Portal:Tennessee/Selected anniversaries

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• January 1, 1953 - Death of Hank Williams in a chauffeured Cadillac somewhere between Knoxville, Tennessee, and Oak Hill, West Virginia.
• January 3, 1863 - Following the Battle of Stones River, defeated Confederate Army troops commanded by General Braxton Bragg began their retreat from Murfreesboro to Tullahoma.
• January 7, 1985 - General Motors announced the formation of the Saturn Corporation as a new corporate division. Later that year the company selected Spring Hill, Tennessee, as the location for Saturn's manufacturing plant.
• January 19, 1946 - Dolly Parton, country music singer, songwriter and composer, was born in Sevierville.
• January 20, 2004 - The first day of ticket sales in the Tennessee Lottery
• January 31, 1981 - Justin Timberlake, pop and R&B singer, was born in Memphis.

• February 5-6 2008 The Super Tuesday tornado outbreak causes 59 deaths across the Southern U.S.; including 32 deaths in West and Middle Tennessee.
• February 7, 1812 - The New Madrid Earthquake occurred, the largest earthquake ever recorded in the contiguous United States, creating Reelfoot Lake.
• February 13, 1919 - Tennessee Ernie Ford, country and western, pop, and gospel music recording artist and television host, was born in Bristol.
• February 14, 1983 - After three months of intensive investigation by federal bank regulators into massive fraud at financial institutions operated by Jake Butcher and his brother C.H. Butcher, Butcher's United American Bank collapsed. The fourth-largest bank failure in U.S. history marked the end of Butcher's East Tennessee financial empire and political career.
• February 22, 1865 - Tennessee's legislature approved an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting slavery.
• February 24, 1868 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson, the third Tennessean to serve as U.S. President.

• March 4, 1829 - Andrew Jackson of Tennessee was inaugurated as the seventh President of the United States.
• March 4, 1845 - James K. Polk of Tennessee was inaugurated as the eleventh President of the United States.
• March 5, 1963 - Singer Patsy Cline died when the small plane in which she was a passenger crashed in a forest just outside Camden, Tennessee.
• March 7, 1974 - Establishment of Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area
• March 12–15, 1993 - A massive late-winter storm, dubbed the Storm of the Century, deposits a large amount of snow on Tennessee.
• March 14, 1775 - Through the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals, a North Carolina land speculation company acquired the Transylvania Purchase, comprising 20 million acres (81,000 km²) in modern Kentucky and Middle Tennessee, from the Cherokees.
• March 26, 1928 - The site that is now Fort Donelson National Battlefield was designated Fort Donelson National Military Park.
• March 26, 1962 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Baker v. Carr, from Tennessee, leading to the requirement for reapportionment of legislative districts after each decennial census.

• April 2, 2006 - A tornado outbreak took 24 lives and devastated parts of West Tennessee, including Newbern and Bradford. It was followed five days later by another devastating tornado outbreak that left 12 people dead in Middle Tennessee.
• April 3-4, 1974 - 45 people died in Tennessee during the largest one-day tornado outbreak on record, which caused a total of 319 deaths in the United States and Canada.
• April 4, 1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, now the National Civil Rights Museum.
• April 6/7, 1862 - The Battle of Shiloh was one of the first major battles in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, it lasted two days.
• April 12, 1864 - The Civil War Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, was fought at Fort Pillow on bluffs above the Mississippi River near Henning, Tennessee.
• April 17, 1905 - The current Tennessee flag was adopted by the Tennessee State Legislature as the state flag.
• April 17, 1973 - Federal Express began operations in Memphis, the first cargo airline to use only jet aircraft for its services.
• April 27, 1865 - The paddlewheel steamboat Sultana was destroyed by an explosion and sank in the Mississippi River near Memphis; the greatest maritime disaster in United States history killed an estimated 1,700 of the 2,400 passengers.

• May 1, 1945 - Rita Coolidge, a Grammy Award-winning American singer of Cherokee heritage, was born in Lafayette, Tennessee.
• May 1, 1982 - The 1982 World's Fair opened in Knoxville. The theme of the exposition was "Energy Turns the World".
• May 12, 1892 - Completion of the Memphis Bridge (now called the Frisco Bridge) across the Mississippi River at Memphis.
• May 18, 1933 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Act of Congress that created the Tennessee Valley Authority, an electricity provider and regional economic development agency chartered to modernize the economy and society of the Tennessee Valley.
• May 19, 1902 - 216 coal miners lost their lives in an explosion at the Fraterville Mine in Anderson County, the deadliest mining accident in Tennessee history.
• May 26, 1790 - The Southwest Territory (formally known as the Territory South of the River Ohio), which was later to become the state of Tennessee, was formed by the Southwest Ordinance from land ceded to the U.S. federal government by North Carolina.

• June 1, 1796 - Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16^th state. The original Tennessee State Constitution came into effect.
• June 1, 1996 - Bicentennial Mall State Park in Nashville is opened during the state's Bicentennial celebration.
• June 7, 1937 - Birth in Nashville of artist Red Grooms, known for his pop art constructions depicting frenetic scenes of modern urban life.
• June 8, 1861 - Tennessee seceded from the Union, becoming the 11th state to join the Confederacy.
• June 11, 1940 - Establishment of Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
• June 11, 2005 - Federal and state agents, led by the FBI, raided and closed the Del Rio Cockfighting Pit in Cocke County, described by officials as the United States' largest and oldest illegal cockfighting pit. 143 criminal citations were issued.
• June 15, 1934 - The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established. About half of the park is located in Tennessee, the other half in North Carolina.

• July 2, 1791 - William Blount, governor of the Territory of the United States south of the River Ohio, and representatives of the Cherokee Nation signed the Treaty of Holston.
• July 5, 1801 - David Farragut, the first Admiral of the U.S.Navy, was born at Campbell's Station, Tennessee (now in the town of Farragut).
• July 8, 1797 - William Blount was expelled from the U.S. Senate, having been impeached the previous day by the U.S. House of Representatives.
• July 9, 1918 - The Great Train Wreck of 1918, a head-on collision in Nashville of two passenger trains, killed 101 people and injured 171.
• July 10-21, 1925 - The Scopes Trial, which pitted the scientific theory of evolution against Biblical creationism, focused the world's attention on Dayton, Tennessee.
• July 13, 1821 - Birth in Chapel Hill, Tennessee, of Nathan Bedford Forrest, controversial Confederate Army general.
• July 25, 1927 - The first day of recording in the Bristol sessions, considered to be the "Big Bang" of modern country music.

• August 6, 1760 - During the French and Indian War, the British garrison at Fort Loudon in Tennessee fell to the Cherokee.
• August 6, 1945 - The first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima, Japan, using enriched uranium produced in the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and revealing the purpose of the Manhattan Project.
• August 16, 1977 - Elvis Presley, singer, musician and actor, died in his Graceland mansion in Memphis.
• August 17, 1786 - Davy Crockett, folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician, was born in Greene County, Tennessee.
• August 18, 1920 - Harry T. Burn of Niota cast the deciding vote as the Tennessee House of Representatives voted, by a one-vote margin, to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, making Tennessee the last state needed for ratification and thus granting women the right to vote.
• August 21, 1974 - Death (from an automobile crash) of former McNairy County sheriff Buford Pusser, whose virtual one-man war on moonshining, gambling and other vices on the Mississippi-Tennessee border inspired the 1973 movie Walking Tall, related books and movies, and at least one TV series.
• August 23, 1784 - Delegates from four North Carolina counties (all parts of the modern state of Tennessee) convened in the town of Jonesborough and declared their lands independent of North Carolina; this was the first step in the formation of the State of Franklin.
• August 27, 1956 - Twelve African American students attended the first day of classes at Clinton High School, marking the first desegregation of a state-supported high school in the southern United States.

• September 1, 1812 - The Nashville Whig, a weekly newspaper to which The Tennessean traces its roots, began publication.
• September 5, 1846 - Jack Daniel, founder of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distillery, was born in Lynchburg, Tennessee.
• September 10, 1794 - University of Tennessee in Knoxville was chartered as Blount College. The "University of Tennessee" was adopted in 1879.
• September 11, 1960 - At the Summer Olympic Games in Rome, Wilma Rudolph of Clarksville anchored the U.S. 400-m relay team to win her third gold medal in the Games, after previously winning the 100-m and 200-m races.
• September 13, 1916 - A crowd of over 2,500 people watched in Erwin, Tennessee, as Mary, a five-ton circus elephant, was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial crane for the crime of killing an itinerant trainer.
• September 18, 2006 - The Music City Star a regional rail service began operation between Nashville and Lebanon, Tennessee.

• October 1, 1933 - Construction of the Norris Dam begins. Located on the Clinch River in East Tennessee, it is the first dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
• October 2, 1871 - Birth of Cordell Hull in a log cabin in Olympus, Tennessee; Hull was Secretary of State for 11 years in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing the United Nations.
• October 2, 1927 - Death of Governor Austin Peay, the only Tennessee governor ever to die in office; his successor was Henry Horton.
• October 5, 1958 - A series of dynamite explosions destroyed much of Clinton High School, the result of a criminal act that was universally assumed to be related to the school's desegregation two years earlier.
• October 18, 1925 - The Grand Ole Opry, the oldest continuous radio program in the U.S., started broadcasting in Nashville.
• October 19, 1818 - The U.S. Government and the Chickasaw Nation agreed to the terms of the Jackson Purchase by signing the Treaty of Tuscaloosa.
• October 27, 1795 - The political border between Tennessee and Arkansas was established in the "Treaty of Friendship, Limits, and Navigation Between Spain and the United States".
• October 31, 1982 The 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville ended after receiving more than 11 million visitors over its six-month run.

• November 4, 1943 - The X-10 Graphite Reactor, the world's first nuclear reactor designed and built for continuous operation, achieves criticality in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
• November 23-25, 1863 - In the Battle of Chattanooga, the Union Army under Major General Ulysses S. Grant defeats the Confederate forces of General Braxton Bragg, eliminating the last Confederate control of Tennessee and opening the door to an invasion of the Deep South that led to the Atlanta Campaign of 1864.
• November 26, 1939 - Singer Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee.
• November 29, 1863 - In the Battle of Fort Sanders, considered the decisive battle of the Knoxville Campaign, Union forces commanded by Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside turned back an attack by Confederate forces under Lt. Gen. James Longstreet.

• December 13, 1887 - Alvin York, the most decorated American soldier in World War I, was born in Fentress County, Tennessee.
• December 15/16 1864 - The Battle of Nashville was a two-day battle fought at Nashville in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.
• December 24, 1865 - Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee, formed the first Ku Klux Klan.
• December 29, 1835 - The Treaty of New Echota was signed by U.S. government officials and several members of the Cherokee Nation, leading to the Cherokee removal on the Trail of Tears.
• December 31, 1862 - The Battle of Stones River began near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, with an early morning Confederate attack on a Union encampment.