On March 18, 1942, flight operations began at the Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in Craven County with the landing of a Grumman J2F “Duck” amphibian.
The base was established just a few years earlier, after the Marine Corps conducted a search up and down the U.S. East Coast for a suitable site for an air station. After Congressman Graham Barden helped secure $40 million for construction in 1941, the base grew quickly, becoming a self-contained city of 20,000 within a few months.
On March 17, 1775, Richard Henderson’s Transylvania Company purchased much of the land that is now Kentucky and Tennessee from the Cherokee through a treaty signed at Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga River.
On March 18, 2003, a sting operation resulted in the recovery of North Carolina’s copy of the Bill of Rights from a group of antiques dealers.
On March 17, 1865, John Sprunt Hill, an early leader in the credit union movement, was born on a farm near Faison.
On March 17, 1967, the Winston-Salem State University Rams bested the Southwest Missouri State University Bears 77-74 at the NCAA Division II national men’s basketball championship game in Evansville, Indiana.
In so doing, WSSU became the first historically black college in the nation to win a national championship.
The championship was the highlight of a 30-1 season for the Rams, and represented a comeback from the Rams’ third-place finish in the CIAA tournament behind North Carolina A&T and Howard.
On March 17, 1829, Roman Catholic Bishop John England consecrated Saint Patrick Church in Fayetteville. The consecration was the first for a Catholic church in North Carolina. The following week England traveled to Beaufort County, where he dedicated St. John’s in Washington, the first Catholic church built in North Carolina.
On March 16, most likely in the 1780s, an odd and offbeat mariner from Ocracoke Island known as Quawk or Quork went to sea in his small fishing skiff despite warnings of impending foul weather. He never returned.
The sailor was said to be a loner, and was, by some accounts, the sole survivor of a shipwreck on the island. He was called Quork because of his voice, which was said to be like that of the “quawk,” the colloquial name for the black-crowned night heron.
On March 16, 1916, the last whale killed by North Carolina fisherman was caught near Cape Lookout.
On March 15, 1781, American and British forces clashed near Guilford Courthouse. The battle was the culmination of several months of hard campaigning by the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Charles Cornwallis.
Early in the day, Greene deployed his army in three lines. The first and second lines were North Carolina and Virginia militiamen, with Greene’s Continental soldiers composing the third. Veteran Virginia and North Carolina riflemen and Continentals were also posted on the flanks of the first line.
On March 15, 1962, archaeologists began diving on the wreck of the blockade runner Modern Greece. The wreck, which had been hidden on the sea floor for nearly 100 years, was discovered after a storm uncovered it. Divers found much of the vessel and its cargo intact. Historians and archaeologists with the state of North Carolina and U.S. Navy teamed up to recover more than 11,500 artifacts from the site.