Tag: This Week in Atlanta History
Flashback: Larry Flynt shot in Lawrenceville
On that warm March afternoon, what pastor Fred Musser first thought was the sound of freight palettes dropping from a truck turned out to be the crack of a .44 caliber Marlin rifle—a weapon designed to kill large game.
Birth of Martha Lumpkin, Atlanta’s namesake
Atlanta wasn’t really planned. It just kind of ... happened. Our streets follow the lines of former cow paths (which explains why I always get turned around on Moore's Mill). And our name evolved in a similarly scattershot manner.
Dedication of the Georgia Capitol
The dedication of Georgia’s new Capitol on July 4, 1889 was an exercise in mixed metaphors. The ceremony, a grand legislative procession from the lawmakers’ temporary digs in an opera house on Marietta Street to the gilded edifice six blocks away, was carefully staged to symbolize democracy as an institution.
The Battle of Atlanta
“The Battle of Atlanta” sounds pretty definitive. And it’s understandable that the average person, not steeped in Civil War martial minutia, might consider this to be the dramatic and fiery destruction of the city (i.e. that famous flaming scene in Gone with the Wind.) But in fact, the battle waged in Atlanta on July 22, 1864 was just one step of the Atlanta Campaign, a months-long effort that didn’t reach its blazing conclusion until the fall.
The Olympics open to grand fanfare
The evening of July 19, 1996, was the culmination of Atlanta's civic leaders' desires to catapult the city into the international limelight and (hopefully) transform it into a relevant, vibrant hub of tourism and commerce.
Dedication of the Gold Dome
The dedication of Georgia’s new Capitol on July 4, 1889 was an exercise in mixed metaphors. The ceremony, a grand legislative procession from the lawmakers’ temporary digs in an opera house on Marietta Street to the gilded edifice six blocks away, was carefully staged to symbolize democracy as an institution.
The murder of Alberta King
On Sunday June 30 1974, Alberta Christine Williams King played “The Lord’s Prayer” on the organ of Ebenezer Baptist, the church where her father, A.D. Williams, her husband, Martin Luther King Sr., and son, Martin Luther King Jr., all had served as pastors.
The Great Fire of 1917
A half-century after Sherman burned Atlanta, the core of the city went up in flames again. The Great Atlanta Fire of 1917 destroyed 1,938 buildings, wiped out 300 acres of real estate, and left more than 10,000 people homeless—almost a tenth of the city’s residents.
The City’s First Telephone Exchange Launches
On May 15, 1879, the National Bell Telephone Company launched Atlanta’s first phone exchange. Located in an upper room of the Kimball House hotel (which, coincidentally, also did time as Atlanta city hall) the...
The first glass of Coca-Cola is served
Coca-Cola was billed as a versatile drug that could “cure all nervous afflictions—Sick Headache, Neuralgia, Hysteria, Melancholy, Etc. …”
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