D avy Crockett at the Fall of the Alamo,” the third motion picture in the series, opened at theaters across Texas on Aug. 22, 1926. The first Alamo movie was made during the early days of silent pictures back in 1911, just eight years after “The Great Train Robbery.”  “The Immortal Alamo” was a 15-m...

O n Aug. 16, 1922, prohibitionist Cullen F. Thomas, eliminated in the first round of voting for a seat in the United States Senate, endorsed front-runner Earle B. Mayfield, the Klan candidate, in the upcoming runoff. Alcoholism and Bright’s disease earned Charles A. Culberson the derisive nickname “...

O n Aug. 9, 1931 Huey P. Long invited the governors of Texas and other southern states to come to New Orleans to discuss his sure-fire cure for what was ailing King Cotton. From a high of 40 cents a pound at the start of the decade, cotton lost half its value on the world market during the 1920’s.  ...

The most powerful hurricane to hit Galveston in more than a generation roared ashore on the morning of July 27, 1943 catching island inhabitants and other Texans as far inland as Houston almost completely by surprise. With no radar, satellites or television to provide them with breaking weather news...

O n July 25, 1861, three months after President Lincoln ordered a blockade of all southern ports, the United States Navy sent a ship to seal off Galveston Bay, and the frigate Santee relieved the original vessel of the lonely watch in mid-September. Bored by seven weeks of uneventful guard duty, Lt....

W ith the Summer Games in Rio less than a month away, let’s take a look back at the XV Olympics that began in Helsinki, Finland on Jul. 19, 1952 and featured gold-medal performances from six different Texans.  In the high jump held on opening day, Walter “Buddy” Davis of Texas A&M was the favorite d...

S ix months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Admiral Chester William Nimitz barely survived the crash of a seaplane in San Francisco Bay on June 30, 1942. If an ancestor had mended his free-spending ways, the future architect of the American victory in the Pacific might well have served wi...

T wenty-four-year-old Wilmer Allison stunned the tennis world on June 28, 1930 by beating the defending singles title-holder in straight sets in the quarter-finals of Wimbledon. An outstanding high school athlete in Fort Worth, Wilmer was thrilled to death when a Texas League team offered him a prof...

By Bartee Haile "H ee Haw,” a country music variety show co-hosted by Buck Owens and Roy Clark, hit the airwaves on June 15, 1969 as a summer replacement for the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. was born in 1929 on a farm near Sherman a short distance from the Red River. As a ...

S tephen F. Austin finally blinked in a tense stand-off with Strap Buckner and signaled on June 10, 1831 that he would meet his stubborn adversary more than halfway.  No one was more determined to take Texas away from Spain than the pugnacious son of a Virginia judge, who did not know the meaning of...