Though his activity spanned only a few years, 1716-18, his legacy lives on in the form of countless books, films, ghost stories and even amusement park rides. Click in for stories of fact and fiction as we sail on with, perhaps, the most well-known pirate of the New World.

This 469-mile ribbon of beauty continues to be the most visited unit of the National Park System. Connecting Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountain National Park, work began in September of 1935 and, incredibly, at one time, the Parkway was designed to span eastern Tennessee and not western North Carolina.  Be with us as we detail the story of one of North Carolina’s priceless gems.

We gather (virtually) to learn about the dramatic events which helped to seal the fate of the Confederacy. Situated at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, Fort Fisher granted countless blockade runners access to Wilmington, N.C.  To cut off the last Southern port open to the outside world, and the largest, at that time, amphibious operation in American history, was planned.

Though not the first sit-in, the non-violent action of four N.C. A&T students served as a catalyst for the sit-in movement that became prominent in the 1960s and beyond. Their courage increased national awareness to address the wrongs of segregation. We trumpet their remarkable story in this lecture.

The settlement on Roanoke Island was an attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement in North America. Granted to Sir Walter Raleigh and led by John White in 1587, the 118 men, women and children seemed to have vanished when supply ships returned in August of 1590.  Be with us as we tell the story of their colonizing effort and share the latest evidence that tries to resolve one of America’s greatest mysteries.

War, piracy and weather have made North Carolina’s coastline a vast cemetery. Sources estimate more than 1,000 ships have gone down along our coast since record-keeping began in 1526. From Spanish galleons, to the U.S.S. Monitor, to Nazi German U-boats, we’ll tell the stories of ships and crews that found this stretch of water one of the most treacherous.

Native North Carolinian, novelist and alum of The University of North Carolina, Thomas Wolfe (class of 1920) is considered one of the first masters of autobiographical fiction and N.C.’s most famous writer. In this session, we’ll chronicle where many of those autobiographical stories took shape — at home in Asheville, and right here as an undergraduate at Carolina.