and killed sheriff's
deputy James D. Paugh (47), then committed suicide on the side of
the Bobby Jones Expressway. Hodges appeared to be drunk and was said
to be firing at passing cars.
(AP, 10/23/11)(SFC, 10/24/11, p.A6)
2011 Oct 26, In Atlanta,
Georgia, helicopters hovered overhead as officers in riot gear
arrested more than 50 Occupy Atlanta protesters at a downtown park.
(AP, 10/29/11)
2011 Nov 1, US federal
authorities arrested four Georgia men, Frederick Thomas (73), Dan
Roberts (67), Ray H. Adams (65) and Samuel J. Crump (68), accused of
plotting to buy explosives and produce a deadly biological toxin to
attack fellow citizens and government officials.
(Reuters, 11/1/11)
2011 Nov 8, Georgia voters in
105 of 127 voted to end a century-old ban on the sale of alcohol on
Sundays.
(SFC, 11/12/11, p.A8)
2011 Nov 28, Ginger White (46)
of Georgia said that she and Republican presidential hopeful Herman
Cain had a 13-year extramarital affair that lasted nearly until the
former businessman announced his candidacy for the White House
several months ago.
(AP, 11/28/11)
2011 Dec 2, In Canton, Georgia,
Puerto Rico-born Jorelys Rivera (7) disappeared from a playground
after her babysitter went home to fetch sodas for friends. The
girl’s body was found on Dec 5 in a trash container and she appeared
to have been severely beaten and sexually assaulted. On Dec 7 Ryan
Brunn (20), a maintenance worker, was arrested for her murder. Brunn
was found dead of an apparent suicide in his prison cell on Jan 19.
(SFC, 12/6/11, p.A12)(SFC, 12/8/11, p.A14)(AP,
12/13/11)(AP, 1/19/12)
2011 Dec 16, In Atlanta,
Georgia, rapper Slim Dunkin was gunned down in a music studio as he
was preparing to record a video.
(AP, 12/16/11)
2012 Feb 6, Georgia’s top court
struck down a state law that restricted assisted suicides.
(SFC, 2/7/12, p.A9)
2012 Feb 9, The US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission voted 4-1 to grant a license to build two more
nuclear reactors at a facility in Georgia.
(SFC, 2/10/12, p.A9)
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End of file.