Chronology

Search and filters

Entries

1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

2. Fall 1935
   Life event · Chapel Hill Shelby Foote arrives in Chapel Hill to enroll at UNC

   Shelby Foote came to Chapel Hill in fall 1935 to register at UNC despite having been turned down, following his Greenville friends Walker and LeRoy Percy. He stayed two years and contributed nine stories to Carolina Magazine.

3. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

4. 1945–1957
   Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill R. B. House becomes the first chancellor at Chapel Hill

   North Carolina created chancellorships for its three campuses in 1945, and President Frank Porter Graham turned to House, who had been executive secretary from 1926 and dean of administration from 1934. House held the post until 1957, the longest chancellorship at Chapel Hill.

5. Recent decades · 1976–2026

6. Fall 1993
   Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Shelby Foote becomes UNC's first Morgan Family Writer-in-Residence

   Shelby Foote spent the fall 1993 semester at UNC as the university's first Morgan Family Writer-in-Residence.

7. 2002
   Award or honor · Chapel Hill Harvey Beech receives the General Alumni Association's Distinguished Service Medal

   The General Alumni Association awarded Beech its Distinguished Service Medal in 2002. The citation, read at the Annual Alumni Luncheon, called him the inspiration behind the Black Alumni Reunion and noted the scholarship endowment he set up at the university.

8. January 18, 2014
   Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Eric Van Loon presents his Carolina Story to the alumni association board

   The General Alumni Association published Van Loon’s My Carolina Story, given as a member of its board of directors. In it he recounts chairing the Carolina Political Union and signing the Speaker Ban lawsuit as one of a dozen students who were plaintiffs.

9. June 2015
   Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill UNC and the Dental Foundation of North Carolina set up the Deah Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha Memorial Award

   The university and the Dental Foundation of North Carolina established a memorial award in the names of Deah Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha, to be presented for the first time in the 2015-16 academic year.

Suggest a correction to an entry →

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.