Chronology

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1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

2. 1946–1973
   Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Kenneth M. Brinkhous chairs the UNC Department of Pathology

   Brinkhous succeeded James B. Bullitt as chair of pathology at the UNC School of Medicine in 1946 and held the post until 1973, building a research program in thrombosis and hemostasis. His department invented the partial thromboplastin time (PTT) test used in clinical laboratories.

3. 1947
   Chapel Hill Brinkhous begins research on dogs that carry hemophilia

   Brinkhous began studying canine carriers of hemophilia in 1947. The work led to the laboratory now called the Francis Owen Blood Research Laboratory and to UNC's hemophilia research and treatment center.

4. 1967–2024
   Storyline · 13 events · Orange County Health care across language and immigration

   From the student-run SHAC clinic of 1967 to UNC’s interpreter services, the CAMPOS program and the Center for Latino Health of 2008, care for the county’s newcomers has grown with its languages, and the health department was serving clients in almost 20 languages by 2014. El Futuro’s bilingual mental health work in Carrboro and the refugee wellness program of 2015 carry it on.

5. 1967
   Founding or opening · Orange County UNC students open SHAC, the nation's first student-run free clinic

   The Student Health Action Coalition began in 1967 with a few UNC medical students seeing patients in supporters' homes. It now holds a free Wednesday evening clinic at the Carrboro Community Health Center, with student interpreting teams in Spanish and Mandarin.

6. Recent decades · 1976–2026

7. 2004
   Founding or opening · Chapel Hill UNC School of Medicine starts CAMPOS to train Spanish-speaking physicians

   Marco Alemán and colleagues founded the Comprehensive Advanced Medical Program of Spanish in 2004 to prepare medical students to care for Spanish-speaking patients without relying on interpreters. Its first class graduated in 2008, and students do yearly service with Spanish-speaking communities.

8. 2008
   Founding or opening · UNC Hospitals, Chapel Hill UNC opens the Center for Latino Health for Spanish-speaking patients

   The UNC Center for Latino Health (CELAH) began in 2008 in the School of Medicine and UNC Health Care, offering specialty and primary care in Spanish, same-day access and health education. It served more than 15,000 patients in its first ten years.

9. September 2009
   Founding or opening · UNC Hospitals, Chapel Hill N.C. Cancer Hospital is dedicated

   The seven-story, 315,000-square-foot N.C. Cancer Hospital, built with a 180 million dollar authorization from the General Assembly, was dedicated in September 2009. It tripled the space available for treating cancer patients at UNC.

10. April 2016
    Property or economic transaction · Davis Library, Chapel Hill Smithies and Sancar give replica Nobel medals to UNC

    At a Davis Library gathering, Oliver Smithies and Aziz Sancar presented gold-plated bronze replicas of their Nobel Prize medals to the university. Chancellor Carol Folt recounted that Sancar had led the search committee that brought Nobuyo Maeda and Smithies to UNC.

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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.