On December 13, 1951, North Carolina dressmaker Molly McCoy Hancock died.
Born in 1863, McCoy grew up in Rockingham County with her five siblings. Her mother owned one of the first sewing machines in the area and wove her own cloth. Hancock learned how to be a seamstress by watching her mother work. She found the work to be so engaging that she ended up designing and making dresses for her sisters and classmates.
On December 12, 1985, Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashed during take-off in Gander, Newfoundland. The chartered flight was transporting 248 soldiers from the 101st Airborne back to their base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, ending a six-month peace-keeping mission in Sinai, Egypt.
Their flight was to deliver them home to their families just in time for the Christmas holidays. Thirty years later, the loss of Arrow Air Flight 1285 remains the worst plane crash involving a peace-keeping force in the history of the U.S. military.
On December 12, 1906, George Ladshaw submitted a survey of the Green River basin in Henderson and Polk counties, proposing dams and hydroelectric power plants along the waterway.
His report on the “Available Power and Cost of Development” would have destroyed the riverbed and natural flow of the Green River, which today is legendary among kayakers for its exciting slides and drops. Other parts of the river are popular for tubing, canoeing and kayaking for beginners.
On December 12, 1957, the first Food Town—now known as Food Lion—opened in Salisbury. The chain began when brothers Ralph and Clifford Ketner teamed up with family friend Wilson Smith to leave Winn-Dixie and try their own hands in the grocery business.
On December 11, 1924, James B. Duke established the Duke Endowment with an initial gift of $40 million. The Endowment received an additional $67 million at Duke’s death the following year.
On December 10, 1825, former North Carolina Governor William Miller died in Key West, Florida.
Born around 1783 in Warren County, Miller worked as a private lawyer, the state’s attorney general and a member of the General Assembly before first being elected governor in 1814. He went on to serve three terms in the post, and was the first to occupy the newly completed Governor’s Palace at the south end of Raleigh’s Fayetteville Street.