Reaching for the TV remote is such a habit now, it’s hard to imagine Atlanta viewers were once thrilled to have two TV stations to watch. In late 1948, WSB-TV was it. It was six months before you could change channels. Then, on this day in 1949, WAGA went on the air. On a set […]
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” are among the greatest hymns ever written. All are the work of Charles Wesley. He was born in England in 1707 and was educated at Christ Church College at Oxford along with his brother John, where they started the […]
Their arrival in Georgia on this date in 1734 heralded the beginning of one of the most culturally distinctive communities in Georgia. The Catholic Archbishop of Salzburg expelled German Protestants from the region in present-day Austria in 1731, and England’s King George II offered them refuge in the new colony of Georgia. Some 300 Salzburgers […]
The arts, he said, are not the privilege of the few, but the necessity of us all. Robert Shaw put the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra – and Chorus – on the international map. As a choral director, he was an innovator who had no equal. He singlehandedly elevated the symphonic chorus to parity with the symphonic […]
It was one of the most popular movies ever made and is forever linked to the state of Georgia. Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick had worried that Civil War movies usually bombed at the box office, and making the movie itself had been a mammoth undertaking. Selznick interviewed 1400 actors and conducted […]
Joseph Souter was born in Atlanta on this day in 1940. After meeting disc jockey Bill Lowery, he shortened his name to Joe South. He played in Lowery’s house band at National Recording Corporation in Atlanta. So did Ray Stevens and Jerry Reed. His first success came writing songs for other performers: “Untie Me” for […]
She gave the performance of a lifetime in just her third film—and won an Oscar at 27. Joanne Woodward was born in Thomasville and grew up there and in Marietta. She loved movies, and in 1939 she and her mother attended the Atlanta premiere of Gone with the Wind. Woodward went to Louisiana State University […]
He took a Bible with him into the ring. Dubbed the “Georgia Deacon,” he was the first black boxer to be middleweight champion of the world. Theodore “Tiger” Flowers was born in Camilla in 1895 and started boxing at 18. Flowers was the first black boxer after Jack Johnson to fight for a world title, […]
She helped create the literary genre known as “Southern Gothic.” But more than anything else, Carson McCullers wrote with penetrating insight about loneliness and suffering. Born as Lula Carson Smith in Columbus in 1917, she went to New York for college and married Reeves McCullers, the beginning of a complex and destructive relationship. In 1940, […]
She was known as “Mother Russell,” the wife of the state’s chief justice and the mother of a U.S. Senator. Ina Dillard was born in Oglethorpe County in 1868. After attending the Lucy Cobb Institute in Athens, she married a young Athens lawyer named Richard Russell. He became one of the first judges to serve […]
