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Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, George Washington. Each man who passed through Georgia was following his own destiny; each was a traitor to those who held power and who had the resources to punish him.

Aaron Burr, prior to his election as vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, had compiled an impressive record. Many considered him a brilliant lawyer as well as an able and strikingly handsome politician. And during the Revolutionary War he had distinguished himself for bravery and leadership.

It was Coca-Cola that first brought Robert Woodruff and President Eisenhower together in World War II, through the morale-boosting campaign to put a Coke in the hands of all military service personnel.

After the war, “Ike” enjoyed hunting quail at Ichauway Plantation as Woodruff’s guest. Thus, with Congress still intransigent, it was time for a personal intervention.

Today’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deep roots in Georgia, not the least of which were the Depression-era efforts of a handful of medical practitioners, a university, and a philanthropist whose support made their work possible.

Next time you drive by the CDC, consider this: What does that imposing complex in the middle of metro Atlanta have to do with a tiny, remote county in southwest Georgia?

When the Great Depression hit Georgia in the late 1920s, most of its population barely noticed, given that the state's own economy still suffered from the ruin of the Civil War.

Sharecropping had become a way of life for many farmers, black and white. In addition to poverty and the plague of pellagra, there were also massive agricultural impediments due to large-scale land erosion, resulting from long-standing poor farming practices.

When we think of Cobb County today, a variety of impressions come to mind. Historically, its development is inseparable from the state’s as a whole. Yet we may not, however, associate Cobb County with a leading role in nuclear weapons delivery and cold war.

Around 1785, planters along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia began importing high-quality cotton from the West Indies and learned to successfully cultivate the crop that made Caribbean planters, merchants, and slave traders rich.

Thus began a critical development in the history of slavery in the United States.

What is the value of a liberal arts education today? Academics — especially in the humanities — are often the objects of public criticism, if not dismissal, because of the “irrelevance” of their work. How does a college student majoring in, say, history or literature find a job after graduation? One scholar’s career, however, can help us recast this question of relevance.

A horrific event in Atlanta’s past changed the course of civil and human rights in the United States. On Sept. 22, 1906, whites began rampaging through Atlanta’s downtown streets and continued for three days.

When it was over, as many as 25 to 40 African Americans were dead, while only two whites died.

Lindbergh can be credited for helping Atlanta develop a taste for aviation. On Oct. 11, 1927, Lindbergh was given a hero’s welcome by 20,000 people at Grant Field where Lind bergh called on Atlantans’ “good will” to be “generous” in their view of “passenger and freight air service” (yes, there would be costs) and to recognize that a new day was dawning for commercial aviation.

In 1923 a quiet and withdrawn 21-year-old college dropout rode his motorcycle from Florida to Sumter County, Georgia, just outside Americus. He had a dream to purchase a biplane, which were being sold in crates as surplus left over from World War I.

When Sherman began the Atlanta Campaign in the spring of 1864, his goal was to drive deep into the South and, in accordance with Union general Ulysses Grant’s instructions, engage Confederate general Joseph Johnston’s army. Grant's orders were “to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their war resources.”