 |
This Day in Alabama History |
1871: Coal miner and Alabama labor leader William Mailly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1899: Writer Howell Vines was born.
1989: Kathryn Thornton, a native of Montgomery and graduate of Auburn University, becomes the first woman to fly on a military space mission on the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Sources: Bhamwiki, Alabama Department of Archives and History
1818: Cahaba, located at the confluence of the Alabama and Cahaba Rivers, is designated by the territorial legislature as Alabama’s state capital. Huntsville would serve for a short time as the temporary capital. The selection of Cahaba was a victory for the Coosa/Alabama River contingent, which won-out over a Tennessee/Tombigbee Rivers alliance group that wanted to place the capital at Tuscaloosa. The power struggle would continue between the two sections of the state; in 1826 the capital was moved to Tuscaloosa, but in 1847 it was moved to the Alabama River at Montgomery.
1933: Astronaut Hank Hartsfield was born in Birmingham.
Sources: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Bhamwiki
1826: Alabama’s legislature convenes in the new capital of Tuscaloosa for the first time. The capital had been moved there from Cahaba, the state’s first permanent capital. In 1846 the legislature voted to change the capital again, this time moving it to Montgomery.
1930: Song Writer, Curly Putnam, was born in Princeton.
1955: Actress and activist, Yolanda King, was born in Montgomery
1977: Robert Chambliss is convicted in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and death of 4 children.
Source: Bhamwiki
1873: W. C. Handy is born in Florence, Alabama. Handy brought the sounds of African-American blues to mainstream culture when he composed a song in 1909 that became known as “The Memphis Blues.” Handy, known as “Father of the Blues,” had a long career that yielded many other blues hits, such as “Beale Street Blues” and “St. Louis Blues.” Handy died in 1958.
1875: Alabama’s Constitution of 1875 is ratified. The “Bourbon” Democrats, having claimed to “redeem” the Alabama people from the Reconstruction rule of carpetbaggers and scalawags, wrote a new constitution to replace the one of 1868. It was a conservative document that gave the Democrats, and especially Black Belt planters, a firm grip on their recently reacquired control of state government.
1941: Musician and song writer, Dan Penn, was born in Vernon.
2004: President Bush nominated Condoleezza Rice to become Secretary of State.
Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Bhamwiki
1910: Eugene Ely was the first to fly an airplane off of the deck of a ship, the USS Birmingham (CL-2).
1992: The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute opened.
Source: Bhamwiki
1867: Alabama State University opened with 113 students.
1910: Writer, William Bradford Huie, was born in Hartselle
1927: Actor Hal Lynch was born in Birmingham.
1956: US Supreme Court affirms a lower court finding that Alabama laws requiring racial segregation on buses are unconstitutional.
1963: Football player, Jon Hand, born in Sylacauga
Source: Bhamwiki, Montgomery Advertiser
1813: Sam Dale, Jeremiah Austill, and James Smith become frontier heroes in a Creek War episode on the Alabama River known as The Canoe Fight.
12-13, 1833: In a spectacle seen across the Southeast, a fantastic meteor shower causes this night to be known as “the night stars fell on Alabama.” The shower created such great excitement across the state that it became a part of Alabama folklore and for years was used to date events. A century later it inspired a song and book, and in 2002 the state put the phrase “Stars Fell on Alabama” on its license plates.
1901: Alabama’s 1901 Constitution is ratified by statewide vote in an election fraught with corruption. Following the trend of other southern states in this period, Alabama used the constitution to effectively disfranchise blacks and poor whites.
1947: Birmingham became the first city to celebrate Armistice Day as Veterans Day
Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Bhamwiki
1903: Mary Anderson was granted a patent for windshield wipers.
1972: Southern Airways Flight 49 is hijacked on a flight from Birmingham to Montgomery. Three armed men wanted by Detroit police demanded a $10 million ransom while diverting the plane from one airport to another in the United States, Canada, and Cuba, where the ordeal ended thirty hours after it began.
Source: Bhamwiki, Alabama Department of Archives and History
1973: Baseball player Brett Taft was born in Hueytown.
1978: Baseball player Jason Standridge was born in Clay.
Source: Bhamwiki
1819: William Wyatt Bibb was elected as Alabama’s first Governor
1929: Football coach, Bobby Bowden, was born in Birmingham
1945: Mother Angelica was invested as a Poor Clare Nun of Perpetual Adoration
Source: Bhamwiki
1969: Writer, Bryant H. McGill, was born in Mobile.
1992: Novelist Richard Yates died of complications from surgery
Source: Bhamwiki
1939: Former Auburn Tigers football coach Pat Dye was born in Blythe, Georgia.
2007: Attorney and politician John Grenier died.
Source: Bhamwiki
Powered by WordPress
