1590 - The Roanoke Island colony, the first English settlement in the New World, was found abandoned with no trace of the 100 or so colonists. There was no sign of violence. The mystery of its collapse has never fully been solved. It is believed the colonists left during a regional drought and were absorbed by a Native American tribe.
1896 - While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory, George Carmack spots nuggets of gold in a creek bed. Roughly 100,000 prospectors migrated to the Yukon and Alaska in the next three years.
1909 - The first auto race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.
1920 - Seven men, including legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, met in Canton, Ohio to organize the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), the forerunner to the hugely successful NFL.
1959 - President Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the Union as the 50th state. Only Hawaii and Texas were internationally recognized sovereign countries before becoming U.S. states.
Indianapolis Motor Speedway Opens
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway complex was built on a 328 acre farm in 1909 as a dangerous gravel and tar track. It was made as a testing ground for Indiana’s growing automobile industry. Different auto manufacturers would race their models and showcase them to the public afterwards. On August 19, the inaugural auto race would bring 12,000 spectators out to watch a 2 lap, 5-mile race. Austrian engineer Louis Schwitzer would win with an average speed of 57.4 mph.
The track would prove deadly. The crushed rock and tar track would break up in a number of places, causing the death of two drivers, two mechanics and two spectators. The track would soon be replaced with 3.2 million paving bricks, laid in a bed of sand and mixed with mortar. It would be famously dubbed, “The Brickyard.” Today, the track is covered in asphalt, except a three-foot line of bricks left exposed at the start/finish line.
Two years later, the speedway would host its first 500-mile race, which quickly grew into a premier racing event, attracting a crowd of eighty thousand. Driver Ray Haroun would win at an average speed of 74.59 mph in 6 hours and 42 minutes. Today, drivers average over 200 mph! With an average crowd of 400,000 the Indy 500 would become the best attended sports event in the U.S.
Widely regarded as the most versatile athlete in US history, Jim Thorpe, played 12 seasons of pro American football, 6 seasons of pro baseball, 2 seasons of pro basketball and won 2 Olympic track and field gold medals.