On August 26, 1942, the first African American troops in the United States Marine Corps arrrived at Montford Point at Camp Lejeune.
Before President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order that ended segregation in the armed forces, Black soldiers who served did so in segregated units, like the one at Montford Point. In the era of strict segregation, interaction between White and Black Marines during training was practically nonexistent.
On April 26, 1865, the largest troop surrender of the Civil War took place on farm of James and Nancy Bennitt in what was then Orange County.
Ten days earlier two worn adversaries, US Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman and Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, along with their escorts, rode out to meet and negotiate the terms for the surrender. By chance, the Bennitt farm was located halfway between the US forces positioned in Raleigh and the Confederate forces encamped in and around Greensboro.
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 25, 1862, the Endor Iron Company was chartered. Two months later investors purchased the Deep River plantation of Alexander McIver and constructed a smelting furnace on it.
On April 25, 1908, famed CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow was born in Greensboro.
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.