Chronology

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1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

2. 1975
   Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Chris Stamey and Will Rigby form Sneakers

   While attending UNC, Stamey teamed with drummer Will Rigby to form the power pop band Sneakers, later joined by guitarist Mitch Easter; the group played Max's Kansas City in New York in 1976 and broke up soon after.

3. Recent decades · 1976–2026

4. December 2010
   Publication, speech or performance · Cat's Cradle, Carrboro First Big Star's Third concert is staged at Cat's Cradle

   Stamey served as musical director for a live staging of Big Star's 1975 album Third, which debuted at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro before later shows in London and at South by Southwest in 2012.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. 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. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. 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 October 4, 2026.