On October 18, 1853, the first North Carolina State Fair opened in Raleigh just south of downtown.
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On October 17, 1859, Lewis Leary was fatally wounded during John Brown’s raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
On October 17, 1862, the contract was signed to build the Confederate ironclad gunboat CSS Neuse.
Football star Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice, native of Asheville, played for UNC 1946 to 1949 before going on to play for the Washington Football Team (formerly Washington Redskins). He was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 1963.
On October 16, 1976, Rick Dees’ song “Disco Duck” hit number one on the Billboard charts. At the time of the novelty hit, Dees was working as a disk jockey at a radio station in Memphis, Tenn.
On October 16, 1928, Robert Phifer, an art collector and native North Carolinian, died, leaving 75 paintings and over $1 million to the North Carolina Art Society. This began the path to all that is what we now have in the North Carolina Museum of Art.
On October 16, 1961, the Livestock Judging Pavilion at the North Carolina State Fair was dedicated and renamed the J. S. Dorton Arena, honoring the memory of “Doc” Dorton, a longtime fairgrounds manager who had died earlier that year.
On October 15, 1951, President Harry S. Truman spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Winston-Salem campus of Wake Forest College. The president spoke for 20 minutes covering the history of the college and praising the people who made the move possible.