Piedmont

One hundred seventy-six years after it was chartered, Georgia’s flagship university admitted its first black students on this day in 1961. Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter applied to the University of Georgia in the summer of 1959 but were told that all dorms were full. They re-applied every semester thereafter and got the same response. […]

When the hit song, “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” went to number one on the charts in 1968, the artist who wrote and sang it had been dead for four months. Otis Redding became one of the most influential and popular soul musicians of all time. He was born in Dawson. When his […]

Sometimes even the best politicians can make big mistakes. President Franklin Roosevelt took a risk on this day in 1938 in Barnesville, Georgia. Giving a speech, he openly campaigned against Georgia Senator Walter George, who was sitting directly behind him. Running for re–election, George had become an outspoken opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The […]

A Masters from Georgia. Not a degree in Athens –- a golf tournament in Augusta. And it was a hit off the first tee. After golfer Bobby Jones retired, he and businessman Clifford Roberts developed a national landmark. Jones brought credibility, while Roberts had business savvy. Jones and noted golf course architect Alister Mackenzie designed […]

When you think Georgia Bulldogs, you probably think Vince Dooley. The legendary football coach’s long shadow didn’t just touch the University of Georgia, but collegiate athletics across the country. Dooley played football for coach Shug Jordan at Auburn University. He also earned a degree in business and a master’s in history there. After his Marine […]

Richard Wayne Penniman is not a name most people associate with the beginning of rock n’ roll, but few people did more to make rock one of the hearthstones of 20th-century American culture than the man known as Little Richard. Penniman was born into a family of 12 children in Macon and grew up singing […]

Warm Springs soothed his body and restored his spirit. Franklin D. Roosevelt made his first visit to the healing waters on this day in 1924. Roosevelt contracted polio three years earlier and traveled to Warm Springs on the advice of George Foster Peabody, his friend and part–owner of the springs. He visited 41 times. Other […]

The man known as “the Georgia Peach” reached a major milestone on this day in 1921. At age 34, baseball great and Georgia native Ty Cobb got career hit number 3000, the youngest player to reach that plateau. Cobb was born in Narrows, Georgia, in 1886 and grew up in nearby Royston. He joined the […]

He won the first Heisman Trophy ever awarded to a southern college football player. But Frank Sinkwich might never have played at the University of Georgia if a recruiter hadn't stopped for gas. Sinkwich was born in 1920 in Pennsylvania and grew up in Youngstown, Ohio.  UGA assistant coach Bill Hartman was recruiting another player […]

The greatest college football player ever? Bear Bryant said he was. Even if he did play for Georgia. Charley Trippi was born in Pennsylvania in 1920. The young athlete caught the attention of a former Georgia Bulldog who ran a Coca-Cola bottling plant near Trippi’s home. He offered Trippi a scholarship to play football at […]