They were the quintessential college rock band of the 1980s, working in the town Rolling Stone called “the best college music scene in the country.” Michael Stipe was an art student at the University of Georgia when he met Peter Buck at the Wuxtry Record store in Athens. Together with Mike Mills and Bill Berry, […]
An African-American with a best-selling novel — a book that was turned into a movie — that was unheard of in the America of the late 1940s. Yet Frank Yerby did just that. Born in Augusta in 1916 to racially mixed parents, Yerby, all his life, had trouble being accepted in either black or white […]
There have been a lot of great Georgia Bulldogs, but very few who needed only one name: Herschel. Herschel Junior Walker was born in Wrightsville in 1962. He was a highly touted football player at Johnson County High School. Coach Vince Dooley and UGA won the very heated Herschel recruiting war. In his first game […]
“Moon River,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “Accentuate the Positive” — Savannah native John Herndon Mercer wrote those songs and a thousand more like them, and his songs are some of the most popular of all time. In a career that spanned nearly 50 years, Mercer co-founded Capitol Records, wrote for Broadway musicals, and was nominated for 19 […]
Known affectionately as the “Mouth of the South, he created a TV and sports empire that dramatically altered the media landscape. Robert Edward “Ted” Turner was born in Cincinnati in 1938. When he was nine, his family moved to Savannah. Turner took over his father’s billboard company after his father’s suicide and began expanding the […]
A Georgia native founded the most influential black newspaper of the 20th century. Robert Sengstacke Abbott was born on St. Simon’s island in 1868 and raised in Savannah. He attended law school in Chicago. When Abbott couldn’t find a job as a lawyer, he turned to journalism and founded the Chicago Defender. Within a decade […]
He was one of only three people inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. Robert Lee “Bobby” Dodd was a four-sport star at the University of Tennessee and was an All-American tailback playing football for legendary coach Robert Neyland. After graduation, Dodd took a job as assistant […]
Ted Turner called them “America’s Team,” but for most of their time in Atlanta they were lovable losers. The Braves played their first Atlanta season in 1966. In 25 years, they made the playoffs twice. There were a few highlights, some great players, like Hank Aaron, Dale Murphy, and Phil Niekro, but the Braves lost […]
It was an international crisis that tarnished America’s global prestige and helped make Jimmy Carter a one-term president. The Iranian Hostage Crisis began in 1979 when Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. It didn’t end for more than a year. Iran’s Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah of Iran, who […]
War can make or break a man. The Civil War made John Brown Gordon. Born in Upson County in 1832, he was managing his father’s coalmines in northwest Georgia when the war began. Although he lacked any military experience, Gordon was elected captain of the Raccoon Roughs, a company of mountain men, and he rose […]
