Category: Tar Heelia

1. True or false: Until “Birth of a Nation” — the movie version of Thomas Dixon’s “The Clansman” — it never occurred to the Ku Klux Klan to burn crosses.

2. What ship at the center of an international incident in 1975 began its existence as a Liberty Ship built in Wilmington during World War II?

3. “The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: They are enormously dangerous, and hence enormously fascinating.” Who said it — H.L. Mencken, A.J. Liebling or Andy Rooney?

4. After the death of Stonewall Jackson his horse, Little Sorrel, spent more than 20 years on the Lincoln County farm owned by Jackson’s father-in-law, making appearances at fairs and Confederate veteran reunions. Where did Little Sorrel go after that?

5. What acclaimed musician’s real first name was Arthel?

Answers….

 

 

 

 

1. True. Dixon had included a pivotal cross-burning in his novel to support the Klan’s supposed link to clans in Medieval Scotland that burned crosses on hillsides to rally troops before battle.

2. The Mayaguez, a U.S. container ship captured by communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas three days after it strayed into Cambodian waters.

3. Mencken.

4. Little Sorrel was shipped by rail to the Virginia Military Academy in Lexington, where Jackson had taught before the war. When the horse died he was stuffed and put on display at the VMI Museum. In 1997, the Daughters of the Confederacy reclaimed Little Sorrel’s bones from the taxidermist, burned them and buried them in front of the Jackson statue near the parade grounds.)

5. Doc Watson of Deep Gap.

 

1. What are the six poisonous snakes found in North Carolina?

2. Greensboro surgeon John Lyday served as the model for what well-known movie and TV character?

3. True or false: North Carolina has no buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

4. “Positively no dogs of any size, value, color or ugliness allowed. Guests who attempt to smuggle them in vanity boxes or suit cases will be asked to vacate their rooms.” What well known hotel included this warning in a 1920 brochure?

5. Until 2012, what company owned the Star-News in Wilmington, the Times-News in Hendersonville and the Dispatch in Lexington?

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1. Copperhead, Carolina pygmy rattlesnake, Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, timber rattlesnake, cottonmouth and Eastern coral snake.

2. Trapper John on “M*A*S*H.” While serving in the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea, Lyday worked with another surgeon, Dr. Dick Hornberger, who under the pen name Richard Hooker wrote a novel that became the basis for the movie and TV series. He died at age 78 in 1999 in Greensboro.

3. True. Although Wright designed homes in Morganton and Asheville, as well as a housing complex for blacks in Whiteville, none was ever built.

4. The Grove Park Inn in Asheville.

5. The New York Times.

 

1. Evelyn Lincoln, secretary to President Kennedy, wrote that on the eve of his trip to Dallas he had told her he might replace Vice President Lyndon Johnson on the 1964 ticket with what North Carolinian?

2. “Your name is James. You’re twenty-three. You live in North Carolina.” These words appear in what controversial 2004 bestseller?

3. The first documented operation on what sick animal was performed in 1993 by veterinarians at N.C. State?

4. If you dug a hole in North Carolina straight through to the opposite side of the world, where would you wind up?

A. Pacific Ocean

B. Indian Ocean

C. Indonesia

D. Australia

5. The protagonist in Tom Wolfe’s 2004 novel “I Am Charlotte Simmons” is a college student from what N.C. town?

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1. Gov. Terry Sanford, who later said Kennedy never mentioned the possibility to him.

2. “A Million Little Pieces” the discredited memoir by James Frey.

3. A goldfish.

4. B. Indian Ocean.

5. Sparta.

 

1. What future terrorist dropped out of Special Forces training at Fort Bragg in 1991 after being unable to complete a 90-minute march with a 45-pound pack?

2. What future terrorist attended Chowan College and graduated from N.C. A&T in mechanical engineering?

3. True or false: The first volcanic eruptions in what is now North Carolina occurred about 820 million years ago.

4. During the Civil War captured Union troops being held at Salisbury Prison introduced what sport to North Carolina?

5. Henderson native Ben E. King‘s best known pop hit made the top 10 in 1961 — and did it again in 1986. What was it?

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1. Timothy McVeigh, who admitted setting the bomb that killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.

2. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged organizer of 9-11.

3. True. Volcanic activity lasted about 220 million years.

4. Baseball.

5. “Stand by Me,” which was revived in the movie by that name.

 

Several new titles were just added to “New in the North Carolina Collection.” To see the full list simply click on the link in the entry or click on the “New in the North Carolina Collection” tab at the top of the page. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library Catalog and they are all available for use in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

1. What blues singer chased off a gang of Klansmen at a 1927 appearance in Concord?

2. Forty-two years after North Carolina replaced a Gov. Hodges with a Gov. Sanford, what other state did the same?

3. What aviation breakthrough was achieved in 1915 by the USS North Carolina?

4. Several hundred residents of what town welcome the New Year by firing black-powder muskets?

5. A 47-minute visit by what president inspired the creation of the forerunner of the Charlotte Chamber?

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1. Bessie Smith. When half a dozen hooded men attempted to collapse the tent where she and the Harlem Frolics were performing, Smith yelled, “What the — you think you’re doing? I’ll get the whole damn tent out here if I have to. You just pick up them sheets and run.” They did.

2. South Carolina, where Mark Sanford succeeded Jim Hodges in 2003. Terry Sanford had succeeded Luther Hodges in North Carolina.

3. The USS North Carolina (the second of four ships bearing that name) became the first ship ever to launch an aircraft by catapult while under way. This experiment led to the catapults used on battleships and cruisers in World War II and beyond.

4. Cherryville. It’s a good luck tradition begun by German settlers more than 200 years ago.

5. Teddy Roosevelt. In 1904 Roosevelt, traveling by train across the South, spoke long enough to tell an overflow crowd at Vance Park, “This is the age of organization.” The next day saw the organization of the Greater Charlotte Club. Motto: “Watch Charlotte grow.”

 

 1. A 1938 visit to the U.S. Fisheries Station at Beaufort inspired what biologist to write about shorebirds in “Under the Sea-Wind”?

2. True or false: The oldest known North Carolinian lived to be 115 years old.

3. What was the “Route of the Pacemakers”?

4. Who was North Carolina’s last popularly elected Roman Catholic governor before Mike Easley?

5. In 1799 Joseph Rice recorded North Carolina’s last known sighting of what animal?

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1. Rachel Carson. In “The Edge of the Sea” (1955) Carson describes the estuarine region near Beaufort now known as the Rachel Carson Reserve. Her next book was the environmentalism landmark “Silent Spring” (1962).

2. True. Maggie Barnes of Kenly died in 1998. (Nine of 10 people who live beyond 110 are women.)

3. A slogan of Piedmont Airlines.

4. There wasn’t one.

5. The buffalo. He killed it in Bull Creek Valley in Buncombe County.

 

1. True or false: When the sun rises in Murphy in the state’s westernmost corner, it has already been up more than half an hour in Manteo on the coast.

2. Who spoke these words at Duke University in 1979?

“If you understood what communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday be communist.

I am a socialist, I think that we should strive toward a socialist society — all the way to communism.”

3. Serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph was a student for two semesters at what N.C. university?

4. Jack Johnson, heavyweight boxing champion and Dr. Charles Drew, father of the blood bank — what cause of death did these two black men share?

5. The likeness of what influential financial figure appears as a banker in one of the bronze sculptures on The Square in Charlotte?

Answers….

 

 

1. True

2. Jane Fonda.

3. Western Carolina University, 1985-86.

4. Both died in car crashes on N.C. highways.

5. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.

 

1. To what experience was actress Susan Sarandon referring when she said, “It’s kind of like taking a hallucinogen. You have to have someone that goes with you on your first trip and kind of walks you through it.”

2. True or false: Until being imported by wildlife authorities, no beavers lived in modern North Carolina.

3. In the late 1950s what two NFL teams played an annual exhibition game in Winston-Salem?

4. “It was the hour of twilight on a soft spring day toward the end of April in the Year of our Lord 1929, and George Webber leaned his elbows on the sill of his back window and looked out at what he could see of New York.” This is the opening sentence of what well known novel?

5. The largest freshwater fish ever caught in North Carolina weighed how much — 77, 97 or 117 pounds?

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1. Eating one’s first Krispy Kreme doughnut.

2. True. The last native beaver was sighted in Stokes County in 1897.

In 1939 a shipment of 29 beavers from Pennsylvania was released in the coastal plain. They thrived, stocking expanded and trappers prospered, until timber damage and flooding necessitated beaver control programs in some areas.

3. The Green Bay Packers and the Washington Redskins. The week before the game the Packers trained in Greensboro, the Redskins in Winston-Salem.

4. “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe, 1940.

5. In 2016 Landon Evans of Benson, fishing from a dock on Lake Gaston, caught a 117-pound, eight-ounce blue catfish.

 

Last week the nation reflected on the work and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., as we marked the 50th anniversary of his assassination on 4 April 1968 in Memphis, Tenn. Included in these remembrances were the events and marches held across the country as the nation grieved together in gatherings both large and small.  On 5 April 1968, residents of Durham, N.C., marched peacefully through the city’s downtown district. The march was sponsored by several organizations to honor the memory of Dr. King. By the following evening on 6 April 1968, arson fires were burning. Governor Dan K. Moore activated the National Guard, and a curfew was imposed.

The North Carolina Collection contains the work of Billy E. Barnes who photographed the peaceful march. Several of the images have been digitized and can be viewed online through the collection’s finding aid:

The North Carolina Collection’s Durham Herald Co. Newspaper Photograph Collection also includes images from events in Durham on April 5 and 6, 1968. Several images from the Durham Herald are featured in a Durham County Library online exhibit about the aftermath of King’s assassination.