On March 31, 1973, Carowinds, near Charlotte, opened to the public.
Miss North Carolina and Miss South Carolina cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony. Young Charlotte resident, Jimmy Henderson, waving a giant ticket, led about 3,000 visitors into the park in a parade reminiscent of the opening of Disneyland in California.
On March 30, 1811, Jacob W. Holt, notable carpenter, builder and contractor, was born in Virginia.
On March 29, 1795, Patriot, planter and prominent Raleigh resident Joel Lane died.
Born in Halifax sometime in the early 1740s, Lane is believed to have been a descendant of early settlers of Jamestown. After serving as justice of the peace and sheriff in Halifax County, Lane acquired several thousand acres of land in what is now Wake County and moved there sometime in the late 1760s.
On March 29, 1982, UNC basketball Coach Dean Smith and his Tar Heels won the school’s first national title since 1957. The Tar Heels took on the Georgetown University Hoyas in New Orleans in final game in the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament that year.
On March 29, 1862, Union forces led by General John G. Parke landed unopposed on Bogue Banks at the mouth of Hoop Pole Creek.
On March 28, 1865, Maj. Gen. George Stoneman’s troops marched through Blowing Rock.
Union cavalry under Stoneman, commander of the Union army District of East Tennessee, conducted one of the longest cavalry raids in history. About 5,000 men under Stoneman’s command entered North Carolina with a mission “to destroy and not to fight battles” in order to expedite the close of the Civil War.
Stoneman’s raid coincided with the raids of Gen. William T. Sherman in the eastern sections of the state.
On March 28, 1914, Erlanger Mills began production in Lexington. The company was conceived of in 1911, when New York textile magnates Abraham and Charles Erlanger needed a source of cotton fabric for their BVD underwear factory in Baltimore, Md. Lexington businessmen convinced the brothers to build a plant near their town.
On March 27, 1931, the General Assembly consolidated what is now UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State University and UNC-Greensboro into the University of North Carolina system. The streamlined system was intended to reduce inefficiency and redundancy in higher education.