On April 5, 2000, stock car racing legend and NASCAR pioneer Lee Petty died in Greensboro. He was 86.It wasn’t until age 35 that Petty began his racing career, driving a borrowed 1946 Buick Roadmaster in NASCAR’s first “strictly stock” race in June 1949 in Charlotte. That same year, Petty established a garage in a repurposed reaper shed on his family’s farm in Randleman. Over the course of his career, Petty claimed 50 wins, including three NASCAR championships and the top spot at the inaugural Daytona 500 in February 1959.
Topics Related to This Day in North Carolina History
On April 5, 1976, James Baxter Hunt Jr. announced his intention to run for governor of North Carolina.With 65 percent of the vote, Hunt handily won the election in 1976. He served as governor for a record-breaking sixteen years—with an eight-year break in between two sets of consecutive four-year terms.
On April 4, 1983, the North Carolina State University Wolfpack won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
On April 4, 1946, H. H. Brimley died.Visitors to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in downtown Raleigh encounter one exhibit that is distinctly different from all the rest. It is the cluttered office of Herbert Hutchinson Brimley, the museum’s original curator and first director. Brimley’s tenure at the museum stretched from 1895 until his death more than 50 years later.
On April 3, 1930, Thomas Built Buses—the High Point company now recognized internationally for building bright yellow school buses—was incorporated.
On April 3, 1730, Scotsman Sir Alexander Cuming was present at a meeting of Cherokee leaders at the council house at Nikwasi. With Cuming’s support and apparent influence among the Indians, local headman Moytoy was selected to be “Emperor of the Cherokee.” Moytoy and Cuming then persuaded those present to pledge their allegiance to King George II. In a ceremony of friendship and possibly of political adoption, the Indians presented Cuming with the “Crown of Tannassy,” a dyed possum-hair headdress.
On April 3, 1973, the Mast General Store was added to the National Register of Historic Places. After a century as a landmark in the mountain community of Valle Crucis, today it is an iconic symbol of the heyday of country stores and their role in life of rural communities.
On April 1, 1937, Lloyd Frutchey, a Montgomery County farmer, conveyed one acre of land containing a Mississippian-era Indian mound to the state of North Carolina for excavation, interpretation and protection. The area was known as Frutchey State Park until the 1940s, when its name was changed to Town Creek.
On April 1, 1987, WRAL-TV in Raleigh broke the “Gar-barge” story.The story began a year earlier when Alabama businessman Lowell Harrelson proposed to alleviate overcrowding in a Long Island landfill by sending garbage to landfills across the South via barges. A parcel in Jones County was selected as the site for the first transfer of waste, and more than 3,000 tons of garbage set sail aboard the Mobro 4000 in late March 1987 bound for the port in Morehead City.