Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History

On June 11, 1937, Eleanor Roosevelt kicked up her heels with the homesteaders at Penderlea. The First Lady visited Pender County to check on the progress at one of her husband Franklin’s premier homestead sites.During the depths of the Depression, Wilmington industrialist Hugh MacRae conceived the idea of creating a model farm community at Penderlea on a grand scale. He had experimented with similar communities across southeastern North Carolina early in the 20th century.

On June 10, 1861, Henry Lawson Wyatt lost his life at the Battle of Bethel in Virginia.

On June 10, 1946, Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion boxer, died at St. Agnes Hospital in Raleigh.

On June 9, 1864, the SS Pevensey, a Confederate blockade runner was run aground at Pine Knoll Shores by the Union supply ship New Berne. At the time the ship’s crew was disoriented, thinking they were much closer to Cape Fear than they actually were.To prevent Union capture of the supplies on board, the Pevensey’s crew exploded the ship’s boilers and then escaped to shore, where they were captured and taken to Fort Macon. One crew member was apprehended before even making it that far.

On June 9, 1978, Robert Moog incorporated Big Briar, his musical instrument company in Asheville.  Moog, an engineer, invented the Moog synthesizer that made him famous in 1963.

On June 8, 1917, the first of 2,300 Germans arrived by train at Hot Springs to begin life in a World War I internment camp. Their civilian merchant ships had been docked in various American ports two months earlier when the United States entered the war. At that time, the government seized the German vessels and declared their officers and crews “alien enemies.”

On June 7, 1973, two Galapagos tortoises became the first residents of the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, slated to open the following year.The huge reptiles, native to the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, were purchased by the North Carolina Zoological Society from Evelia Burr of Concord, whose late husband had hatched them from eggs. The pair, considered endangered species, cost $5,000.