On April 26, 1956, at the port of Newark, New Jersey, Malcolm McLean watched as a giant crane swung his newly invented shipping containers onto a ship. As the ship steamed off toward Houston, Texas, the era of container shipping had begun.
Born in 1914 in Robeson County, McLean rose from humble roots to build a business empire. He began by driving a truck as a teenager and owned one of America’s largest transportation companies by the time he was in his mid-30s.
On April 24, 1776, North Carolina’s Provincial Congress ordered that a salt works be established in the colony for Revolutionary War use.
On April 24, 1776, prominent patriots Richard Herring and John Devane founded a gun factory on the Black River north of Wilmington in what’s now Sampson County.
On April 23, 1985, former U.S. Senator and Watergate Committee chairman Sam J. Ervin, Jr., died of respiratory failure at North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. He was 88.
Born in Morganton, Ervin graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1917 before serving in France during World War I. After earning a law degree from Harvard University in 1922, he returned to his hometown to practice law and, years later, still described himself as an “old country lawyer.”
On April 23, 1864, Robert Frederick Hoke, then only 27-years-old, became the youngest major general in the Confederate States Army. He was promoted days after leading a successful campaign to recapture Plymouth in Washington County.
On April 23, 1932, the Administration Building of what’s now Wingate University was destroyed by fire.