Roger Babson is the founder of the Gravity Research Foundation, an organization with the stated purpose of studying, understanding and, ultimately, harnessing the force of gravity. it was the childhood drowning of his older sister in a river near Gloucester, Massachusetts that sparked Babson’s life-long interest in finding a way to control the effects of […]
Tag: Georgia History
Posted inStories of Atlanta
Aunt Geekie’s gift
In her more than two-decades-long opera career, Atlanta-born Mattiwilda Dobbs performed to acclaim on stages around the world. Along the way, she made history time and again, although, never on stage in Atlanta. It’s the story of a much-delayed hometown debut in this week’s Stories of Atlanta.
Posted inStories of Atlanta
$5
Five dollars does not go very far these days in Atlanta – or most other places, for that matter. But, there was a time not so very long ago when five dollars could buy a lifetime of memories. One of those times is the subject of this installment of Stories of Atlanta.
Posted inStories of Atlanta
Gift from France
The Woodruff Arts Center complex is home to some of the City’s premiere arts organizations. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Alliance Theatre, and High Museum of Art all reside within its walls. The artistic theme continues on the Center’s grounds with other works of art situated around the campus. Amid these is a piece with a […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
A bold move
Unlike today, where name-calling is a political sport, calling someone a traitor in 1848 apparently meant something. People were actually offended. Consider the example of Georgia Supreme Court Associate Justice Francis Cone, who used the word “traitor” when describing Little Alex…and to Little Alex, that was going too far. Fair warning, it doesn’t end well […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
Rules, regulations and fines
It’s pretty easy to imagine the amount of difficulty the newly chartered City of Atlanta experienced trying to bring the rule of law to a community that, since its inception, essentially had no laws. Atlanta, in its early days, was little more than a rowdy, frontier, railroad camp and, in the minds of many of […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
Man of the house
When George moved from his home in Alabama to the City of Atlanta, he was only 16 years old but, none the less, he was acutely aware that the responsibility for the well-being of his mother and his 5-siblings rested squarely on his shoulders. Amid the fervor and chaos of an Atlanta recovering from the […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
His honor, the saloonkeeper
Following the granting of an official charter by the State of Georgia, the City of Atlanta was obligated to elect a city government. If the number of fistfights that broke out in the city are any indication, Atlantans apparently felt very passionate about the person who should hold the title of Atlanta’s first mayor. The […]
Posted inStories of Atlanta
GA Tech night school
Coming out of Reconstruction, the City of Atlanta was experiencing growing pains but one of the more positive results of Atlanta’s emergence as an up-and-coming city was the founding of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Georgia Tech had been founded in 1885 as part of a plan to build a Southern industrial economy. At its […]
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GPB premieres the landmark documentary The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick
This week, Mandy Wilson, of Georgia Public Broadcasting, offers a preview of The Vietnam War, the highly anticipated new documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.
By Mandy Wilson
Mandy Wilson
Ken Burns has been hailed as one of the most influential documentary filmmakers of all time, turning millions of people onto history with films like Baseball, Jazz, and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.
In fact, the late historian and presidential biographer Stephen Ambrose said of his films, “More Americans get their history from Ken Burns than any other source.”
