The modern United States receives its crowning star when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the
Union as the 50th state (above). The president also issued an order
for an American flag featuring 50 stars arranged in staggered rows:
five six-star rows and four five-star rows. The new U.S. flag became
official July 4, 1960.
Thomas T. Hall (May 25, 1936 – August 20, 2021)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tom T. Hall, the singer-songwriter
who composed “Harper Valley P.T.A.” and sang about life’s
simple joys as country music’s consummate blue collar bard,
has died.
His son, Dean Hall, confirmed the musician’s death on Friday
at his home in Franklin, Tennessee. Hall, known as “The
storyteller” for his unadorned yet incisive lyrics, composed
hundreds of songs.
On August 20, 1619, “20 and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony of Virginia and were then bought by English colonists. The arrival of the enslaved Africans
in the New World marked the beginning of two and a half centuries
of slavery in North America.
CAMILLE BOHANNON
Singer Robert Anthony Plant is 73 today.
Plant is best known as the lead singer and lyricist
of the English rock band Led Zeppelin.
On August 19, 1909, the first race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.
Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana, the speedway was started by local businessmen as a
testing facility for Indiana’s growing automobile industry.
In that first five-mile race, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian
engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4 miles
per hour. The track’s surface of crushed rock and tar proved a
disaster, breaking up in a number of places and causing the deaths
of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators.
The surface was soon replaced with 3.2 million paving bricks, laid
in a bed of sand and fixed with mortar. Dubbed “The Brickyard,”
the speedway reopened in December 1909.
Ray Harroun wheels his No. 32 Marmon Wasp racecar to
victory in the inaugural Indy 500.
