On November 29, 1931, Zachary Smith Reynolds married Broadway actress Libby Holman. The young tobacco heir had just spent the better part of a year following the starlet and torch singer around the world until she finally agreed to marry him.The young couple wed in secret in the parlor of a Monroe, Michigan, justice of the peace. It took place just a few days after Reynolds’s first wife, textile heiress Ann Cannon Reynolds, was granted a divorce from him in Reno, Nevada, on the grounds of cruelty.
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On November 29, 1942, the SS James Iredell, a Liberty Ship constructed by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, was launched.
On November 29, 1906, Samuel Spencer, president of the Southern Railway Company, died in a violent collision on his own railroad. Spencer, a Confederate veteran and influential businessman, accompanied guests to Wake County to hunt quail. His private car, and several others, became detached from the engine due to a faulty connection and came to a dead stop on the track about 14 miles south of Lynchburg, Va.
On November 29, 1978, Portsmouth in Carteret County was added to the list of the National Register of Historic Places.The Portsmouth Village Historic District boasts 250 acres of ocean-views and quaint town buildings. Located between the North Core Banks and Ocracoke Inlet in a secluded portion of a tract now protected by the Cape Lookout National Seashore, Portsmouth Island saw its last permanent residents in 1971.
On November 28, 1814, Congress promoted Johnston Blakeley to the rank of Captain for his stellar performance in the ongoing war with Great Britain.Born in Ireland but raised in Wilmington, Blakeley joined the navy as a young man and had a great deal of experience when the War of 1812 was declared. Shortly after the war’s outbreak, he was ordered to Massachusetts to oversee construction of a new sloop, Wasp.
On November 28, 1861, inventor John Blue was born in what is now Scotland County.
On November 28, 1948, Arthur Talmage Abernethy was appointed Poet Laureate, just before the end of Governor R. Gregg Cherry's term of office.
On November 27, 1981, Mel Tomlinson made his debut as the only African American member of the New York City Ballet.Born in Raleigh in January 1954, Tomlinson became interested in dance after participating in gymnastics in high school. He received a B.F.A. from what’s now the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) after studying there for only two years. After graduation, Thomlinson began touring the country with the Agnes de Mille Heritage Theatre, which was founded at the school.
On November 27, 1962, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a speech in Rocky Mount. Before a crowd of nearly 2,000 in the gymnasium at Booker T. Washington High School, King used a number of expressions that made their way into his landmark “I Have a Dream” address at the Lincoln Memorial, which was part of the March on Washington in August 1963.
On November 27, 1864, General Braxton Bragg was given command of the Department of North Carolina of the Confederate States Army. Braxton Bragg (1817-1876), Governor Thomas Bragg (1810-1872) and Congressman John Bragg (1806-1878), brothers, were among the six sons of Thomas and Margaret Bragg. They grew up in Warrenton and attended the Warrenton Male Academy.