On August 16, 1883, circus performers John Mertz and Mariah Elizabeth Nail were married on the stage of the Buckingham Theater in Louisville, Kentucky.
On August 15, 1754, Benjamin Hawkins, politician and agent for Indian affairs south of the Ohio River, was born in Warren County.
On August 15, 1866, Monroe Nathan Work, one of the most distinguished historians of the African American experience, was born in Iredell County.
On August 15, 1973, Carolista Fletcher Baum placed herself in the path of a bulldozer removing sand from Jockey’s Ridge and refused to move. The driver cut off the engine and talked with Baum, who, after some time, left the dune unscathed.
On August 14, 1880, while returning home from a political convention in Beaufort County, Bryan Grimes was murdered by a hired assassin near Bear Creek, about five miles from his family’s plantation, “Grimesland.”
On August 13, 1976, early Boy Scout leader Stanley Harris died in Greensboro.
On August 13, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Shackleford Banks Wild Horses Protection Act.