Chronology

News, Journalism & Broadcasting, Recent decades: 9 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →

1. Recent decades · 1976–2026
2. April 3, 1976 WUNC-FM returns to the air as an NPR affiliateBroadcast milestone · Chapel Hill

   UNC's radio station WUNC, which had begun FM broadcasting in 1952 and had been silenced by equipment problems in the early 1970s, returned to the air from Chapel Hill on April 3, 1976, as a National Public Radio affiliate.

3. 1979 Sandy McClamroch helps found the Carol Woods retirement communityCivic institution · Chapel Hill

   McClamroch, by then a former mayor and the founder of WCHL, was instrumental in founding the Carol Woods retirement community in Chapel Hill in 1979.

4. 1983 Shanklin's Press prints Irene Oliver Pender's History of Orange County SchoolsPublication · Hillsborough

   Shanklin's Press of Hillsborough, the Black-owned print shop run by the family of Thomas Shanklin, published Irene Oliver Pender's A History of Orange County Schools: 1752-1983. The shop began in the family home in the 1960s and later moved to Cornelius Street.

5. 1985 Charles Kuralt gives the UNC spring commencement addressSpeech · Chapel Hill

   Kuralt, who had edited the Daily Tar Heel as a student, returned to Chapel Hill to deliver the University's spring commencement address in 1985. He told the graduates that the influence of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill moves outward to the farthest corners of the state.

6. November 7, 1994 WXYC makes the first internet radio simulcastChapel Hill

   WXYC streamed its radio broadcast over the internet on November 7, 1994.

7. July 1997 Charles Kuralt is buried in the Old Chapel Hill CemeteryDeath and burial · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, Chapel Hill

   Kuralt died on July 4, 1997 and was buried on the UNC campus in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. About 1,600 people attended a memorial service in Memorial Hall, where Hugh Morton and William C. Friday spoke.

8. September 29, 2004 WCOM community radio begins broadcastingBroadcast milestone · Carrboro

   WCOM, a 100-watt low-power FM community station run by the nonprofit Public Gallery of Carrboro, first went on the air at 103.5 FM from Carrboro at 11:27 p.m. on September 29, 2004. Its founders included Jacques Menache and Ruffin Slater, and it first broadcast from a building at Weaver and Greensboro streets.

9. July 29, 2020 UNC trustees vote to remove Josephus Daniels’s name from the student stores buildingRenaming · Chapel Hill

   On July 29, 2020 the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted 11 to 2 to remove four names from campus buildings, among them Josephus Daniels. The Daniels Building became UNC Student Stores, and the names of Charles Brantley Aycock, Julian Shakespeare Carr and Thomas Ruffin Sr. were removed at the same meeting.

10. January 2024 The News of Orange merges with the Mebane EnterpriseBusiness merger · Hillsborough and Mebane

    Womack Publishing announced on January 3, 2024, that its weeklies The News of Orange County and the Mebane Enterprise would merge at the end of January. The combined paper, with a section for Mebane, covers Mebane, Hillsborough and Efland from the News of Orange office in Hillsborough, and the Mebane office closed.

The other dated entries wait behind a subject, a place, an era, a month, or the All dated entries switch, and each storyline’s page carries its own component entries. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. Each card’s “Correct this” link opens the contact form with the entry already named. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated September 14, 2026.