a t l a n t a -- Timeline 1733 -- Georgia founded as the thirteenth British colony. 1821 -- Creek Indians cede land that will later become the City of Atlanta. 1838 -- The Buckhead community is established after Henry Irby purchases 202 acres of land. It is called Buckhead because, legend has it, Irby killed a buck and hung its head on a post at a nearby tavern. 1842 -- Exact center of “Terminus” relocated to present site of Zero Mile Post in Land Lot 77. The following year, Terminus is incorporated as the town of Marthasville, named after Georgia Governor Wilson Lumpkin’s young daughter. 1847 -- The City of Atlanta is incorporated. 1850 -- Oakland Cemetary is founded on eighty-eight acres. 1857 -- Atlanta is called the “Gate City” in celebration of the completion of the Memphis and Charleston rail line. 1860 -- Population: 7,741. 1864 -- U.S. Army General William Sherman captures Atlanta, and burns down most of the city in his March to the Sea. 1867 -- Atlanta University is chartered. -- Rich and Bros. Dry Goods Store is founded by recent Hungarian Jewish immigrants. 1868 -- Atlanta is chosen as the capital city of Georgia. 1874 -- Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady wrote of the “New South” for the first time. 1875 -- The city’s first water plant is built. By 1890, over forty miles of water pipes had been laid, mostly in elite residential areas. 1881 -- The Cabbagetown community begins to form around the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills. The factory operates until 1977. 1885 -- The Georgia Institute of Technology is founded. -- Atlanta’s only street of row houses, Baltimore Block, is built by Jacob J. Rosenthal. Named for the developer’s hometown, the land for the fourteen original units was, in accepted Baltimore custom, leased to homeowners for ninety-nine years. 1886 -- Coca-Cola is developed by Dr. John Stith Pemberton. -- The Gentlemen’s--now Piedmont--Driving Club is organized. 1887 -- The Piedmont Exposition, a fair promoting advances in trade, technology, and agriculture, is held in Atlanta at present-day Piedmont Park. 1888 -- Asa G. Candler acquires control of the Coca-Cola Company. 1889 -- Agnes Scott College is established in Decatur. -- The Hebrew Orphans’ Home built is at 478 Washington Street. It will operate until 1930. 1890 -- Frederick Law Olmsted, the dean of American landscape architecture and designer of New York’s Central Park, visits Atlanta at the invitation of Atlanta civic leaders. 1893 -- The Georgia Tech Blacksmiths defeat the University of Georgia Wildcats 28-6 in the first football game between the two schools. The definitive, illustrated history of this intrastate rivalry is given in Georgia vs. Georgia Tech: Gridiron Grudge since 1893 by John Chandler Griffin ( www.hillstreetpress.com/GaGT.html ). 1895 -- The Cotton States and International Exposition is held at present-day Piedmont Park. Booker T. Washington opens the fair with his famous “Five Fingers” address and projected motion pictures make their U. S. debut in an exhibit called Living Pictures at the fair’s Trocadero Theater. 1896 -- Golf is first played in Atlanta when the Piedmont Driving Club lays out its seven-hole links. 1900 -- Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell is born into a prominent Atlanta family. A long-lost cache of her childhood writings--short stories, plays, and poems--was found in an Atlanta basement decades after her death. 1901 -- The Atlanta Crackers play their first season of minor-league baseball at Ponce de Leon Ball Park. 1902 -- The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary is built at 601 McDonough Boulevard. The prison will later house gangster Al Capone on charges of tax evasion. 1904 -- The City of Atlanta agrees to purchase 189 acres of former farmland for Piedmont Park. The land costs the city $93,000. The long, proud history of the South’s largest urban park. -- John Heisman coaches his first of sixteen seasons at Georgia Tech. 1906- -- A series of race riots rock the city. 1909 -- Atlanta claims 1,300 “horseless carriages.” 1911 -- The Georgian Terrace Hotel is built at Peachtree Street and Ponce de Leon Avenue. -- Atlanta’s first sewage treatment plant is built. Typhoid deaths begin to decrease. 1914 -- Atlanta becomes the site of the Sixth District Federal Reserve Bank. 1915 -- Emory College is rechartered as Emory University. -- On Thanksgiving Day, thirty-four men atop Stone Mountain resurrect the Reconstruction-era vigilante group known as the Ku Klux Klan. 1916 -- Leo Frank, a prominent member of Atlanta’s German Jewish community, is lynched after his conviction on dubious charges of murder and rape. 1917 -- Asa G. Candler is elected mayor. 1919 -- The Democratic Executive Committee of Atlanta votes 24-1 in May to give women the right to vote in municipal elections. 1920 -- Author Donald Windham is born in Atlanta. His autobiographical novel, The Dog Star, gives a poignant portrait of Atlanta life in the 1950s. 1921 -- Ebenezer Baptist Church, 413 Auburn Avenue, is built. Martin Luther King Jr. will later act as pastor of the church and it becomes a center of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. A portrait of the most storied African-American commercial and residential street in the South is given in Sweet Auburn: An Illustrated Guide to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Park Site and Auburn Avenue Historic District. 1926 -- The Atlanta Historical Society is chartered. Walter McElreath is elected president. -- The High Museum of Art is organized as a tribute to philanthropist Harriett (Mrs. Joseph) High. 1928 -- The Varsity Restaurant is opened on North Avenue by Frank Gordy. 1929 -- Martin Luther King, Jr. is born at 501 Auburn Avenue. An affectionate memoir of the civil rights leader is found in Sharing the Dream: Martin Luther King Jr., the Movement, and Me by King’s long-time secretary. -- The City of Atlanta purchases Candler Field, now Hartsfield International Airport. -- The 5,0000-seat Fox Theatre opens on December 25, less than two months after the Black Tuesday stock market crash. -- Atlanta University becomes the graduate school for Spelman and Morehouse colleges. 1930 -- Bobby Jones completes his “Grand Slam” of the four most prestigious golf events in the world thereby, in the words of the New York Sun, “storming the impregnable quadrilateral of golf.” 1933 -- Techwood Homes, the first public housing project in the nation, is begun. 1934 -- Atlanta mill workers take part in a nationwide strike to protest violations of the National Industrial Recovery Act. 1936 -- Gone With the Wind, written by Atlantan Margaret Mitchell, is published; the book is awarded the Pulitzer Prize the following year. Part of her research for the novel was undertaken a decade before for a series of articles she wrote as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. -William B. Hartsfield is elected mayor for the first of five terms he will eventually serve. -A crippling, three-month strike at the Lakewood General Motors and Fisher body plants forces management to recognize the United Automobile Workers Union (Local No. 34), the city’s first. 1939 -- Blues great Beverly “Guitar” Watkins is born in Atlanta. Watkins and other Atlanta blues musicians are depicted in Music Makers: Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America, published in association with the Music Maker Relief Foundation. 1940 -- The Crypt of Civilization time capsule is sealed at Oglethorpe University to be opened in 8113. 1941 -- Journalist Celestine Sibley begins work at the Atlanta Constitution. She would cover Margaret Mitchell’s death, report on the trial of James Earl Ray, interview Eleanor Roosevelt, and cover Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. 1941 -- Margaret Mitchell christens the naval cruiser USS Atlanta. 1945 -- Bobby Dodd is named Georgia Tech head football coach. 1946 -- Song of the South, Walt Disney’s animated film based on Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, premieres at the Fox Theatre. -- One hundred and nineteen people die in a fire at the downtown Winecoff Hotel--the greatest loss of life by hotel fire in U.S. history. The tragedy spurs national interest in improved safety regulations for high-rise buildings. 1948 -- WSB-TV, the first television station in Atlanta, commences broadcasting. Legend holds that the call letters stand for “Welcome South, Brother!” -- The city’s first black police officers are hired. 1953 -- Beginning a Christmas tradition that will last until 1991, The Pink Pig Flyer, a porcine monorail, circles the Great Tree on roof of the downtown Rich’s department store. 1958 -- The new and expanded Grady Memorial Hospital opens. 1959 -- Mayor Hartsfield describes Atlanta as “a city too busy to hate.” 1960 -- Greater Atlanta population: 1,000,000 1961 -- Ivan Allen Jr. is elected mayor. -- Four Atlanta public high schools and Georgia Tech are integrated. 1962 -- One hundred and six Atlanta arts philanthropists die in an Air France crash at Paris’ Orly Field en route home from a museum tour. An expansion of the High Museum of Art is later dedicated in their honor. 1963 -- Mayor Allen testifies in Washington, D. C., in support of the Civil Rights Act. -- The Westminster School was the first private school to desegregate. 1964 -- Atlanta native Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize. 1965 -- The Milwaukee Braves move to Atlanta. 1966 -- The Atlanta Historical Society purchases the Swan House, on Andrews Drive in Buckhead, as its headquarters. 1969 -- Sam Massell is elected Atlanta’s first Jewish mayor. (Aaron Haas, also Jewish, had served as the city’s first mayor pro tem in 1875.) -- The first annual Peachtree Road Race is held with one hundred runners. It is now the nation’s largest 10K. 1970 -- More than a hundred members of the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activist Alliance hold a rally to protest anti-gay beatings at New York’s Stonewall Inn. The rally becomes an annual event, Gay Pride, which hosts more than 300,000 every June in Piedmont Park. -- MARTA is founded. 1972 -- Atlanta is advertised as an “international city.” 1973 -- Maynard Jackson is elected Atlanta’s first black mayor. -- Lenox Square is enclosed and air-conditioned. 1975 -- The grassroots “Save the Fox” campaign succeeds against the demolition plans of Southern Bell; the efforts were coordinated by Atlanta Landmarks, Inc. 1976 -- Former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter is elected president of the United States. --The Atlanta Botanical Garden incorporates on sixty-three acres of Piedmont Park, including the fifteen-acre Storza Woods, and opens to the public in 1977. 1980 -- The Atlanta Preservation Center is founded to promote quality of life and architecture preservation issues. 1983 -- The new High Museum of Art, designed by Richard Meier, is opened. -- Mayor Young refers to the “Castle,” a midtown landmark, as a “hunk of junk.” His remark spurs a “Save Our Hunks of Junk” campaign by preservation-minded Atlantans. 1988 -- The Democratic National Convention is held at the Omni. --Historic Preservation Steering Committee is created to formulate a historic preservation plan for Atlanta. 1990 -- Atlanta is named as host city for the XXVI Olympic Games, to held in the summer of 1996. 1993 -- The City of Atlanta extends benefits to same-sex partners of city employees. 1994 -- Super Bowl XXVIII is played in the Georgia Dome. The game returns to Atlanta in 2000. 1997 -- Cathy Woolard becomes Georgia’s first openly gay elected official when she is elected to the Atlanta City Council. She is selected as council president four years later. 2000 -- Shirley Franklin is elected Atlanta’s first female mayor. -- Metropolitan population: 4,112,200 2002 -- Pedro Marin and David Casas, are elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, the first Latinos to be so elected.