Timeline Texas
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Timeline to 1901: http://www.lsjunction.com/events/events.htm#statehood
Texas is about 1/3 times the size of Mexico.
(SSFC, 10/9/05, Par p.27)
Amarillo used to be called "Ragtown" because the first
settlers
lived in tents or huts of buffalo hide.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, Z1 p.6)
67Mill BC Dinosaurs roamed the area
that later became Big Bend National Park. Neck bones of a hundred ton
dinosaur from this time were found in 2000.
(SFC, 2/2/00, p.A3)
36kBCE A woolly mammoth died on the Texas Gulf Coast.
It was unearthed in 2004 and tentatively dated to this time.
(AP, 1/13/04)
1528 Nov 2, The Spanish Narvaez
expedition, having traveled some 700 miles toward eastern Texas,
encountered a massive storm and their 5 barges separated.
(ON, 10/03, p.2)
1528 Nov 6, A Spanish barge under
Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca landed in East Texas. The survivors of 2
barges spent the winter on an island they named Isla de Malhado, "The
Island of Misfortune." By the spring of 1529 there were 15 castaways
left and half the native population was dead from disease.
(ON, 10/03, p.3)
1534 Sep, Don Alvar Nunez Cabeza
de Vaca, reunited earlier with 3 survivors of the Narvaez expedition:
Andres Dorantes, Alonso de Castillo and Estevanico, a black African and
formerly Castillo's slave, fled their enslavement under the Mariames
Indians.
(ON, 10/03, p.4)
1535 Jun, Castaways Don Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with 3 companions resumed their journey from Texas
to Mexico after spending 8 months with the congenial Avavares Indians.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)
1536 cJan, Spanish castaways Don
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca with 3 companions reached the Pacific Coast
in northern Mexico under Indian escort and encountered Spanish troops
engaged as slave hunters.
(ON, 10/03, p.5)
1540 Feb 23, Spanish explorer
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado began his unsuccessful search for the
fabled Seven Cities of Gold in the American Southwest. Antonio de
Mendoza, Viceroy of Mexico, sent Francisco Coronado overland to search
for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola in present day New Mexico.
Coronado, Spanish explorer, introduced horses, mules, pigs, cattle, and
sheep into the American southwest. An Indian guide spoke of a rich
kingdom called Quivira. When no cities were found he confessed under
torture that the story was false.
(NPS-CNM, 4/1/97)(HN, 2/23/99)(TL-MB, 1988,
p.16)(SFC, 1/31/04, p.D1)
1541 May, The expedition of
Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, having crossed the high plains of Texas,
feasted on game and held a Mass of thanksgiving.
(Sm, 2/06, p.12)
1687 Mar 19, French explorer
Robert Cavelier (43), Sieur de La Salle, the first European to navigate
the length of the Mississippi River, was murdered by mutineers while
searching for the mouth of the Mississippi, along the coast of the Gulf
of Mexico in present-day Texas.
(SFC, 11/9/96, p.A12)(AP, 3/19/97)(HN, 3/19/99)(MC,
3/19/02)
1720 Mission San Jose was
established by Franciscan friars on the San Antonio River.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.T8)
1793 Mar 2, Sam Houston, the first
president of the Republic of Texas (1836-38, 1841-44), was born near
Lexington, Va. He fought for Texas' independence from Mexico; President
of Republic of Texas; U.S. Senator; Texas governor
(AP, 3/2/98)(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)(SC, 3/2/02)
1793 Nov 3, Stephen Fuller Austin
was born. He colonized Texas.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1804 Nov 27, Pres. Jefferson
issued a nationwide proclamation to military and public officials
warning of a conspiracy to attack Spanish territory in Texas. He had
opened negotiations with Spain to purchase Texas territory west of New
Orleans. Jefferson had heard rumors that Aaron Burr had begun plotting
an invasion of Texas. Jefferson ordered Gen. James Wilkinson to move
federal troops into defensive positions between the Sabine River and
New Orleans. Wilkinson, unbeknownst to Jefferson, was a close
confidant of Burr and also worked as a spy in the employ of Spanish
officials in Mexico.
(ON, 12/08, p6)
1829 Aug 25, Pres. Jackson made an
offer to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refused.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1835 Mar 27, The Mexican army
massacred Texan rebels at Gohad.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1835 Sep, Texans petitioned for
statehood separate from Coahuila. They wrote out their needs and their
complaints in The Declaration of Causes. This document was designed to
convince the Federalists that the Texans desired only to preserve the
1824 Constitution, which guaranteed the rights of everyone living on
Mexican soil. But by this time, Santa Anna was in power, having seized
control in 1833, and he advocated the removal of all foreigners. His
answer was to send his crack troops, commanded by his brother-in-law,
General Martin Perfecto de Css, to San Antonio to disarm the Texans.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Oct 2, The first battle of
the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers fought Mexican
soldiers near the Guadalupe River; the Mexicans ended up withdrawing.
(AP, 10/2/08)
1835 Oct, Before the Alamo,
Mexican General Css led troops against the small community of Gonzales,
since enshrined in history as the "Lexington of Texas." San Antonio de
Bixar went under military rule, with 1,200 Mexican troops under General
Css’ command. When Css ordered the small community of Gonzales, about
50 miles east of San Antonio, to return a cannon loaned to the town for
defense against Indian attack--rightfully fearing that the citizens
might use the cannon against his own troops--the Gonzales residents
refused. "Come and take it!" they taunted, setting off a charge of old
chains and scrap iron, shot from the mouth of the tiny cannon mounted
on ox-cart wheels. Although the only casualty was one Mexican soldier,
Gonzales became enshrined in history as the "Lexington of Texas." The
Texas Revolution was on.
(HNQ, 3/24/01)
1835 Nov 13, Texans officially
proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star
Republic, after its flag, until its admission to the Union in 1845. In
2001 Randy Roberts and James S. Olson authored "A Line in the Sand," a
narrative of the Texas drive for independence.
(HN, 11/13/98)(WSJ, 2/9/00, p.W6)
1835 Nov 24, Texas Rangers, a
mounted police force, was authorized by the Texas Provisional
Government. The Mexicans called them Los Diablos Tejanos -The Texas
Devils.
(MC, 11/24/01)(HNQ, 4/7/02)
1836 Jan 5, Davy Crockett arrived
in Texas just in time to die at the Alamo.
(MC, 1/5/02)
1836 Jan 18, Knife aficionado Jim
Bowie arrived at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders.
(HN, 1/18/99)
1836 Feb 12, Mexican General Santa
Anna crossed the Rio Grande en route to the Alamo.
(HN, 2/12/99)
1836 Feb 23, The Alamo was
besieged by Santa Anna. Thus began the siege of the Alamo, a 13-day
moment in history that turned a ruined Spanish mission in San Antonio,
Texas, into a shrine known and revered the world over.
(HN, 2/23/98)(AP, 2/23/98)
1836 Feb 24, Some 3,000 Mexicans
under Gen. Santa Ana launched an assault on the Alamo, with its 182
Texan defenders. The siege lasted 13 days.
(HN, 2/24/98)(MC, 2/24/02)
1836 Mar 2, Texas declared its
independence from Mexico on Sam Houston's 43rd birthday. The first
vice-president was Lorenzo de Zavala. Mexico refused to recognize Texas
but diplomatic relations were established with the US, Britain and
France. Texas was an independent republic until 1845.
(WSJ, 11/21/95, p.A-12)(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)(SFC,
4/28/97, p.A3)(AP, 3/2/98)(HN, 3/2/99)
1836 Mar 6, The Alamo fell after
fighting for 13 days. Angered by a new Mexican constitution that
removed much of their autonomy, Texans seized the Alamo in San Antonio
in December 1835. Mexican president General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
marched into Texas to put down the rebellion. By late February, 1836,
182 Texans, led by Colonel William Travis, held the former mission
complex against Santa Anna’s [3,000] 6,000 troops. At 4 a.m. on March
6, after fighting for 13 days, Santa Anna’s troops charged. In the
battle that followed, all the Alamo defenders were killed while the
Mexicans suffered about 2,000 casualties. Santa Anna dismissed the
Alamo conquest as "a small affair," but the time bought by the Alamo
defenders’ lives permitted General Sam Houston to forge an army that
would win the Battle of San Jacinto and, ultimately, Texas’
independence. Mexican Lt. Col. Pena later wrote a memoir: "With Santa
Anna in Texas: Diary of Jose Enrique de la Pena," that described the
capture and execution of Davy Crockett and 6 other Alamo defenders. In
1975 a translation of the diary by Carmen Perry (d.1999) was published.
Apparently, only one Texan combatant survived Jose María
Guerrero, who persuaded his captors he had been forced to fight. Women,
children, and a black slave, were spared.
(AP, 3/6/98)(HN, 3/6/98)(HNPD, 3/6/99)(SFC, 6/15/99,
p.C6)(MC, 3/6/02)
1836 Mar 16, The Republic of Texas
approved a constitution.
(AP, 3/16/97)
1836 Apr 21, Texans led by Sam
Houston defeated the Mexican army under Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa
Anna at San Jacinto. Texas, won independence from Mexico.
(AP, 4/21/97)(HN, 4/21/98)(MC, 4/21/02)
1836 Sep 5, Sam Houston was
elected president of the Republic of Texas.
(AP, 9/5/97)
1836 Oct 22, Sam Houston was
inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the
Republic of Texas.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HN, 10/22/98)
1836 Dec 27, Stephen Fuller Austin
(43), founder of state of Texas, died.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1836-1838 Sam Houston (1793-1863), US soldier and
political leader, was president of the Republic of Texas.
(WUD, 1994, p.689)
1836-1845 Texas was an independent republic.
(SFC, 4/28/97, p.A3)
1837 Mar 3, US President Andrew
Jackson and Congress recognized the Republic of Texas.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1839 John Neely Byron started a
trading post on what later became known as the grassy knoll near Dealy
Plaza in Dallas, Tx., near the site of JFK's 1963 assassination.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.C8)
1843 Mar 25, Seventeen Texans, who
picked black beans from a jar otherwise filled with white beans, were
executed by a Mexican firing squad. After months of raiding, captivity
and escapes in Northern Mexico, Mexican president Antonio Lopez de
Santa Anna ordered the execution of one tenth of the 176 Texas
freebooters of the Mier Expedition. The event was later depicted by
artist Theodore Gentilz.
(HNPD, 3/27/00)
1844 Apr 12, Texas became a US
territory.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1845 Mar 1, President Tyler signed
a congressional resolution to annex the Republic of Texas.
(AP, 3/1/98)
1845 Jun 23, The congress of the
Republic of Texas voted to accept annexation by the US after 10 years
as an independent republic. [see Jul 4, 1845]
(MC, 6/23/02)
1845 Jul 4, Texas Congress voted
for annexation to US. [see Jun 23, 1845]
(Maggio, 98)
1845 Oct 13, Texas voters ratified
a state constitution.
(AP, 10/13/97)
1845 Dec 29, Texas (comprised of
the present State of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and
Wyoming) was admitted as the 28th state, with the provision that the
area (389, 166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five
states "of convenient size." Sam Houston insisted on maintaining
control of offshore waters as a condition of joining the union.
(HN, 12/29/98)(AP, 12/29/97)(Econ, 7/1/06, p.29)
1846 Jan 13, President James Polk
dispatched General Zachary Taylor and 4,000 troops to the Texas Border
as war with Mexico loomed. At the outset of the Mexican-American War,
the Mexican army numbered 32,000 and the American army consisted of
7,200 men. The American army had, since 1815, only fought against a few
Indian tribes. Forty-two percent of the army was made up of recent
German or Irish immigrants. In the course of the war, the total U.S.
force employed reached 104,000. In 2008 Martin Dugard authored “The
Training Ground: Grant, Lee, Sherman, and Davis in the Mexican War,
1846-1848.”
(HN, 1/13/99)(HNQ, 2/28/99)(WSJ, 5/16/08, p.W8)
1846 Feb 19, The Texas state
government was formally installed in Austin, with J. Pinckney Henderson
taking the oath of office as governor.
(AP, 2/19/07)
1846 May 8, The first major battle
of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas; US forces
led by General Zachary Taylor were able to beat back the invading
Mexican forces.
(AP, 5/8/07)
1846 May, Sarah Borginnis was very
big--a red-haired behemoth anywhere from 6 to 7 feet tall, depending on
whose account you read. She first appeared in history at the beginning
of the Mexican War as she traveled with Zachary Taylor's army as a
cook, laundress and occasional nurse. But it was in May 1846 during the
siege of Fort Brown, Texas, that Sarah distinguished herself by calmly
making coffee and bean soup in an open courtyard as Mexican explosive
shells burst around her. In spite of receiving a "bullet through her
bonnet and another through her bread tray," Sarah, who became known as
"The Heroine of Fort Brown," made her rounds nursing soldiers and
feeding the men.
(HNQ, 5/17/99)
1849-1853 Fort Worth served as an Army post.
(SFC,11/8/97, p.E4)
1853 May 26, John Wesley Hardin
was born in Bonham, Texas. The 19th-century Western outlaw John Wesley
Hardin was named after John Wesley, who began the Methodist movement in
1738.
(HNQ, 4/1/00)
1853 The 825,000-acre King Ranch
was founded by Richard King, a former NY native and steamboat captain.
(SFC, 5/25/01, p.D7)
1860 Nov, Abraham Lincoln won the
US presidential elections with a majority of the electoral votes in a
4-way race. Following his election South Carolina seceded from the
Union followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and
Texas.
(WSJ, 9/19/97, p.A13)
1860 Texas enacted a sodomy law.
It was repealed in 2000.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.A4)
1861 Feb 1, A furious Governor Sam
Houston stormed out of a legislative session upon learning that Texas
had voted 167-7 to secede from the Union. Texas became the 7th state to
secede.
(AP, 2/1/97)(HN, 2/1/99)(MC, 2/1/02)
1861 Feb 4, Winfield Scott, US
general-in-chief, decided to relieve Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee as
commander of federal forces in Texas and bring him to Washington DC
where Lee could take command of forces guarding DC.
(ON, 12/05, p.11)
1861 Feb 4, Delegates from six
southern states met in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States
of America. They included Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana and Texas. They elected Jefferson Davis as president of
Confederacy.
(AP, 2/4/97)(ON, 11/00, p.1)
1861 Feb 23, Texas by popular
referendum became the 7th state to secede from the Union.
(HN, 2/23/98)(MC, 2/23/02)
1861 Apr 5, Federals abandoned Ft.
Quitman, Tx.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1861 Apr 23, Battle of San
Antonio, TX.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1861 Aug 12, Texas rebels were
attacked by Apaches.
(MC, 8/12/02)
1862 Feb 21, The Texas Rangers won
a Confederate victory in the Battle of Val Verde, New Mexico.
(HN, 2/21/98)
1862 Aug 12, Gen John Hunt Morgan
and his raiders capture Gallatin, TX.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1863 Jul 26, Samuel Houston (70),
1st Pres. of Republic of Texas (1836-38, 41-44), died.
(MC, 7/26/02)
1863 Sep 8, Confederate Lieutenant
Dick Dowling thwarted a Union naval landing at Sabine Pass, northeast
of Galveston, Texas.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1863 A woman was executed by the
state. The next woman to face execution would be Karla Faye Tucker in
1998.
(WSJ, 2/3/98, p.A1)
1864 Nov 26, Colonel Kit Carson
led the attack in the first Battle of Adobe Walls. Carson, leading a
column of 335 officers and men of the 1st New Mexico Volunteer Cavalry,
surprised an encampment of Kiowa Indians on the site of adobe buildings
on the South Canadian River in Texas. After routing the Kiowa, Carson's
forces were counterattacked by hundreds of Comanches from nearby
villages and forced to retreat.
(HNQ, 9/25/98)
1865 May 12, The last land action
of the Civil War was fought at Palmito Ranch in Texas. It was a
Confederate victory.
(SC, Internet, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/02)
1865 May 26, At the Battle of
Galveston, TX., Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered.
(MC, 5/26/02)
1865 Aug 20, Pres. Johnson
proclaimed an end to the "insurrection" in Texas.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1865 Jun 2, At Galveston,
Confederate General Kirby-Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi
Department to Northern Forces.
(HN, 6/2/98)
1865 Jun 19, Emancipation Day,
also known as Juneteenth, was the day that Union General Granger
informed Texas slaves that they were free. Blacks came to celebrate the
day as Juneteenth Freedom Day.
(SFEC, 6/21/98, p.D3)(SFC, 6/18/04, p.B2)
1865-1875 Texas, like other Confederate states, was
subjected to a federal army of occupation for a decade.
(WP, 6/29/96, p.A15)
1866 Nov 1, Belle Starr
[née Myra Maybelle Shirley], “Bandit Queen” and wild woman of
the west, married James C. Reed (d.1874) in Collins County, Texas.
(www.thehistorynet.com/we/blbanditqueenbellestar/)
1866 Some Texans drove a herd of
longhorns 900 miles overland to Missouri. A majority of the cattle were
lost.
(ON, 4/01, p.12)
1867 cJan, Joseph G. McCoy,
livestock dealer, began building a stockyard and hotel in Abilene, Ka.,
the westernmost point of the new railroad. He sent agents to Texas to
encourage ranchers to drive their cattle up the Chisholm Trail to his
holding pens.
(ON, 4/01, p.12)
1868 Jun 1, The Texas
constitutional convention met in Austin.
(DT internet 6/1/97)
1868 Nov 24, Scott Joplin was born
in Texas. By the time he was a teenager, Joplin could play the banjo
and the piano, and had begun to work as a saloon musician. In the late
1890s, he was performing and composing at the Maple Leaf Club in
Sedalia, Missouri, and in 1899 his "Maple Leaf Rag" made ragtime
popular. Ragtime was a mixture of classical European and
African-American styles of music, and it influenced the later
development of jazz. Joplin was not considered a serious composer until
ragtime resurfaced in the 1970s, when his composition "The Entertainer"
was the theme to the movie The Sting. The first grand opera composed by
an African American was Joplin's Treemonisha (1911), which was not very
successful at the time. In 1976, however, more than 50 years after
Joplin died, Treemonisha won the Pulitzer Prize.
(HNPD, 11/24/98)
1868 Dec 22, John Nance Garner,
(VP-D-1933-41), was born in Texas.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1868 Over 100,000 Texas longhorn
cattle came up the Chisholm Trail to the Abilene, Ka., stockyards.
(ON, 4/01, p.12)
1870 Mar 30, Texas was the last
Confederate state readmitted to the Union.
(AP, 3/30/97)(HN, 3/30/98)
1870 Sep 2, Samuel Augustus
Maverick (b.1803), Texas lawyer, politician, land baron and signer of
the Texas Declaration of Independence, died. His name is the source of
the term "maverick", first cited in 1867, which means independent
minded. Maverick was considered independent minded by his fellow
ranchers because he refused to brand his cattle.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Augustus_Maverick)
1874 Jan 11, Gail Borden (b.1801),
inventor of condensed milk, died in Borden, Tx. Epitaph: “I tried and
failed, I tried again and again and succeeded.”
(ON, 5/04, p.5)( www.famoustexans.com/GailBorden.htm)
1874 May, John Wesley Hardin
gunned down Charlie Webb in Comanche, TX.
(MesWP)
1874 Sep 28, Colonel Ronald
Mackenzie raided a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo
Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.
(HN, 9/28/98)
1874 Oct 4, Kiowa leader Santanta,
known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrenders in Darlington, Texas.
He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide
October 11, 1878.
(HN, 10/4/98)
1874 Cattleman Charles Goodnight
rounded up 5 orphaned buffalo calves and set them loose on 10,000 acres
in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas Panhandle. The herd grew to 250
animals and a number were sent to start herds elsewhere. In 1997 the
herd was put under the guardianship of the state. By 2001 it was
realized that inbreeding put the herd at risk of extinction. In 2005
Ted Turner agreed to provide 3 bulls from his herd in New Mexico to
help the Texas herd.
(WSJ, 8/2/05, p.A1)
1874-1875 The Gatling gun was first used against the
Comanche Indians at the Battle of Red River in the Texas Panhandle.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.B4)
1876 Jan 24, Bat Masterson had a
legendary gunfight in Sweetwater, Texas. A cavalry soldier named King
and a woman named Mollie Brennan were killed, Masterson was seriously
wounded in the hip in a saloon.
(MesWP)(HNQ, 12/29/02)
1876 Texas adopted a post-civil
war constitution. It barred idiots, lunatics, paupers and women from
voting.
(Econ, 10/29/05, p.30)
1877 The Texas and Southwestern
Cattle Raisers Association was formed to represent ranchers in Texas
and Oklahoma in their fight against castle theft on the open range.
(SSFC, 4/11/04, p.A24)
1879 Mar 19, Jim Currie opened
fire on the actors Maurice Barrymore and Ben Porter near Marshall,
Texas. His shots wounded Barrymore and kill Porter.
(HN, 3/19/99)
1879 Texas passed legislation that
made gay and lesbian activity a crime. The law was modified in 1993 to
make homosexual sex a misdemeanor with a fine up to $500.
(SFEC,11/30/97, p.A6)(SFC, 11/7/98, p.A7)
1880s Although invented in Waco,
Texas in the 1880s, Dr Pepper first received national exposure at the
1904 St. Louis World‘s Fair.
(HNQ, 10/25/00)
1882 Jul 10, Ima Hogg, Texas art
patron, founder of Houston Symphony, was born.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1882 John Armstrong III, a Texas
Ranger, settled a ranch south of Corpus Christi. He bought the
beginnings of the Armstrong Ranch with the $4,000 bounty he received
for capturing outlaw John Wesley Hardin. The ranch, which expanded to
50,000 acres, is near the King Ranch, settled by the Kleberg family.
(SFC, 2/13/06, p.A6)(http://tinyurl.com/dhd84)
1884 The Lone Star Brewery opened
on the banks of the San Antonio River. The structure was used as a
cotton mill in the 1920s and in 1981 was renovated as the San Antonio
Museum of Art.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.T11)
1885 Mar 30, Texas was the last
Confederate state readmitted to the Union.
(HN, 3/30/01)
1885 In Texas George Bannerman
Dealey founded the Dallas News at the behest of Col. A.H. Belo.
(SFC, 2/20/07, p.B4)
1885 America's 1st recorded serial
murders took place in Austin, Texas.
(SFCM, 10/11/03, p.34)
1886 In Galveston the Millie
Walters House was built. It was the last of the famous Postoffice St.
bordellos.
(HT, 5/97, p.62)
1886 Texas was hit by 4 hurricanes.
(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.A1)
1886 The Baptist General
Convention, a state umbrella group for Baptist churches, was founded.
(SFEC, 3/1/98, p.A14)
1889 Feb 17, H[aroldson] L. Hunt,
Texas oil multi-millionaire, was born.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1890 Oct 14, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
34th president of the United States, was born in Denison, Texas.
(AP, 10/14/97)(HN, 10/14/98)
1890 In Galveston the Isaac
Heffron home was built.
(HT, 5/97, p.62)
1891 Sep 3, Cotton pickers
organized a union & strike in Texas.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1891 The 1st Battle of Flowers
Parade was held in San Antonio.
(SSFC, 4/8/01, p.T8)
1892 In Fort Worth, Texas, 20
women founded the state’s 1st art museum with $50,000 from Andrew
Carnegie.
(WSJ, 12/17/02, p.D8)
1894 The Grand Opera House was
built in Galveston, Texas, with no seat more than 70 feet from the
stage.
(SSFC, 11/6/05, p.F5)
c1895 In Galveston the Louis Marx
home was built.
(HT, 5/97, p.62)
1896 May 15, A tornado killed 78
in Texas.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1899 Dec 22, Wiley Post, aviation
pioneer, was born in Texas.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1900 Sep 8, Some 6,000-8,000
people were killed in Galveston by flying debris, collapsing buildings
and drowning. The storm let up around midnight, leaving in its wake $30
million in damage and thousands of bodies. Many of the dead had to be
hastily dumped in the ocean for fear of spreading disease. Bishop's
Palace in Galveston, Texas, remained standing amid piles of rubble
after the island city suffered the greatest natural disaster in U.S.
history. By nightfall, winds reached 125 mph and the city was under 15
feet of water. The storm battered Galveston for 18 hours and some 3,600
buildings were destroyed. Reports of the storm failed to reach
Galveston because the US Weather Service had temporarily banned the
cable transmission of Cuban weather reports. In 1999 Erik Larson
published "Isaac's Storm."
(AP, 9/8/97)(HNPD, 9/8/98)(SFC, 11/30/98, p.A2)(WSJ,
9/3/99, p.W8)(SFC, 9/22/05, p.A17)
1900 The Dallas Symphony Orchestra
was founded.
(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A20)
1900 Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry
Alonzo Longabaugh (aka Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and their
Wild Bunch went to Fort Worth after their last holdup of the First
National Bank at Winnemucca, Nevada. They posed for pictures at John
Swartz’s photo studio.
(HT, 4/97, p.45)(SFC, 1/19/98, p.A10)
1901 Jan 10, In Corsicana the
Lucas Gusher flowing at the rate of 80,000 to 100,000 barrels per day,
blew in. Pattillo Higgins, a self-taught geologist, became interested
in Spindletop Hill, just south of Beaumont, Texas in 1889. Believing
that Spindletop covered a vast pool of oil, Higgins joined two other
men in 1892 to form the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing
Company--one of the first oil companies in Texas. Higgins, lacking
proper drilling equipment, failed in his efforts, and the Gladys City
Company leased land to a team led by Austrian mining engineer Captain
Anthony Lucas in 1899. By 1902, 285 wells were operating on Spindletop
Hill and over 600 oil companies had been chartered, but overproduction
ruined the field. By 1903 the boom was over and within 10 years
Spindletop Hill was practically a ghost town. Spindletop enjoyed a
resurgence in 1926 when technology made possible the recovery of more
oil through deeper drilling.
(HNPD, 1/10/99)(WSJ, 6/29/99, p.A12)
1901 Oct 24, Anna Edson Taylor, a
43-year-old widow, was the first woman to go safely over Niagara Falls
in a barrel. She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she
put toward the loan on her Texas ranch.
(AP, 10/24/97)(HN, 10/24/98)
1902 Apr 7, The Texas Fuel Co. was
founded. It soon changed its name to the Texas Co. and eventually
became Texaco.
(SFC, 10/20/04, p.C6)
1902 In Pittsburg, Texas, Rev.
Burrell Cannon (d.1922), itinerant Baptist minister and inventor, built
his Ezekial Airship and reportedly flew it for a short distance at a 12
foot altitude. The craft was destroyed on a rail car while enroute to
the St. Louis World Fair.
(WSJ, 11/20/02, p.A1)
1905 Virgil Earp died of pneumonia
in Goldfield, Nevada.
(MesWP)
1906 Aug 13, At Fort Brown, Texas,
some 10-20 armed men engaged an all-Black Army unit in a shooting
rampage that left one townsperson dead and a police officer wounded. A
1910 inquiry placed guilt on the soldiers and Pres. Roosevelt ordered
all 167 discharged without honor. In 1970 John Weaver (d.2002) authored
"The Brownsville Raid," an account of the incident that led the Army to
exonerate all 167 men.
(SFC, 12/7/02, p.A25)
1907 Sep 10, Herbert Marcus Sr.,
his sister Carrie Marcus Nieman, and her husband A.I. Nieman opened the
retail firm Neiman Marcus in Dallas, Texas. By 2002 the firm had 32 US
stores.
(SSFC, 9/9/07, p.G3)(AP, 9/10/07)
1907 Sep 29, Gene Autry (d.1998),
singing cowboy and baseball executive, was born in Tioga, Texas.
(SFC, 10/3/98, p.A14)(AP, 9/29/07)
1908 Aug 27, Lyndon B. Johnson,
the 36th president of the United States (1963-1969), was born near
Stonewall, Texas.
(AP, 8/27/97)(HN, 8/27/98)
1909 May 14, Texan Samuel Franklin
Cody became the first to make a powered airplane flight beyond one mile
in the United Kingdom. Cody, no relation to William F. "Buffalo Bill"
Cody, used his name and talents to create his own "Wild West" show that
toured Europe. Despite the fact he could read nor write, Cody designed
a series of kites, including a huge man-lifting version that could be
used for battle reconnaissance. Cody built a large biplane for the
British army, which he flew beyond a mile on May 14, 1909. His second
flight of the day crashed. Cody died in 1913 when another of his planes
broke apart in midair.
(HNQ, 3/12/99)
1909 Texas A&M Univ. began its
bonfire tradition as part of the lead-up to the annual football match
with archrival Univ. of Texas in Austin.
(SFC, 11/19/99, p.A21)
1911 Jan 24, U.S. Cavalry was sent
to preserve the neutrality of the Rio Grande during the Mexican Civil
War.
(HN, 1/24/99)
1911 Jul 28, Ann Doran, actress
(Longstreet, Shirley), was born in Amarillo, Tx.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1911 The 226-room Hotel Galvez was
built in Galveston, Texas.
(SSFC, 11/6/05, p.F5)
1912 Aug 13, Ben Hogan, PGA golfer
(US Open 1950, 51, 53), was born in Dublin, Tx.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1914 Jun 26, Babe (Mildred)
Didrikson Zaharias (International Women's Sports Hall of Famer, Olympic
Hall of Famer, World Golf Hall of Famer, LPGA Hall of Famer, National
Track and Field Hall of Famer), was born in Port Arthur, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babe_Zaharias)
1914-1919 The Texas Rangers killed some 5,000
Hispanics over this period.
(SFC, 4/12/04, p.E8)
1915 Aug 16, A hurricane hit
Galveston, Texas. It caused 12 deaths and an estimated $5-8 million in
property damage in the city.
(http://www.gthcenter.org/exhibits/storms/1915/)
1915 Sep 22, Southern Methodist
University in Dallas, Texas, held its 1st class.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1915-1916 A number of skirmishes took place between
the Texas Rangers and Mexican Americans rebelling under the "Plan de
San Diego" and numerous people were killed. Participants included the
anarchist Magon brothers, and rebel leader Aniceto Pizana. In 2003
Benjamin Heber Johnson authored "Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten
Revolution and Its Bloody suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans."
(SSFC, 1/4/04, p.M3)
1915-1917 James Ferguson served as governor of Texas
until he was impeached for fiscal irregularities. In 1924 his wife was
elected governor.
(WSJ, 8/5/05, p.W2)
1916 Aug 28, C. Wright Mills
(d.1962), sociologist, writer (The Power Elite), was born in Waco,
Texas.
(Google)
1916 Trammell Crow was born. He
later established one of the world's largest real estate companies and
amassed a collection of Asian art which he placed in a pavilion behind
the Trammell Crow Center in Dallas.
(WSJ, 2/12/99, p.W9)
1917 Feb 27, John Connally, Texas
Governor, wounded in the assassination of President John Kennedy, was
born.
(HN, 2/27/98)
1917 Dec 29, Tom Bradley, future
mayor of Los Angeles, was born on a cotton plantation in Calvert, Texas.
(SFC, 9/30/98, p.A13)
1918 Sep 3, Five soldiers were
hanged for alleged participation in the Houston riot of 1917.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1918 In Texas C.N. Williamson and
E.E. Dickies established the U.S. Overall Co. It was later renamed
Williamson-Dickie and then came to be known as Dickies.
(SSFC, 8/20/06, p.M4)
1919 Texas Rep. Jose T. Canales
pushed through legislation to reform the Texas Rangers following
reports that the Rangers had killed some 5,000 Hispanics over the
previous 5 years.
(SFC, 4/12/04, p.E8)
1920 Aug 22, Denton Cooley, heart
surgeon (1st artificial heart implant), was born in Houston.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1920 The Cowtown Coliseum in Fort
Worth, Texas, hosted the world's 1st indoor rodeo.
(SSFC, 8/3/03, p.C4)
1920s The Newton Boys were 4
brothers from rural Texas who became bank robbers in the early 1920s.
They held up over 80 banks. The 1998 film "The Newton Boys" was based
on their true story.
(SFEC, 3/22/98, DB p.10)(SFC, 3/23/98, p.E2)(WSJ,
3/31/98, p.A20)
1921 Aug 19, Gene Roddenberry,
television writer and producer, best known for the series "Star Trek,"
was born in El Paso, Texas.
(HN, 8/19/98)(MC, 8/19/02)
1921 Nov 14, The Cherokee Indians
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres
of land in Texas.
(HN, 11/14/98)
1921 The "Texas Pig Stand," the
1st drive-in car-service restaurant, was opened on the Dallas-Ft. worth
Highway by G. Kirby and R.W. Jackson.
(SFC, 8/12/00, p.B3)
1923 Apr 12, Ann Miller, [Lucille
Ann Collier], dancer (On the Town), was born in Cherino, Tex.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1923 Tula Elise Finklea, later
known as actress and dancer Cyd Charisse, was born in Amarillo.
(SFC, 12/28/99, p.C4)
1924 Jun 20, Audie Murphy was born
in Kingston, Tx. He became the most decorated American soldier of World
War II who went on to make movies and write a book about his war
experiences called "To Hell and Back."
(HN, 6/20/98)(MC, 6/20/02)
1924 Nov 4, Miriam Ferguson was
elected governor in Texas. She began office Jan 20, 1925, as the
nation’s 2nd woman governor, 15 days after Nellie T. Ross in Wyoming.
(http://wyoarchives.state.wy.us/articles/rossbio.htm)
1924 M.B. Zale and his brother
William founded a jewelry business in Wichita Falls, Texas. The Zale
family cashed out of Zale Corp. in the 1980s.
(WSJ, 6/26/06, p.A1)
1925 Oct 16, The Texas School
Board prohibited the teaching of evolution.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1927 Mar 7, A Texas law that
banned Negroes from voting was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1928 Aug 29, Thomas Stewart,
baritone (La Roche Capriccio), was born in San Saba, Texas.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1929 Aug 12, Buck Owens, country
singer (Hee Haw), was born in Sherman, Texas.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1929 Dec 21, The 1st US group
hospital insurance plan was offered in Dallas, Tx.
(MC, 12/21/01)
1930 Mar 19, Ornette Coleman was
born in Fort Worth Texas and was an early proponent of ‘free form
jazz.‘ Having taught himself to play the saxophone and read music by
age 14, Coleman moved to Los Angeles and met like-minded musicians in
the early ‘50s. His debut album in 1959, Something Else! introduced his
atonal interpretation of jazz, one free of traditional tonal structure,
which he terms ‘harmolodic.‘ Many listeners and critics have termed it
‘anarchy.‘ Coleman has continued to be an influential if controversial
figure in jazz, now producing albums under his own label (Harmolodic,
Inc.) as well as soundtracks for films.
(HNQ, 10/19/00)
1930 Mar 26, Sandra Day O'Connor,
first woman US Supreme Court Justice (1981- ), was born in El Paso TX.
(HN, 3/26/01)(SS, 3/26/02)
1931 Feb 6, Rip Torn, actor (Coma,
Summer Rental, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), was born in Tx.
(MC, 2/6/02)
1931 Oct 31, Dan Rather, news
anchor (CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes), was born in Wharton Texas.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1931 George Glenn Jones, country
singer, was born in Saratoga.
(WSJ, 1/17/02, p.A12)
1932 Jul 30, The Summer Olympic
Games opened in Los Angeles. The US won 41 gold medals, Italy was 2nd
with less than a third of that. Bill Miller of Stanford won a gold
medal in the pole vault when he cleared 14'-1 ¾". Later in the
year he set a world record at 14'-1 7/8". Babe Didriksen (21) of Texas
won 2 track gold medals and a silver. Track events in this summer’s
Olympics were timed with manual stopwatches.
(SFC, 7/14/96, Par p.4)(AP, 7/30/97)(NG, 8/04,
Geographica)(WSJ, 8/23/04, p.C3)
1932 Nov, Miriam Ferguson was
elected governor in Texas for a 2nd time.
(www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/FF/ffe6.html)
1932 Elmer Doolin of Texas gave a
border cook $100 for a corn chip recipe that grew to become Fritos.
(SFEC, 1/17/99, Z1 p.1)
1933 Apr 26, Carol Burnett,
comedian, actress (Annie, 4 Seasons), was born in San Antonio, Tx.
(MC, 4/26/02)
1933 Sep 1, Ann Richards, Gov-Tx.,
was born.
(SC, 9/1/02)
1934 Mar 5, Mother-in-law's day
was 1st celebrated in Amarillo, Tx.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1934 Apr 1, Two Texas Highway
Patrol officers, E.B. Wheeler (26) and H.D. Murphy (24), were killed by
Henry Methvin, a gang member of Bonnie and Clyde, as they approached
the gang’s car near Grapevine, Texas.
(ON, 7/02, p.2)(SFC, 8/13/96, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/26/08,
p.A13)
1934 May 13, A great dustbowl
storm occurred. [see Apr 14, 1935]
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)
1934 Apr 18, The 1st laundromat,
called a "Washateria," opened in Fort Worth, Tx.
(AP, 4/18/07)
1934 May 23, Bonnie Parker and
Clyde Barrow were shot some 4 dozen times early in the morning in a
police ambush by Texas Rangers as they were driving a stolen Ford
Deluxe along a road in Bienville Parish, near Sailes, La. This ended
the most spectacular manhunt seen in America up to that time. The pair
had spent the previous 2 years killing and robbing banks in the
Midwest. Bonnie Parker was 19 and Clyde Barrow was 21 when they met in
Dallas in 1930. By the time the Barrow gang's crime spree ended four
years later, Bonnie, Clyde, Clyde's brother Buck and Buck's wife had
terrorized the Southwest and Midwest and were believed to have
committed 13 murders. In 1997 Clyde’s bullet-ridden shirt was auctioned
off to a Nevada casino for $85,000. His largest theft was estimated at
$4,000. In 1979 Ted Hinton and Larry Grove authored "Ambush: The Real
Story of Bonnie and Clyde."
(SFC, 4/3/97, p.A13)(SFC, 4/15/97, p.A13)(AP,
5/23/97)(HNPD, 5/29/99)(HN, 5/23/02)(ON, 7/02, p.3)
1934 Nov 17, Lyndon Baines Johnson
married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as "Lady Bird," in San
Antonio, Texas.
(AP, 11/17/07)
1935 Apr 14, A major sandstorm,
dubbed “The Black Blizzard,” ravaged the US Midwest. The Black Sunday
was the worst day of the almost decade long Dust Bowl era. It ravaged
Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. In 2005 Timothy Egan
authored “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived
the Great American Dust Bowl.”
(SSFC, 1/8/06,
p.M1)(www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm)(Sm, 3/06,
p.111)
1936 Feb 28, Samuel Maverick Jr.
(99), San Antonio banker, died. During the Civil War he served in
Terry's Texas Rangers, a Confederate regiment, He was the last
surviving member of that organization. His father was the Texas pioneer
Samuel A. Maverick
(http://tinyurl.com/5jgmr2)
1936 Apr 23, Roy Orbison, rocker
(Pretty Woman), was born in Vernon, Tx.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1936 Aug 12, 120° F (49°
C), Seymour, Texas (state record).
(SC, 8/12/02)
1936 Sep 7, Rock legend Buddy
Holly (d. Feb 3, 1959) was born Charles Hardin Holley in Lubbock,
Texas. His hit songs included "That'll Be the Day," "Oh Boy" and "Maybe
Baby."
(AP, 9/7/97)(WSJ, 2/25/99, p.A16)
1936 The Texas Co. joined Standard
Oil in Saudi Arabia. The joint venture eventually became the Saudi oil
giant Aramco.
(SFC, 10/20/04, p.C6)
1937 Feb 25, Bob Schieffer,
newscaster (CBS Weekend News), was born in Austin, Tx.
(MC, 2/25/02)
1937 Mar 18, Some 300 people,
mostly children, were killed in a gas explosion at a school in New
London, Texas.
(AP, 3/18/08)
1937 Jun 15, Waylon Jennings
(d.2002), country singer, was born in Littlefield, Texas, where his
father worked on a cotton farm.
(SFC, 2/14/02, p.A2)
1937 Jun 27, Robert Johnson, blues
guitarist, recorded "Traveling Riverside Blues and 10 other songs in
Dallas for the American Record Corp. He also "Come On in My Kitchen."
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.D5)(BS, 5/3/98, p.7E)
1938 Aug 21, Kenny Rogers, singer,
was born in Houston.
(SSFC, 5/20/01, Par p.22)
1938 Aug 24, Mason Williams,
composer (Classical Gas), writer (Smother Brothers Hour), was born in
Abilene, Tx.
(MC, 8/24/02)
1938 Nov 24, Mexico seized oil
land adjacent to Texas.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1938 Gilbert Kerlin of New York
began buy the 61,000 acres of Padre Island along with the ribbon of
water separating it from land from the Mexican¬-American Ballis
family. A share of the mineral rights were assigned to the Ballis
family, but never paid. In 2000 a judge ruled that 1.1 million in
royalties was owed along with penalties for malice and fraud.
(SFC, 8/3/00, p.A3)
1939 Feb 28, Tommy Tune, dancer,
choreographer (Boyfriend), was born in Wichita Falls, Tx.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1939 The Carter Family left
Virginia and went to Texas to pioneer border radio broadcasts.
(SSFC, 8/4/02, p.M3)
1940 Mar 14, A truck full of
migrant workers collided with a train outside McAllen, Texas. 27 people
were killed and 15 injured.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1940 Dec 19, Phil Ochs, anti-war
folk singer (Joe Hill, War is Over), was born in El Paso, Tx.
(MC, 12/19/01)
1940s In the late 1940s Gordon L.
Harwell and a partner started Uncle Ben’s Inc. under the name Converted
Rice. The namesake was a Texas rice grower who lived near Houston many
years ago.
(BS, 5/3/98, p.6F)
1941 Dec, Cecil Green (d.2003 at
102), Eugene McDermott, J. Eric Jonsson and H. Bates Peacock purchased
Geophysical Service Inc. in Dallas, Texas. In 1951 the name was changed
to Texas Instruments.
(SFC, 4/17/03, p.A22)
1942 Apr 15, Kenneth Lay, the son
of a Baptist minister, was born. He grew up in Rush, Missouri, and in
1986 became the CEO of Texas-based Enron Corp.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.A19)
1942 Lake Jackson, south of
Houston, was founded as a bedroom community for a new Dow Chemical
Plant. Architect Alden Dow dedicated all the streets after plants named
all roads that lead downtown as ways. One corner thus came to be the
intersection of This Way and That Way.
(SFC, 12/15/99, p.A1)
1943 Sep 7, Fire in a decrepit old
Gulf Hotel killed 45 in Houston, Texas.
(MC, 9/7/01)
1943 Lady Bird Johnson purchased
KTBC, a low-powered radio station in Texas. The Federal Communications
Commission, which reviewed all broadcast-license transfers, was close
to being abolished. Lyndon Johnson used his political influence in both
Congress and the White House to prevent that from happening. In 1945
the FCC OK'd KTBC's request to quintuple its power, which cast its
signal over 63 counties.
(Econ, 7/21/07,
p.85)(www.slate.com/id/2170481/nav/navoa/)
1943-1945 Some 4,800 soldiers of Germany’s Afrika
Corps were held in a POW camp near Hearne, Texas.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.28)
1944 Mar 30, Gobbledygook was
coined by US Rep. Maury Maverick, a Texas Democrat, in a memo banning
"gobbledygook language" at the Smaller War Plants Corporation. It was a
reaction to his frustration with the "convoluted language of
bureaucrats." However, the first time the new word was seen by the
average person was on May 21, 1944. That day, he wrote a long article
for the New York Times magazine, explaining how he invented the word,
and giving readers many examples of how the new word could be used.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobbledygook)(NYT,
5/21/1944, p.SM11)
1944 Aug 15, Linda Ellerbee,
newscaster (Weekend, NBC Overnight), was born in Bryan, Texas.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1944 Oct 31, Kinky Friedman,
country rocker (Ride 'em Jewboy), was born in Palestine, Tx.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1946 Sep 15, Tommy Lee Jones,
actor (Executioner's Song, Bloody Monday, Fugitive), was born in San
Saba, Texas.
(www.britannica.com)
1946 The Balcones Research Center
was established in Austin, Texas. It carried out government-supported
defense and electronics research. Tracor, a big defense firm, grew out
of this and itself spun off some 20 technology related firms, which
established Austin as a high-tech business cluster.
(Econ, 10/14/06, p.17)
1947 Apr 9, A series of tornadoes
struck Kansas, West Texas and Oklahoma. 181 were killed and some 1,300
injured.
(AP, 4/9/08)
1947 Apr 16, The French ship
Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew
up, devastating Texas City, Texas. It was America's worst harbor
explosion. Another ship, the Highflyer, exploded the following day. The
final death toll was 576, and more than 3,000 Texas City residents were
left homeless. Property damage ran into the millions.
(SFC, 5/4/96, p.E-4)(AP, 4/16/97)(HNPD, 4/17/00)
1948 Lyndon Johnson‘s nickname
"Landslide Lyndon" was coined because of his slim victory in the 1948
primary election for the senate. While Johnson finished second in the
first round of the Texas Democratic primary of 1948, a runoff election
was required. In the runoff election, Johnson won the majority of the
more than 1 million ballots cast by a mere 87 votes, thus earning him
the ironical nickname "Landslide Lyndon." Although the vote was
contested, Johnson was awarded the victory and went on to win election
to the U.S. Senate. Johnson was reelected to the senate twice and
became Vice President under John Kennedy in 1961. Upon the
assassination of Kennedy in 1963, Johnson became President. In the 1964
presidential election, Johnson defeated Barry Goldwater in a true
landslide, garnering 43 million popular votes to Goldwater‘s 27
million. Johnson did not seek reelection in 1968.
(HNQ, 4/27/00)
1949 Dec 25, Sissy Spacek,
(Carrie, Badlands, Coal Miner's Daughter), was born in Quitman, Tx.
(MC, 12/25/01)
1949 The interracial drama film
"Pinky" starred Jeanne Crain and Bert Conway (d.2002 at 87). It was
directed by Elia Kazan. It was banned in Marshall, Texas, but the
censoring ordnance was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme
Court.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, p.D5)(SFC, 2/18/02, p.B6)(SFC,
12/15/03, p.A24)
1949 R.D. Hull, a Texas
watchmaker, invented the spin-cast reel for fishing and got the Zero
Hour Bomb Co. in Tulsa to manufacture it. The company soon changed its
name to Zebco.
(WSJ, 9/9/99, p.A25)
1949 The last US case of smallpox
was reported in Texas.
(SFC, 10/19/01, p.A17)
1950 Feb 3, Morgan Fairchild,
[Patsy McClenny], actress (Falcon Crest), born in Dallas, Tx.
(en.wikipedia org/wiki/Morgan_Fairchild))
1950 Elizabeth Taylor spent her
first honeymoon with Nicky Hilton in his El Paso, Texas, downtown hotel.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.39)
1951 Jan 16, World's largest gas
pipeline opened from Brownsville Tx, to 134th St, NYC.
(MC, 1/16/02)
1953 May 11, A tornado his
downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114 people with 597 injured.
(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par p.11)
1953 May 25, 1st non-commercial
educational television station began in Houston, TX.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1953 May 29, Rick Henderson,
singer (Mason Dixon-Karen Comes Around), was born in Beaumont, TX.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1954 Apr 9, Dennis Quaid, actor
(Big Easy, Dreamscape, Right Stuff), was born in Houston, TX.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1954 In Houston John Staub
designed a home for Harris and Carroll Masterson. It was bequeathed to
the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 1991 and named after Mr. Masterson's
grandfather, Rienzi Melville Johnston, who was editor and publisher of
the Houston Post as well as a US senator.
(SFC, 3/22/99, p.A20)
1956 Mar 8, On the 2nd day of a
3-day regional conference of the Southern District Division of
Production, American Petroleum Institute, in San Antonio, Texas, M.
King Hubbert, a Shell geologist, predicted that US oil production for
the 48 states would peak (i.e., reach a maximum annual extraction rate)
in 1965 if the nation ultimately produced 150 billion barrels, and in
1970 if the nation ultimately produced 200 billion barrels. 1970 turned
out to be the peak year, both for the 48 states and for the 50 states
including Alaska.
(SSFC, 3/21/04, p.J3)
1956 Jul 2, Jerry Hall, model,
Mrs. Mick Jagger, was born in Mesquite, Tx.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1956 Aug 30, A white mob prevented
the enrollment of blacks at Mansfield HS, Texas.
(MC, 8/30/01)
1956 Sep 27, Mildred E "Babe"
Didrikson Zaharias (b.1911), track and field gold medalist (1932)
and Hall of Fame golfer, died in Galveston, Texas. Six years earlier
the Associated Press had named her the Greatest Female Athlete of the
First Half of the 20th Century.
(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/2/)(AP, 9/27/06)
1956 Dec 31, In Dallas 12-year-old
Jeannett Mangan was slain on Goat Hill bluff. Ernesto Lopez (19) and
Simon Rodriguez (16) were later convicted of the rape and murder. In
1962 both men escaped from prison. Rodriguez was captured but Lopez
remained at large until he was captured in 1997.
(SFC, 6/28/97, p.A8)
1957 Jun 27, More than 500 people
were killed when Hurricane Audrey slammed through coastal Louisiana and
Texas.
(AP, 6/27/97)
1957 Canyon Dam, 30 miles NE of
San Antonio, Tx., was completed.
(SFC, 7/5/02, p.A4)
1958 Jul 24, Jack Kilby
(1923-2005) of Texas Instruments came up with the idea for creating the
1st integrated circuit on a piece of silicon. By September 12 he made a
working prototype.
(SFC, 10/11/00, p.A6)(SFC, 6/22/05, p.A5)(Econ,
7/25/05, p.75)
1958 A rattlesnake roundup began
in Seetwater, Texas, for ranchers concerned about rattlesnakes biting
their cattle. It grew to become the world’s largest such event.
(Econ, 3/21/09, p.36)
1959 Dec 19, Walter Williams
(117), officially recognized as the last survivor of the 4 million who
fought in the Civil War, died in Houston. He served as forage master
for a Confederate cavalry company. The last survivor of the Union Army
was Albert Woolson. He died on August 2, 1956 at the age of 109.
(HN,
12/19/98)(www.chipublib.org/008subject/005genref/faqvet.html)
1960 The Dallas Cowboys football
team was formed with Tom Landry as head coach.
(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.A26)
1961 Apr 16, Selena, Latina singer
(Grammy-1994), was born in Texas.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1961 Jul 23, Woody Harrelson,
actor (Woody Boyd-Cheers), was born in Midland, Tx.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1961 Nov 3, New Braunfels, Texas,
began hosting its Wurstfest, an annual sausage festival, to drum up
business for local merchants. The festival was set to always begin on
the Friday before the first Monday in November. By 2007 the 1 day
festival had expanded to 10 days with well over 100,000 visitors.
(SSFC, 10/7/07, p.D8)
1961 The 1st Six Flags park opened
in Texas. By 2004 there were 31 in the US and Europe with 39,500
seasonal employees.
(WSJ, 8/31/04, p.B1)
1962 The 1st Van Cliburn Int’l.
Piano Competition was held in Fort Worth, Texas.
(http://www.cliburn.org/page/117)
1963 May 29, Lisa Whelchel,
actress (Blair-Facts of Life, Mickey Mouse Club), was born in Fort
Worth, TX.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1963 Oct 25, Anti-Kennedy "WANTED
FOR TREASON" pamphlets scattered in Dallas.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1963 Nov 21, President Kennedy and
his wife, Jacqueline, began a two-day tour of Texas.
(AP, 11/22/03)
1963 Nov 22, John F. Kennedy, the
35th president of the United States, had been in office two years, 10
months and two days, when an assassin's bullet ended his life in
Dallas, Texas. Kennedy, on a pre-campaign trip to supposedly hostile
Texas, had been greeted warmly by enthusiastic crowds at every stop.
Upon their arrival in Dallas, President and Mrs. Kennedy, accompanied
by Texas Governor John Connolly and his wife, were driven slowly
through the downtown streets on their way to a scheduled speech at the
Dallas Trade Mart. At 12:30 p.m., as the open limousine traveled
through Dealey Plaza past the Texas School Book Depository, Kennedy was
shot. Within the hour, Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital
and by 2 p.m., Dallas police had arrested Lee Harvey Oswald as the
suspected assassin. At 2:38 p.m. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was
sworn in as the 36th President of the United States.
(HNPD, 11/22/98)
1963 Nov 22, Two amateur films
recorded the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. A 24 ½ sec. video
by Orville Nix Sr. and Abraham Zapruder, a dress manufacturer, captured
the assassination on video tape. In 1981 David Lifton published "Best
Evidence," on the medical evidence of the assassination. In 1993 Gerald
Posner published "Case Closed," a book on the Warren Commission report.
In 1998 new testimony was released that a 2nd set of pictures was taken
at the autopsy that were never made public. In 2007 David Talbot
authored “Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.”
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A5)(SFC, 10/25/98, p.D5)(SFC,
11/23/00, p.A11)(SSFC, 5/13/07, p.M1)
1963 Nov 22, Dr. Charles Andrew
Crenshaw, a 3rd year surgical intern at Dallas’ Parkland Memorial,
tended Kennedy and placed him into a coffin. In 1992 Crenshaw (d.2001)
authored "JFK: Conspiracy of Silence" and insisted that Kennedy had 4
gunshot wounds, including one from the front and that the neck wound
had been tampered to look like an exit wound.
(SFC, 11/21/01, p.A25)
1963 Nov 22, John F. Kennedy was
assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade in
Dallas. Texas Gov. John B. Connally was seriously wounded. Oswald was
in turn shot in front of TV cameras by Jack Ruby. Rufus Youngblood
(1924-1996), a Secret Service agent, shielded VP Johnson from possible
gunshots with his body. Johnson rewarded him by promoting him over time
to the No. 2 position in the Secret Service. Ruby used a .38 Colt Cobra
purchased at Ray’s Hardware and Sporting Goods in Dallas run by
Lawrence Brantley (1921-1996). From the address that President Kennedy
never got to deliver in Dallas: "If we are strong, our strength will
speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be no help."
(TMC, 1994, p.1963)(AHD, p. 931)(SFC, 10/4/96,
p.B2)(SFC, 10/17/96, C2) (AP, 11/22/97)
1963 Nov 22, Dallas police officer
J.D. Tippit was slain by Oswald 45 minutes after Kennedy was shot when
he called Oswald over for questioning.
(SFC, 8/1/98, p.A5)(SFC, 10/25/98, p.D5)
1963 Nov 24, Jack Ruby shot and
mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President
Kennedy in front of TV cameras in the garage of the Dallas Police
Department. Ruby used a .38 Colt Cobra purchased at Ray’s Hardware and
Sporting Goods in Dallas run by Lawrence Brantley (1921-1996). Sometime
earlier Oswald had made an attempt to murder right-wing Gen’l. Edwin A.
Walker. In 2002 Thomas Mallon authored "Mrs. Paine’s Garage and the
Murder of John F. Kennedy."
(SFC, 10/17/96, C2)(AP, 11/24/97)(HN, 11/24/00)(WSJ,
1/18/02, p.W8)
1964 Dec 13, In El Paso, Texas,
President Johnson and Mexican President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz set off an
explosion that diverted the Rio Grande, reshaping the U.S.-Mexican
border and ending a century-old dispute.
(AP, 12/13/04)
1964 Harrel G. Tillman Sr. (d.1998
at 73) was appointed a municipal court judge in Houston, the first
black judge in the state.
(SFC, 6/23/98, p.A16)
1965 Apr 9, The newly built
Houston Astrodome featured its first baseball game, an exhibition
between the Astros and the New York Yankees. Mickey Mantle hit the 1st
indoor homerun, but the Astros won, 2-1 in 12 innings.
(WSJ, 10/15/98, p.B8)(AP, 4/9/09)
1965 Apr 19, At a cost of $20,000,
the outer Houston Astrodome ceiling was painted because of sun's glare.
This in turn caused the grass to die.
(MC, 4/19/02)
1965 The play "The Effect of Gamma
Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds," written by Paul Zindel (d.2003),
was 1st produced at the Alley Theater in Houston. It opened off
Broadway in 1970 and was made into a film in 1972.
(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A16)
1965 Raymond D. Nasher, Dallas
real-estate developer, opened the NorthPark Center, in which he began
displaying large sculptures that he collected with his wife Patsy.
(WSJ, 11/4/03, p.AD8)
1966 Mar 19, Texas Western College
under coach Don Haskins won the NCAA basketball tournament becoming the
1st team to win with an all African American team. In 2006 the film
“Glory Road” depicted the story of the winning team.
(SFC, 1/24/06, p.B1)
1966 Aug 1, Charles Joseph Whitman
(25), architectural engineering student and ex-Marine, shot and killed
14 people at the University of Texas before he was gunned down by
police. His mother and wife were the first victims before he climbed to
the tower at the Univ. of Texas in Austen and shot 14 people dead and
wounded 31. One shooting victim died of complications in 2001 bringing
the death toll to 17. The 1997 film "The Delicate Art of the Rifle" by
the Cambrai Liberation Collective of North Carolina was a reimaging of
the attack at the Austin Campus.
(AP, 8/1/97)(SFC,11/19/97, p.A3)(SFC, 4/17/07, p.A8)
1966 The US tested biological
weapons in Texas. This was not disclosed until Mar 18, 1981.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1966 Norman Brinker, restaurant
pioneer, founded Steak and Ale in Dallas. The chain later became part
of the Metromedia Restaurant Group. In 2008 Metromedia filed for
bankruptcy.
(WSJ, 7/30/08, p.B1)
1966 Lonnie Pilgrim took over
Texas-based Pilgrim’s Pride. In 1986 he took the chicken company public.
(WSJ, 10/17/08, p.A1)
1967 Jan 3, Jack Ruby (55), the
man who shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, died in a
Dallas hospital.
(AP, 1/3/98)
1967 Nov 28, Actress-model Anna
Nicole Smith (d.2007) was born Vickie Lynn Hogan in Houston.
(AP, 11/28/07)
1967 IBM opened a plant in Austin,
Texas, to make Selectric typewriters. The plant moved on to make
mainframe circuit boards, terminals and eventually personal computers.
(Econ, 9/23/06, p.74)
1969 Apr 4, In Houston, Texas, Dr.
Denton Cooley implanted the 1st temporary artificial heart.
(www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/health/27docs.html)
1970 Aug 3, Hurricane "Celia"
reached its peak as it made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, as a
strong Category Three hurricane.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Celia)
1971 Sep 20, The American League
Ok'd the Washington Senator move to Arlington, where they became the
Texas Rangers.
(WSJ, 4/7/99,
p.B1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Washington_Senators_season)
1972 In Fort Worth, Texas, the
Kimbell Museum, designed by Louis Kahn, opened.
(WSJ, 12/17/02, p.D8)
1972 The Campus Crusade for Christ
organized “Explo ‘72” at “Godstock” in Dallas, Texas. The organization
for the first time embraced rock music to attract young people.
(WSJ, 1/18/08, p.W11)
1972 In Olney, Texas, Jack
Northrup and Jack Bishop organized the annual One-Arm Dove Hunt. It
turned into an annual support meeting for amputees.
(SFEC, 8/24/97, p.A8)
1973 Jan 22, Former President
Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969) died at his Texas ranch at age 64. Robert
Dallek in 1998 published the biography "Flawed Giant."
(SFC, 7/19/97, p.A6)(AP, 1/22/98)(SFC, 3/16/98, p.A2)
1973 Aug 8, In Texas Elmer Wayne
Henley (17) called police in the Houston suburb of Pasadena to report a
shooting. The high school dropout said he had killed Dean Corll after
the 33-year-old electric company employee threatened to rape and kill
Henley and two other teenagers who had gone to party at Corll's modest
bungalow. By night's end 8 corpses were recovered from makeshift graves
inside the corrugated metal shed in southwest Houston. The next day 9
more were discovered. Another 10 bodies were found on remote High
Island beach, 80 miles east of Houston, and in a wooded area near Lake
Sam Rayburn in East Texas. 27 dead Some as young as 13, none older than
21, were all victims of one killer, Dean Corll, and his two teenage
accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Owen Brooks. The boys had
seemed to vanish over the previous three years. In July, 1974, Henley
was convicted in six of the murders and sentenced to six life terms in
prison.
(AP, 6/8/08)
1973 Aug 26, The Univ. of Texas at
Arlington became the 1st accredited school to offer belly dancing.
(www.celebratetoday.com/celebrate.html)(http://tinyurl.com/696e4t)
1973 Sep 22, Dallas-Fort Worth
International Airport was dedicated. It was constructed to accommodate
the new jumbo jets.
(Hem., 5/97, p.70)(AP, 9/22/98)
1973 Marvin Zindler (1922-2007),
TV reporter, pressed Texas Gov. Dolph Briscoe to close the Chicken
Ranch brothel. His crusade eventually led to the Broadway show and
film: “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
(SFC, 7/30/07, p.B8)
1974 Oct 28, Missionaries Mark
Fischer (19) of Milwaukee, Wis., and Gary Darley (20) of Simi Valley,
Calif., disappeared in Austin, Texas. Their bodies were never found.
Robert Elmer Kleasen, taxidermist, was convicted for their murder and
sentenced to death in 1975, but was released after 2 years due to a
faulty search warrant. He moved to Britain and in 2001 was convicted
again based on DNA evidence, but died in 2003 while awaiting possible
extradition.
(AP, 4/21/03)
1974 Nov 29, Haroldson L. Hunt
(b.1889), Texas oil man and multi-millionaire, died.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhuntHL.htm)
1974 Architects Doug Michels
(1943-2003) and Chip Lord, founders of the Ant Farm in SF, created
"Cadillac Ranch," a sculpture of 10 planted Cadillacs, in Amarillo,
Texas.
(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.A1)
1974-1978 Fred Hofheinz served as mayor of Houston.
In 2000 Hofheinz pleaded guilty in a New Orleans federal extortion case.
(SFC, 11/22/00, p.A5)
1975 Jul 25, Jay R. Ferguson Jr.,
American actor (Taylor Newton-Evening Shade), was born in Dallas, Tx.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_R._Ferguson)
1975 The 1st post prohibition
winery opened in Texas.
(WSJ, 6/2/00, p.W1)
1975 Joseph Stanley Faulder was
convicted for the murder of oil matriarch Inez Phillips (75). He was
sentenced to be executed. His execution was blocked in 1998 because he
was a Canadian citizen and had not been informed of his right to
contact the Canadian consulate. He was executed in 1999.
(SFC, 12/10/98, p.C13)(SFC, 6/18/99, p.A10)
1976 Feb 22, Sandra Camille found
her husband, David Stegall, a Dallas dentist, dead with slashed wrists
and a bullet in the left temple. Sandra collected insurance and
re-married 2 years later to Bobby Bridewell, who died of cancer 2 years
later. After 2 more years Sandra married Alan Rehrig (29). He was found
shot dead in 1985, and Sandra again collected insurance. Sandra
embarked on a series of frauds and in 2007 at age 62 was held in North
Carolina pending investigations into her past.
(SFC, 7/6/07, p.B9)
1976 Apr 5, Reclusive billionaire
Howard Hughes died in Houston at age 72. In 1993 Charles Higham
authored “Howard Hughes: The Secret Life.” In 1996 Peter Harry Brown
and Pat H. Broeske authored "Howard Hughes: The Untold Story." Hughes
had hired a coterie of Mormons to take care of his confidential
business. These included Frank William Gay (1920-2007), who led Hughes’
Summa Corp. from 1970-1978.
(AP, 4/5/97)(SFC, 10/21/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 5/26/07,
p.A6)
1976 J. Howard Marshall II
(d.1995), Texas oil tycoon and alumnus of Haverford College, Pa.,
pledged $4 million to Haverford. In 1994 Marshall married Playboy
Playmate Anna Nicole Smith (26) and by his death had donated less than
$2 million to the college.
(WSJ, 7/24/03, p.A1)
1977 Apr 23, Dr. Allen Bussey
completed 20,302 yo-yo loops in Waco, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco,_Texas)
1977 Sep, In Philadelphia Helen
"Holly" Maddux, a Bryn Mawr College graduate from Tyler, Texas, was
murdered and stuffed into a steamer trunk for 18 months until her body
was discovered. Ira Einhorn, "hippie guru" was arrested for the murder
in 1979 but released on bail. He fled to hide in France. Fred Maddux,
Holly's father, committed suicide in 1988. Einhorn was convicted in
absentia in 1993. In June,1997, he was arrested in France. A French
court ruled against extradition and released Einhorn. Einhorn was
arrested in 1998 under a new extradition warrant. The events were
broadcast as a TV crime story in 1999 titled "The Hunt for the Unicorn
Killer." In 1999 The French Supreme Court ruled that Einhorn should be
returned to the US. In 1999 a civil suit ordered Einhorn to pay $907
million to the Maddux family. Einhorn was extradited to the US in 2001.
he was convicted of murder Oct 17, 2002.
(SFC, 6/17/97, p.A2)(SFC,12/5/97, p.A17)(SFC,
9/22/98, p.A3)(WSJ, 5/3/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 5/12/99, p.A23)(SFC, 5/28/99,
p.D3)(SFC, 7/29/99, p.A8)(SFC, 7/20/01, p.A14)(SFC, 10/18/02, p.A7)
1977 Nov 5, Guy Lombardo (75),
orchestra leader (Auld Lang Syne), died in Houston.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1975 Waylon Jennings and Willie
Nelson made a hit with their duet: "Luckenbach, Texas."
(SFC, 2/14/02, p.A2)
1977-1992 Rev. Rudolph Kos sexually abused a number
of altar boys from 1977-1992, when he was suspended. In 1988 he became
a pastor. In 1997 on Jul 24, a Dallas jury awarded $120 million in
damages against the local Roman Catholic diocese on the grounds that
the Church had ignored evidence of his abuses. He was sentenced to life
in prison in 1998. In 1998 the Diocese agreed to pay $23.4 million to
the nine former altar boys.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/2/98, p.A6)
1978 Apr 2, TV show "Dallas"
premiered on CBS as a 5 week mini-series. It was produced by Leonard
Katzman (1927-1996) and ran through May, 1991.
(SFC, 9/9/96,
p.A26)(www.tvguide.com/tvshows/dallas/cast/100107)
1978 Jun 10, Algur Hurtle Meadows
(b.1899), Texas oilman, died in a car crash. He left behind a large
collection of Hispanic art at the Virginia Meadows Museum at Southern
Methodist Univ.
(WSJ, 3/2/05,
p.D9)(www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmezk.html)
1978 Jun 21, Dr. LeMaistre and Art
Dilly flew to New York City with checks totaling $2.4 million to
purchase a complete edition of the two-volume, 1456 Gutenberg Bible.
The Carl H. and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation of NYC had sold the
Gutenberg Bible to the Ransom Center of Texas.
(www.utexas.edu/news/2003/07/22/nr_hrc/)(http://tinyurl.com/32vox7)
1978 Jul 30, Tropical Storm Amelia
formed in the western Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. The storm
moved over land, but continued to intensify to a 50 mph tropical storm.
The storm dissipated over Texas on August 1. Flooding rains due to
torrential rains exceeding 40 inches led to the deaths of 30 people in
Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Atlantic_hurricane_season#Tropical_Storm_Amelia)
1978 Nov 1, In Dallas, Texas,
Jonathan Bruce Reed attacked Wanda Jean Wadle and her roommate,
Kimberly Pursley. He'd apparently entered their apartment by posing as
a maintenance man. In 1979 Reed was convicted and condemned to death
for the rape-slaying of Wanda Jean Wadle at her apartment. In 2009 an
appeals court ruled that Reed could be freed because prosecutors
improperly excluded blacks from his jury in the belief that blacks
empathize with defendants.
(AP, 1/14/09)
1978 John Mackey began his Whole
Foods Market in a garage in Austin, Texas, under the name SaferWay. In
1980 he merged with a natural grocery store and opened as Whole Foods
Market. The natural foods grocery went public in 1992.
(Econ, 7/30/05,
p.60)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods_Market)
1979 Mar 12, Mary Francis Davis
was shot and killed at the Lone Star Ice and Food Store in San Antonio.
John Satterwhite was later convicted and sentenced to death. He was
executed Aug 16, 2000.
(SFC, 8/17/00, p.A5)
1979 May 29, US District Judge
John Wood (b.1916) was assassinated in San Antonio as he was about to
preside in a drug conspiracy trial against Jimmy Chagra. Joe Chagra
(1946-1996), Jimmy’s brother, conspired in the killing and served as a
prosecution witness against Charles V. Harrelson. Joe served 6 1/2 of
10 years. Charles Harrelson (d.2007) was convicted of the murder.
Prosecutors said a drug dealer facing trial had hired Harrelson to kill
the judge, who was known for giving maximum sentences. In 1985
Harrelson’s son Woody began an acting career with a role in “Cheers.”
(SFC, 12/11/96,
p.A24)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Wood,_Jr.)(SFC, 3/21/07,
p.B7)
1979 Oct 25, In Texas Johnny Penry
raped and stabbed to death Pamela Mosely Carpenter (22). Penry, said to
have an IQ of 51-63, was convicted of murder and faced execution in
2000. The US Supreme Court blocked the Nov. execution. The US Supreme
Court overturned his death sentence in 2001 due to flawed instructions
in his initial conviction.
(www.oag.state.tx.us/newspubs/newsarchive/2000/20001113penryfacts.htm)(SFC,
6/5/01, p.A1)
1979 Nov 1, The tanker Burmah
Agate, spilled 10.7 million gallons of oil off Galveston Bay, Texas, in
US's worst oil spill disaster.
(http://tinyurl.com/2jwxd3)
1979 The film "North Dallas Forty"
by Ted Kotcheff starred Nick Nolte as a wounded football player. It was
based on a novel by former Dallas Cowboy football player Peter Gent.
(WSJ, 11/1/96, p.A11)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.E2)(WSJ,
2/16/00, p.A26)
1980 Apr 12, In Texas Richard
Whitehead (16) was shot and killed after allegedly drinking into the
early hours with co-worker Delma Banks. Banks claimed he was innocent,
but was convicted in the murder and sentenced to death. The US Supreme
Court stopped the execution in 2004 and allowed Banks to appeal his
conviction.
(SFC, 2/25/04,
p.A4)(www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=563&scid=)
1980 Oct 13, In Houston, Texas, a
delicatessen clerk was shot and killed by one bullet during a robbery.
Willie Williams, who admitted to firing the fatal shot, was executed in
1995. His accomplice, Joseph Nichols, was convicted in 1982 at age 20
and in 2007 was also executed for the murder.
(http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510332007)
1981 May 13, Bobby Grant Lambert
was shot and killed during an attempted robbery at a Houston Safeway
parking lot. Gary Graham was later convicted of the murder and
sentenced to death.
(WSJ, 6/28/00, p.A22)
1981 Mar 18, The U.S. disclosed
that there were biological weapons tested in Texas in 1966.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1981 The San Antonio Museum of Art
opened in a structure that originally housed the Lone Star Brewery.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.T11)
1981-1984 Kenneth Lay served as president and COO of
Transco Energy.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.A19)
1982 Nov 19, An antenna tower
collapsed during construction in Missouri City, Texas, and 5 riggers
were killed.
(http://ethics.tamu.edu/ethics/tvtower/tv3.htm)
1982 Dec 7, Convicted murderer
Charlie Brooks Junior became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by
injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas. Brooks, convicted of
murdering an auto mechanic, received an intravenous injection of sodium
pentathol.
(AP, 12/7/99)
1982 Braniff Airlines, based in
Dallas, ceased operations with $1 billion in debt. Harding Lawrence
(d.2002 at 81) led the company from 1965-1980.
(SFC, 1/21/02, p.B5)
1982 Texas reinstated the death
penalty.
(SFC,11/22/97, p.A11)
1982 Texas sent James Curtis Giles
(28) to prison for 10 years for the gang rape of a Dallas woman that he
has long maintained he did not commit. In 2007 more than a decade after
his release from prison, he was expected to become the 13th Dallas
County man on track to be exonerated with the help of DNA evidence.
(AP, 4/9/07)
1983 Mar 18, Mexico's financial
crisis was causing a surge of illegal aliens over the border into
Texas.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1983 Jul 14, Clarencio Champion
(59), a party store operator in Mercedes, was stabbed during a robbery
and died a week later. In 1998 David Castillo (34) was executed for the
murder though he insisted on his innocence.
(SFC, 9/24/98, p.A3)
1983 Jul 25, The first nonhuman
primate, a baboon, was conceived in a lab dish in San Antonio, Tx.
(http://tinyurl.com/34c8hm)
1983 Aug 10, In Houston Janet
Caldwell (38), mother of two, died after she was shot twice in the neck
by Charlie Livingston, who robbed her as she returned to her van with a
bag of groceries.
(SFC,11/22/97, p.A11)
1983 Aug 18, Hurricane Alicia
slammed into the Texas coast, leaving 21 dead and causing more than $1
billion damage.
(AP, 8/18/08)
1983 Aug 29, William Goyen
(b.1915), Texas-born novelist and playwright, died in Los Angeles. His
1st novel was “House of Breath” (1950).
(www.tsha.utexas.edu)(www.inthe80s.com/deaths/died1983.shtml)
1983 Oct, In Texas four bodies
were found shot execution-style in an airplane hangar on the B&B
Ranch north of Dallas. 3 months later chemical salesman Lester Leroy
Bower Jr. was charged with capital murder. More than 20 years later, a
state judge stopped Bower's scheduled July 22, 2008, execution and
agreed to consider his request that evidence be examined to see if DNA
testing could back up his claim of innocence.
(AP, 7/6/08)
1983 The Texas-based Belo Corp.
under CEO James Moroney Jr. (1921-2007) purchased Corinthian
Broadcasting Group from Dun & Bradstreet for $606 million. This was
the largest deal to date in US broadcast history.
(SFC, 2/20/07, p.B4)
1983 Joseph Frank Smith was
convicted of raping the same woman twice in San Antonio. He later
agreed to impotence-causing injections as a condition of probation. In
1998 he pleaded guilty to new sex crimes and was being investigated for
up to 75 more incidents since 1987.
(SFC, 11/28/98, p.A3)
1983 Jimmy Don Beets, a Dallas
fire captain, was murdered. His wife, Betty Lou Beets, was convicted of
the murder and sentenced to death. She was also accused of shooting and
killing her 4th husband, Doyle Barker, but was not tried for that case.
She was also convicted for shooting and wounding her 2nd husband. Beets
was executed in 2000.
(SFC, 2/23/00, p.A5)(SFC, 2/25/00, p.A3)
1984 Jun, Kenneth Lay joined
Houston National Gas as chairman and CEO.
(SSFC, 2/3/02, p.A19)
1984 Aug 22, The Republican
convention in Dallas renominated Ronald Reagan.
(http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0329270-00)
1984 Dick Armey, Texas Republican
and economics professor, was elected to the US Congress. In 2003 he
authored "Armey's Axioms."
(WSJ, 12/11/03, p.D6)
1984 The Dallas Semiconductor
Corp. began operations under Vin Prothro (d.2000 at 58).
(SFC, 11/18/00, p.A24)
1984 Michael Dell (19), a student
at the Univ. of Texas, founded Dell Computer in Austin, Texas.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.B9)(SSFC, 4/13/03, p.I1)
1984 Marketplace Chaplains USA was
founded in Dallas, Texas, to provide corporations with chaplains. By
2007 it employed 2100 at 300 US companies in 46 states.
(Econ, 8/25/07, p.60)
1984 In Texas Karla Faye Tucker
and a male companion took a pick-ax to two people. She was convicted
and sentenced to die. She was executed on Feb 3, 1998.
(WSJ, 1/5/98,
p.20)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Faye_Tucker)
1985 Jul 11, Houston Astro's Nolan
Ryan became the first pitcher to strike out 4000 batters as he fanned
Danny Heep of the New York Mets.
(www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/hallfame/ryan.htm)
1985 Aug 2, In Texas 137 people
were killed when a Delta Air Lines jumbo jet crashed while attempting
to land at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
(AP, 8/2/97)
1985 Sep 30, Maxxam Corp. made a
tender offer for Pacific Lumber at $36 a share. The same day it
demanded and received a 50% cut in fees due to Drexel Burnham Lambert.
During the summer the Wall Street firm Drexel Burnham Lambert and
Maxxam Corp. had hired a timber consultant to fly over the holdings of
Pacific Lumber and estimate their worth. Charles Hurwitz announced his
intention to acquire Pacific Lumber and had Michael Milken of Drexel
arrange junk bond financing. Control of Pacific Lumber passed to
Hurwitz of Texas-based Maxxam by the end of the year. The bonds were
sold to United Savings Association, a Texas S&L whose parent
corporation was owned by Charles Hurwitz. The thrift failed in 1988 and
taxpayers were stuck with a $1.6 billion bailout.
(SFC, 9/4/96,
p.A4-5)(www.mcn.org/e/iii/politics/hurwitzm.htm)
1985 Sep, In Texas Patrick Rogers
shot a killed police officer David Roberts (23) after a robbery.
Rogers, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death. His story
was made into a 1997 Dateline NBC documentary.
(WSJ, 1/5/98, p.20)
1985 Nov 6, An exploratory oil
well at Ranger, Tx., exploded and spilled 150,000 barrels of oil.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980-1989_world_oil_market_chronology)
1985 In Dallas developer Trammel
Crow built the massive Infomart, modeled after the London’s famous
Crystal Palace that burned down in 1936.
(WSJ, 12/2/97, p.B12)
1985 Ann Rockefeller Roberts
donated her father's folk art collection of some 2,500 pieces to the
San Antonio Museum of Art.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.T10)
1985 Texas passed a compensation
law to cover the wrongly convicted. It was limited to $50,000 and
included strict conditions.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.A16)
1985 Enron Corp. was formed when
Houston Natural Gas combined with InterNorth Inc., a gas-pipeline
company. Kenneth Lay (1942-2006) was named chairman and CEO in 1986.
Enron filed for bankruptcy in 2001.
(NW, 12/10/01, p.50)(SFC, 1/24/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
2/3/02, p.A19)
1985 John Kilheffer was killed by
two hitchhikers. In 1997 Irineo Tristan Montoya was executed for
holding Kilheffer while Juan Villavicencio stabbed him 22 times.
Villavicencio testified against Montoya and avoided the death sentence.
(SFC, 6/19/97, p.A3)
1985 Five illegal Mexican
immigrants were robbed and shot after crossing into Texas in a boxcar.
One of the 5 was killed and Rodolfo Hernandez was convicted for his
role in the murder. His execution was set for Mar 21, 2002.
(SFC, 2/23/02, p.A2)
1985 A Dallas-area woman was raped
and her apartment was burglarized. Thomas Clifford McGowan (26) was
convicted of both crimes in separate trials in 1985 and 1986 and
sentenced to life each time. In 2008 McGowan won his freedom after a
DNA testing proved him innocent.
(AP, 4/16/08)
1986 Sep 13, In Texas Jonathan
Nobles stabbed to death Mitzi Johnson-Nalley (21) and Kelly Farquhar
(24). Nobles was high on drugs at the time and during imprisonment
offered to donate his organs, but the Texas system did not allow organs
from death row inmates to be harvested. He was executed Oct 7, 1998.
(SFC, 10/8/98, p.A3)
1986 Sep 19, Harken Energy agreed
to acquire Spectrum 7 Energy Corp., a Texas oil and gas company where
George W. Bush was chairman, for 200,000 shares and a consulting
salary. Bush became a Harken board member and a $100,000-a-year
($120,000-a-year) consultant. In 1989 Harken sold 80% of its Aloha
petroleum subsidiary to a group of insiders. An SEC investigation
pointed to disguised Harken losses of $8 million.
(SFC, 7/9/02, p.A12)(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.A4)
1986 Oct 15, Harvard Univ. agreed
to buy 1.35 million shares of Harken Energy for $2 million and to
invest $20 million in Harken projects. George W. Bush served as a
Harken board member and paid consultant.
(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.A4)
1986 Dec 27, James Wilkens shot
and killed is ex-girlfriend’s 4-year-old son and boyfriend. Wilkens was
executed in 2001.
(SFC, 7/12/01, p.A10)
1986 Deanna Ogg (16) was raped and
murdered. Roy Criner was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with
no physical evidence. DNA tests in 1997 showed that Criner was not the
rapist but an appeals court denied a new trial. In 2000 prosecutors
agreed that Criner should be released. He was pardoned by Gov. Bush.
(SFC, 7/25/00, p.A4)(SFC, 7/29/00, p.A7)(SFC,
8/16/00, p.A3)
1987 Feb 12, A Court in Texas
upheld an $8.5 billion fine imposed on Texaco for the illegal takeover
of Getty Oil.
(HN, 2/12/98)
1987 May 22, A deadly tornado
devastated the small West Texas town of Saragosa, killing 30 people and
injuring 162. The storm destroyed 61 houses and leveled the community
center and church.
(AP, 5/22/97)
1987 May 23, Rescue workers and
survivors searched through the rubble of a killer tornado in Saragosa,
Texas, that had claimed 30 lives. Texas Gov. Bill Clements expressed
his sorrow, and pledged all possible help.
(AP, 5/23/97)
1987 Jul 17, 10 teen-agers were
killed when raging floodwaters from the Guadalupe River near Comfort,
Texas, swept away a church bus and van holding 43 people.
(AP, 7/17/97)
1987 Aug 4, Ernest Ray Willis was
sentenced to death for capital murder in an arson in west Texas. In
2004 he was released after facts in the case exonerated him.
(NYT, 10/8/04, p.A16)
1987 Oct 14, A real-life drama
began in Midland, Texas, as 18-month-old Jessica McClure slid 22 feet
down an abandoned well at a private day care center. Hundreds of
rescuers worked 58 hours to free her.
(AP, 10/14/97)
1987 Oct 15, Frantic efforts
continued in Midland, Texas, to save 18-month-old Jessica McClure, who
had fallen 22 feet down an abandoned well the day before. Jessica was
freed the following evening.
(AP, 10/15/97)
1987 The Menil Museum in Houston,
Texas, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, was completed.
(WSJ, 6/8/06, p.D8)
1987 George Roden was driven from
the Branch Dravidian religious group after a gun battle with David
Koresh over the leadership. The 77-acre compound near Waco, known as
Mount Carmel, belonged to Roden’s mother, who named Koresh as the
trustee in her will.
(SFC, 12/8/98, p.A3)
1987 Kevin Lee Zimmerman stabbed
and killed a Louisiana oil worker at a Beaumont motel. He was convicted
and faced execution in 2004.
(USAT, 1/20/04, p.12A)
1987 Apr 7, Frances Newton (22)
allegedly killed her husband and 2 children in Houston to gain
insurance benefits. According to a reprieve petition, Adrian Newton was
a drug user and drug seller and there was evidence that some sort of
trouble in this regard was brewing before the murder. In 2005 she was
executed in Huntsville, Texas, the 1st black woman to be executed by
the state since the Civil War.
(SFC, 9/15/05, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/9mw34)
1988 Mar 1, Courtney Gibbs Eplin
(21) of Texas was crowned 37th Miss USA.
(SC, 3/1/02)
1988 Apr, Marie Wilson (7) was
raped and killed by Garry Dean Miller near Abilene. Miller was executed
in 2000.
(SFC, 12/6/00, p.A13)
1988 Jul 12, Democratic
presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis tapped Texas Sen. Lloyd
Bentsen as his running mate.
(AP, 7/12/98)
1988 Jul 29, FDIC bailed out 1st
Republic Bank, Dallas, with $4 billion.
(http://tinyurl.com/lubu9)
1988 Aug 25, Challenger Center
opened its classroom doors in Houston.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1988 Aug 31, Fourteen people were
killed when a Delta Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff from Dallas-Fort
Worth Airport.
(AP, 8/31/98)
1988 Sep 6, Lee Roy Young became
the first African-American Texas Ranger in the force's 165-year history.
(HN, 9/6/98)
1988 Sep 8, Two nuclear-missile
rocket motors were destroyed at an army ammunition plant in Karnack,
Texas; they were the first US weapons to be eliminated under an arms
reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.
(AP, 9/8/08)
1988 Nov 10, The Department of
Energy announced that Texas would be the home of a $4.4 billion
atom-smashing super collider. However, support for the project declined
as cost estimates soared, and Congress finally voted in October 1993 to
kill it.
(AP, 11/10/98)
1988 Nov 22, Americans honored
President Kennedy on the 25th anniversary of his assassination, with
2,500 people turning out in Dallas, and visitors stopping by his
gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery.
(AP, 11/22/98)
1988 Texas made hunter safety
education mandatory for any hunter seeking a license born after Sept.
2, 1971.
(SFC, 2/14/06, p.A10)
1988 Nancy DePriest was killed at
a Pizza Hut in Austin. Christopher Ochoa was arrested and pleaded
guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison and later said his plea was
coerced. In 2001 he was cleared by DNA evidence, gathered by a group of
law students, and released.
(SFC, 1/17/01, p.A4)
1989 Apr 17, The US House Ethics
Committee released its report accusing Speaker Jim Wright of violating
House rules on the acceptance of gifts and outside income -- charges
denied by the Texas Democrat.
(AP, 4/17/99)
1989 Jun, Miguel Angel Flores
murdered Angela Tyson (20), a student of Eastern New Mexico Univ.,
after kidnapping her at knifepoint from a video store in the Texas
Panhandle. Flores was executed Nov 9, 2000.
(SFC, 10/14/00, p.A16)(SFC, 11/10/00, p.A3)
1989 Jul 6, The U.S. Army
destroyed its last Pershing 1A missiles at an ammunition plant in
Karnack, Texas, under terms of a 1987 treaty.
(AP, 7/6/97)
1989 Sep 21, In Alton, Texas, 21
students died when their school bus collided with a truck and careered
into a water-filled pit.
(AP, 9/21/99)
1989 Oct 23, Twenty-three people
were killed in an explosion at Phillips Petroleum Co.'s chemical
complex in Pasadena, Texas.
(AP, 10/23/99)
1989 Dallas opened The Sixth Floor
Museum dedicated to the 1963 assassination of JFK. It was located on
the 6th floor of the former School Book Depository near the site of the
murder.
(SSFC, 11/16/03, p.C8)
1989 Jerry Jones, the new owner of
the Dallas Cowboys, let go coach Tom Landry, who had led the team since
1960.
(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.A26)
1989 Claude Howard Jones was
convicted for the slaying of Allen Hilzendager. Jones was executed in
2000.
(SFC, 12/8/00, p.D4)
1989 A Dallas police narcotics
officer was killed. Javier Suarez Medina (20) was convicted and
sentenced to death. In 2002 Mexico’s Pres. Fox called for a halt to the
execution.
(SFC, 8/13/02, p.A5)
1990 Jun 22, George W. Bush, a
director of Harken Energy Corp., a Texas oil company, sold 212,140
shares at $4 per share just before huge losses were reported. Corporate
disclosure of the sale was filed months later.
(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A1)(SFC, 7/9/02, p.A12)(WSJ,
7/10/02, p.A8)
1990 Jun 30, Harken Energy
reported a $23 million 2nd quarter loss. George W. Bush was a director
at Harken.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A19)
1990 Jul 31, Pitcher Nolan Ryan of
the Texas Rangers became the 20th major leaguer to win 300 games as he
led his team to victory over the Milwaukee Brewers 11-to-3.
(AP, 7/31/00)
1990 Aug 27, Texan blues guitarist
Stevie Ray Vaughan (35) was killed in a helicopter crash after
performing at a concert in Wisconsin.
(Reuters, 8/28/01)
1990 Nov 30, Harken Energy
transferred $20 million in debt to a Harvard partnership, and
eliminated another $16 million in debt by transferring assets to
Harvard. George W. Bush served as a Harken board member and paid
consultant.
(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.A4)
1990 Hallie Crawford Stillwell (d.
1997 at 99), a Big Bend Texas pioneer, wrote her autobiography. A
sequel was to be completed by her great niece.
(SFC, 8/21/97, p.C4)
1990 Bob Bullock (d.1999 at 69)
began serving as lieutenant governor. For 8 years he presided over the
state Senate, made all committee appointments and controlled the flow
of legislation.
(SFC, 6/19/99, p.A21)
1990 In San Antonio a newspaper
began publishing lists of heavy water users during times of drought.
The paper went defunct but the list was continued by the Express-News.
(WSJ, 8/10/98, p.A1)
1990 James Michael Wilcox was
murdered in Texas. Robert Smith (22), with an IQ estimated at 63, was
convicted and sentenced to death. In 2004 Gov. Rick Perry commuted the
death sentence due to a 2002 Supreme Court decision barring the
execution of developmentally disabled inmates.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.A2)
1991 Mar 4, George W. Bush
notified the SEC about his 1990 sale of Harken stock.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A19)
1991 Jul 3, A Fort Worth, Texas,
police officer was videotaped beating a handcuffed prisoner in his
patrol car. The officer was suspended, but later reinstated after a
grand jury refused to indict him.
(AP, 7/3/01)
1991 Oct 16, In Killeen, Texas,
George Jo Hennard (35) crashed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria
and opened fire, killing 23 people before taking his own life. Another
20 people were wounded.
(AP, 10/16/97)(SFC, 4/17/07, p.A8)
1991 Jennifer Soto (19), a Taco
Bell manager, was killed during a robbery attempt in Dallas. LaRoyce
Lathair Smith (19) was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for her
murder. In 2004 his sentence was overturned by the US Supreme Court
because jurors did not consider his learning disability and other
evidence. Smith’s IQ was reported to be 78.
(SFC, 11/16/04, p.A4)
1991 Four people were killed in a
shooting spree at a Taco Bell restaurant in Huntsville. Jessy Carlos
San Miguel was convicted and executed by lethal injection in 2000.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.A10)
1992 Mar 12, Caren Koslow was
beaten to death at her home in Fort Worth. Her husband Jack was also
beaten but survived. In 2000 Jeffrey Dillingham, hired for the murder
by a stepdaughter, was executed by injection for the murder.
(SFC, 11/2/00, p.A4)
1992 Aug 15, While Republicans
gathered in Houston for their national convention, President Bush spent
the weekend at Camp David, his renomination secure.
(AP, 8/15/97)
1992 Aug 22, President Bush told
an evangelical gathering in Dallas that the Democrats had left "three
simple letters" out of their platform: "G-o-d." Democrat Bill Clinton
said Bush was trying to divert attention from the economy.
(AP, 8/22/02)
1992 Oct 12, Mike Piperis (46),
co-owner of U&I Restaurant in Corpus Christi, and Anthony Staton
(31), a cook, were murdered. Martin E. Gurule was convicted for the
murder and sentenced to death. Gurule’s girlfriend, Malisa Smith, was
also convicted, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
(SFC, 11/28/98, p.A8)
1992 The south Texas town of
Hidalgo erected a 20-foot statue of a bee and dubbed itself the Killer
Bee Capital of the World. Tourists came to see it.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.41)
1992 Texas executed 12 inmates.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A17)
1992 Dorthy Harris (41) and Louis
Oates (63) were shot to death at their oil company office in Palestine,
Texas. Kelsey Patterson, a paranoid schizophrenic, was arrested and
convicted of the murder. Patterson was executed May 18, 2004.
(SFC, 5/19/04, p.A7)
1993 Feb 2, IRS and Willie Nelson
settled on $9M tax bill (of $16.7M). In November 1990 the IRS had
raided Willie Nelson's home in Texas and seized everything. The IRS
auctioned off Nelson's home and his property, though friends and fans
bought most of his things and gave them back later.
(www.440.com/twtd/archives/feb02.html)(www.bankruptcy-usa.info/famous-bankruptcies.html)
1993 Feb 28, Agents of the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the ranch of the Branch
Davidian sect under David Koresh in Waco, Texas. A shootout followed
when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve
warrants on the Branch Davidians; four agents and six Davidians were
killed as a 51-day standoff began. In 1997 the film "Waco: The Rules of
Engagement: was released that documented the story.
(SFC, 2/28/97, p.D3) (AP, 2/28/98)
1993 Mar 1, Authorities near Waco,
Texas, continued negotiating with Branch Davidians holed up in their
bullet-scarred compound, a day after a furious gun battle between the
Davidians and federal agents that left 10 people dead.
(AP, 3/1/98)
1993 Mar 6, As a standoff at the
Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended its first week,
authorities appealed publicly to David Koresh and his followers to give
themselves up.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1993 Mar 7, Authorities said David
Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidians, was becoming irritable and
had rejected proposals to end a week-long standoff at his compound near
Waco, Texas.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1993 Apr 19, The 51-day siege at
the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed
the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens
of people, including leader David Koresh (Vernon Howell), were killed.
In 1999 the FBI admitted that it used incendiary tear gas canisters but
still maintained that it did not start the fire. An undisclosed tape
recording of the assault was also disclosed in 1999.
(TMC, 1994, p.1993)(AP, 4/19/97)(SFC, 8/25/99,
p.A3)(SFC, 9/2/99, p.A30)
1993 May 2, Authorities said they
had recovered the remains of David Koresh from the burned-out Branch
Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
(AP, 5/2/98)
1993 May 15, The $186 million
Alamodome opened in San Antonio, Texas.
(http://tinyurl.com/86zlw)
1993 Jun 5, In Texas, Republican
Kay Bailey Hutchison won the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Treasury
Secretary Lloyd Bentsen.
(AP, 6/5/98)
1993 Jun 15, Former Texas Gov.
John Connally, who was wounded in the gunfire that killed President
Kennedy, died at age 76.
(AP, 6/15/98)
1993 Jun 24, In Texas Jennifer
Ertman (14) and Elizabeth Pena (16) were confronted by six teenage
members of a loose-knit "Black and White" gang who savagely raped,
tortured, and beat them to death. Police soon arrested Jose Ernesto
Medellin, who gave a written confession but was not told that he could
request assistance from the Mexican consulate. Five of the six
defendants received death sentences at trial. Medellin was sentenced to
death in 1994, but the World court in 2004 ruled that his conviction,
and that of 50 other Mexicans in the US, violated the 1963 Vienna
Convention. In 2007 his case went before the US Supreme Court.
(SFC, 10/11/07,
p.A7)(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=7051821)
1993 Aug, Juan Raul Garza,
indicted as the boss of a drug ring, was convicted and sentenced to
death for killing 3 men in Texas between April 1990 and Jan 1991. Garza
maintained his innocence and in 2000 Pres. Clinton delayed the
execution to allow an appeal for clemency. The delay was followed by a
6-month reprieve to study racial and geographic disparities in the
federal death penalty. Garza was executed in 2001.
(SFC, 8/3/00, p.A3)(SFC, 12/8/00, p.A3)(SFC,
6/20/01, p.A3)
1993 Sep 27, Sen. Kay Bailey
Hutchison, R-Texas, was indicted on charges that, as Texas state
treasurer, she'd misused state facilities and employees. The indictment
was dismissed for technical reasons; Hutchison was reindicted and later
acquitted.
(AP, 9/27/98)
1993 Sep 30, US Treasury
Department issued a report sharply criticizing top officials at the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for their handling of the
February raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
(www.carolmoore.net/waco/waco-treasury-report1.html)
1993 Oct 8, The US government
issued a report absolving the FBI of wrongdoing in its 51-day siege and
final assault in Texas on the Branch Davidian compound, which went up
in flames, killing as many as 85 people. It concluded the department
and Attorney General Reno made no mistakes and that the cult bore the
blame for the fire that destroyed the compound, killing at least 80
people.
(AP, 10/8/98)
1993 T.D. Jakes, a West Virginia
preacher who ran a Pentecostal church in Dallas, published "The Lady,
Her Lover and Her Lord." It was a self-help guide peppered with
scripture. In 1998 the title was followed up with a gospel-pop album of
the same name as "sacred music for married couple."
(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.A1)
1993 Federal Judge Lucius Bunton
(d.2001 at 76) forced the legislature to establish the Edwards Aquifer
Authority to regulate pumping from the 175-mile aquifer of San Antonio.
(SFC, 1/20/01, p.A24)
1993 Enron Corp. persuaded the SEC
to grant it an exemption from the depression-era Public Utility Holding
Company Act that prevented utilities from diversifying into unrelated
businesses.
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.D1)
1993 Hearst Corp. acquired the San
Antonio Express-News.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1993 A US project to build a 23-km
particle accelerator near Waxahachie, Texas, was cancelled after nearly
$2 billion had been spent.
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.84)
1993 The 12-year-old step-daughter
of Ricky McGinn was raped and hacked to death with an ax. McGinn was
convicted for the murder and sentenced to death. In 2000 DNA tests
confirmed his guilt and he was executed Sep 27.
(SFC, 6/2/00, p.A3)(SFC, 8/16/00, p.A3)(WSJ,
9/28/00, p.A1)
1993 Texas executed 17 inmates.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A17)
1994 Jan 30, The Dallas Cowboys
repeated as NFL champions as they defeated the Buffalo Bills, 30-13, in
the Super Bowl. It was the fourth straight Super Bowl loss for the
Bills.
(AP, 1/30/99)
1994 Feb 11, A judge in Fort
Worth, Texas, ordered Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison acquitted of ethics
charges after prosecutors refused to present their case.
(AP, 2/11/04)
1994 Feb 26, A jury in San Antonio
acquitted 11 followers of David Koresh of murder, rejecting claims they
had ambushed federal agents; five were convicted of manslaughter.
(AP, 2/26/99)
1994 Mar 29, Dallas Cowboys coach
Jimmy Johnson resigned, capping a longstanding feud with team owner
Jerry Jones.
(AP, 3/29/04)
1994 Apr, Napoleon Beazley (17)
shot and killed John Luttig (63), the father of a federal judge, in a
carjacking in Tyler. Beazley’s scheduled execution in 2001, was
delayed. Beazley was executed May 28, 2002.
(SFC, 8/14/01, p.A3)(SFC, 8/16/01, p.A3)(SFC,
5/29/02, p.A4)
1994 Jun 22, The Houston Rockets
defeated the New York Knicks 90-84 to win the NBA championship.
(AP, 6/22/99)
1994 Jul 3, Thirty-one people died
in three separate crashes on Texas highways.
(AP, 7/3/9)
1994 Oct 16, Heavy rains began
drenching southeast Texas, resulting in floods that left 20 dead and
forced 14,000 from their homes in 35 counties.
(AP, 10/16/99)
1994 Trieu Viet Le and 5 other men
staged an armed robbery for microchips of the Cyrix Corp. in
Richardson, Texas. Le was indicted in 1999.
(SFC, 3/10/99, p.A20)
1994 Hearst acquired Associated
Publ. Co., a publisher of "yellow pages" directories in Texas.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1994 Texas executed 14 inmates.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A17)
1995 Jan 17, George W. Bush
(b.1946) began serving as the 46th governor of Texas. Bush had already
picked Alberto Gonzales (b.1955) as his general counsel.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush)(Econ,
7/14/07, p.38)
1995 Jan 20, Bruno Jordan, suit
salesman and brother a drug enforcement officer, was shot dead in El
Paso. In 2002 Charles Bowden authored "Down By the River," an account
of the murder and narcotics traffickers.
(NW, 1/13/03, p.61)
1995 Mar 31, Mexican-American
singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the
founder of her fan club. Yolanda Saldivar was convicted of murder and
sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1995 Apr 1, More than 1,500
mourners attended a vigil for Mexican-American singer Selena in Corpus
Christi, Texas, where she had been shot to death the day before.
(AP, 4/1/00)
1995 Apr 18, The Houston Post
closed after 116 years.
(AP, 4/18/00)(MC, 4/18/02)
1995 May 5, Thunderstorms began
tearing through North Texas, claiming two dozen lives.
(AP, 5/5/00)
1995 May 19, AMC Entertainment
Inc. opened the 1st multi-theater film megaplex, the Grand 24, in
Dallas, Texas.
(SFC, 5/19/05, p.C3)(WSJ, 5/13/97, p.B1)
1995 Aug 4, J. Howard Marshall II,
Texas oil tycoon and alumnus of Haverford College, Pa., died. In 1994
Marshall married Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith (26). In 2002, a
federal judge ruled that the dying 90-year-old truly loved his then
26-year-old wife and awarded her $88 million in a court fight with
Marshall’s son. In 2004 an appeals court reversed the judgement.
(www.lasc.org/opinions/97cc1718.opn.pdf)(AP,
12/31/04)
1995 Aug, In Austin, Texas,
Madalyn Murray O’Hair, leader of United Secularists of America,
disappeared with her son and granddaughter and more than $600,000 in
funds from her various organizations. Her diaries, some 2,000 pages,
were scheduled to be auctioned in 1999. The IRS filed an affidavit in
1999 against David Waters and 3 others in relation to suspected murders
and theft. In 1999 Waters (52) was sentenced to 60 years in prison for
skimming over $50,000 from the atheist organization. Waters was later
given another 8 year sentence on a federal weapons charge. [See Oct 3.]
In 2001 bones were found on the ranch where she was believed to have
been buried following an agreement between Waters and prosecutors. All
3 bodies were identified in Mar.
(SFEC, 3/3/97, p.A4)(SFC, 1/12/99, p.A4)(SFC,
5/27/99, p.A3)(SFC, 8/12/99, p.3)(SFC, 8/21/99, p.A3)(SSFC, 1/28/01,
p.A2)(WSJ, 3/16/00, p.A1)
1995 Oct 3, In Texas three young
crooks stole a suitcase from a walk-in storage locker in North Austin.
The suitcase contained some $80,000 in coins stashed by Gary Karr,
David Roland Waters and Danny Raymond Fry, who were implicated in the
disappearance of atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
(SFC, 6/3/00, p.A7)
1995 Oct 23, A jury in Houston
convicted Yolanda Saldivar of murdering Tejano singing star Selena.
(AP, 10/23/00)
1995 Dec 4, Diane Zamora and David
Graham, high school sweethearts, killed Adrienne Jones (16). Jones and
Graham had had sex and the murder was reported as an appeasement to
Zamora. Graham went on to the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs.
The murder remained a mystery until Zamora confided her story to
classmates at the Annapolis Naval Academy in Sep 1996. Zamora later
testified that Graham shot and killed Jones. Zamora was convicted in
Feb, 1998, and received a life sentence with possible parole after 40
years. Graham was convicted in July, 1998, and received an automatic
life sentence.
(SFEC, 2/8/98, p.A6)(SFC, 2/11/98, p.A3)(SFC,
2/18/98, p.A3)(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A3)
1995 Texas passed the "veggie
libel" law that protected perishable food products from false and
defamatory statements.
(SFC, 1/21/98, p.A3)
1995 In Houston a test pilot
demonstrated a backpack rocket contraption and flew over the Houston
Ship Channel for 28 seconds. The rocket belt was built by Larry Stanley
and Brad Parker in a shop that belonged to Joe Wright. In 1994 Barker
beat Stanley with a hammer. Stanley sued Barker and Wright for
conspiracy to seize the belt for their own benefit. Wright was
bludgeoned to death July 16, 1998. In 1999 Stanley won a default
judgement for over $10 million in damages and the return of the RB-2000
belt, which was still missing.
(SFC, 7/27/99, p.A6)(SFC, 7/28/99, p.A7)
1995 Texas executed 19 inmates.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A17)
1995 J. Howard Marshall, oilman,
died at age 90 and left a fortune estimated at $1.6 billion. He had
married Anna Nicole Smith, a Houston stripper in 1994. In 2000 a court
awarded Smith $449.7 million based on her "widow’s election" and
overrode a will that bequeathed the fortune to Marshall’s youngest son.
Smith accepted a $475 million court award in 2001. A federal judge
later nullified the court award.
(SFC, 9/28/00, p.A2)(SFC, 1/6/01, p.A2)(SFC,
5/25/01, p.A3)
1996 Jan 14, The Pittsburgh
Steelers defeated the Indianapolis Colts, 20-to-16, to win the AFC
championship. The Dallas Cowboys beat the Green Bay Packers, 38-to-27,
to win the NFC championship.
(AP, 1/14/01)
1996 Jan 28, In Super Bowl XXX the
Dallas Cowboys captured their third Super Bowl victory in four years,
beating the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-to-17.
(AP, 1/28/01)
1996 Apr 16, Oprah Winfrey hosted
her evening show and included a segment on mad cow disease. A group of
Texas cattle ranchers later sued her for her comments. The case was
initially a test of the state’s 1995 "veggie libel" law that protected
perishable food products from false and defamatory statements, but was
ruled to proceed as a common-law business defamation case. Texas jury
selection in the trial of Oprah began Jan 20 and she was acquitted by
the jury on Feb 26, 1998.
(SFC, 1/21/98,
p.A3)(www.cnn.com/US/9802/26/oprah.verdict/)
1996 May 24, Jayla Belton (2) died
of internal injuries. An 11-year-old girl was convicted of murder and
sentenced to 25 years. In 1999 the conviction was overturned because
police obtained her statements illegally.
(SFC, 4/16/99, p.A3)
1996 Jun 27, A Dallas police
officer was charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill football star
Michael Irvin; Johnnie Hernandez later pleaded guilty to solicitation
of capital murder. He was sentenced to serve two concurrent six-year
prison terms, and was paroled in 1998.
(AP, 6/27/06)
1996 Dec 22, Eight workers were
killed in an explosion at the Wyman Gordon Forgings metal-fabricating
plant in northwest Houston. They had been doing maintenance on 9-story
pressurized tanks.
(SFC, 12/24/96, p.A3)(AP, 12/22/97)
1996 Laura Bush founded the Texas
Book Festival.
(WSJ, 9/4/01, p.A19)
1996 In a Dallas suburb 14
teenagers and young adults died after using a potent "uncut" Mexican
heroin.
(SFC, 6/2/98, p.A6)
1997 Jan 1, Townes Van Zandt
(1944-1997) Texas songwriter, died. His work included the 1983 song
"Pancho and Lefty," sung by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson.
(SFC, 1/3/97, p.A26)(SFC, 1/4/97, p.E1)(WSJ,
6/25/03, p.D8)
1997 Feb 17, Angela Peck was
stabbed in the back and the neck by Carl Wayne Thomas (21), a security
guard. She pleaded for mercy and promised to blame the attack on a
fictitious character. Thomas agreed and summoned aid. She later told
the truth and Thomas confessed. he agreed to a 42-year prison sentence
for attempted murder.
(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A9)
1997 Apr 16, Doris Angleton, wife
of former bookie Robert Angleton, was found shot to death in River
Oaks, Houston. Roger Angleton, Robert’s brother, confessed to the
murder in a suicide note in Feb 1998.
(SFC, 8/15/01, p.A4)
1997 Apr 27, A Texas militia
group, called Republic of Texas, took 2 hostages at the Davis Mountain
Resort community. They advocated independence for the state. The
hostages were released later the next day in exchange for a jailed
comrade, but the standoff continued. Richard McLaren and Robert Otto
were later captured, convicted and sentenced to 99 and 50 years in
prison. Acquittal on kidnapping charges against McLaren and Otto were
handed down by an Appeals court in 1999.
(WSJ, 4/29/97, p.A1)(SFC, 4/29/97, p.A1)(SFC,
8/28/99, p.A5)
1997 May 2, In Texas Robert
Scheidt surrendered to police and left behind 7 people of the Republic
of Texas under the leadership of Richard McLaren. The number of
separatists was reduced to 7 from an earlier estimate of 13.
(SFC, 5/3/97, p.A3)
1997 May 3, The standoff in Texas
with the Republic of Texas ended. Two militia members fled into the
Davis mountains while 5 surrendered peacefully.
(SFEC, 5/4/97, p.A1)
1997 May 27, A tornado hit Cedar
Park, [Jarrell] Texas, and left at least 32 [27] people dead. It cut a
swath from Austin to Waco.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.A1)(SFC, 5/29/97, p.A3)(AP, 5/27/98)
1997 Jun 4, In Lubbock, Texas,
Michael Rosales, a parole violator, beat and used kitchen tools to kill
Mary Felder (67) during a robbery at her apartment. Rosales (35) was
executed on April 16, 2009.
(SFC, 4/16/09,
p.A6)(www.oag.state.tx.us/oagnews/release.php?id=2917)
1997 Jun 18, Irineo Montoya, a
Mexican laborer, was executed by the state of Texas for a 1985 killing
despite protests by the Mexican government.
(AP, 6/18/98)
1997 Jun 23, Two freight trains
collided in Texas near San Antonio and 4 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/24/97, p.A2)
1997 Jul 24, A Dallas jury awarded
$120 million in damages against the local Roman Catholic diocese that
ignored evidence that the priest, Rudolph Kos, sexually abused a number
of altar boys from 1977-1992. Kos was suspended in 1992. Kos pleaded
guilty to 3 sex abuse charges in 1998.
(SFC, 7/25/97, p.A1)(SFC, 3/25/98, p.A3)
1997 Aug 30, Philip Noel Johnson,
an armored car driver believed to have stolen $22 million, was arrested
at the Texas border. Johnson later pleaded guilty to charges of
kidnapping, money laundering and interfering with interstate commerce.
He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
(AP, 8/30/02)
1997 Sep, In Dallas, Texas, the
Walt Whitman Community School began classes as the nation’s first
private high school for gay students.
(SFC, 5/11/98, p.A3)
1997 Nov 5, The Enron executive
committee approved several hundred million in loan guarantees for a new
partnership named Chewbacca, to be partly owned and run independently
by Enron executive Michael Kopper. This set a pattern for transactions
that inflated earnings and kept debt hidden.
(WSJ, 2/1/02, p.A1)
1997 Nov 6, The $83 million George
Bush Presidential Library and Museum was dedicated on the campus of
Texas A&M Univ. at College Station.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A3)
1997 Nov 19, Michael Eugene Sharp
became the 35th condemned killer to be put to death this year in Texas.
He used the Internet to distribute his last words. He had abducted a
woman and her 2 young daughters, sexually abused them, and fatally
stabbed the mother and youngest daughter.
(SFC,11/20/97, p.A3)
1997 Nov 21, Charlie Livingston
was executed by lethal injection for the Aug 10, 1983 murder of Janet
Caldwell (38).
(SFC,11/22/97, p.A11)
1997 Dec 2, In Texas Alberto
Gonzales (b.1955), the general counsel to Gov. George W. Bush, began
serving as the Sec. of State.
(www.whitehouse.gov/government/gonzales-bio.html)(Econ, 7/14/07, p.38)
1997 Dec 6, Lee Patrick Brown was
elected as the first black mayor of Houston.
(SFC,12/897, p.A6)
1997 Dec 9, Michael Lee Lockhart
was put to death by lethal injection for the 1988 murder of a Beaumont
police officer. He was also wanted by Florida and Indiana where in 1987
he killed a 14-year old girl and 16 year-old girl. He was the 37th to
be executed by Texas this year.
(SFC,12/10/97, p.A3)
1997 Dec 26, It was reported that
the Emu market had collapsed and that the 100-pound birds were roaming
the Texas countryside and being slaughtered by frustrated owners.
(SFC,12/26/97, p.A4)
1997 The Dallas Zoo claimed the
largest sculpture in the state with a giant giraffe built by Robert
Cassilly of St. Louis. His piece surpassed the giant statue of Sam
Houston made by sculptor David Adickes.
(WSJ, 1/18/06, p.A6)
1997 In Sugarland, Tx., Ira P.H.
Poon spent $20 million to open his Forbidden Gardens museum, a 1/20th
scale replica of the Forbidden City in Beijing along with a replica of
the tomb of Qin Shi Huang.
(SFC, 8/23/99, p.A3,4)
1997 Yvonne Gonzalez,
superintendent of the Dallas school district, pleaded guilty to fraud
and embezzlement of $10,000 that she used to furnish her home.
(SFC, 4/23/99, p.A21)
1997 Enron won exemption from the
Investment Company Act of 1940 which allowed it to leave debt from
foreign power plants off its books.
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.D1)
1998 Jan 16, Texas settled with
the tobacco industry for $15.3 billion.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A6)
1998 Jan 20, In Texas jury
selection in the multi-million-dollar lawsuit trial of Oprah Winfrey
began. She was being sued by Texas cattlemen for remarks on her Apr 16,
1996 show about mad cow disease. The case was initially a test of the
state’s 1995 "veggie libel" law that protected perishable food products
from false and defamatory statements, but was ruled to proceed as a
common-law business defamation case. Winfrey won the case on Feb 26.
(SFC, 1/21/98,
p.A3)(www.cnn.com/US/9802/26/oprah.verdict/)
1998 Feb 3, In Texas Karla Faye
Tucker (38) was executed by lethal injection with sodium thiopental for
the 1983 pickax slaying of 2 people during a break-in in 1983. She was
the first woman executed in the United States since 1984.
(SFC, 2/4/98, p.A1)(WSJ, 1/4/98, p.R4)(AP, 2/3/99)
1998 Feb 17, A jury in Fort Worth,
Texas, convicted former Naval Academy midshipman Diane Zamora (20) of
killing a 16-year-old romantic rival. Zamora and her ex-boyfriend,
former US Air Force Academy cadet David Graham, were sentenced to life
in prison in the slaying of Adrianne Jones.
(AP, 2/17/08)
1998 Feb 26, A jury in Amarillo,
Texas, rejected an $11 million lawsuit brought by Texas cattlemen who
blamed Oprah Winfrey's talk show for a price fall after a segment on
food safety that included a discussion about mad-cow disease.
(AP, 2/26/99)
1998 Apr 25, Three teenagers were
found shot to death in Brownsville.
(SFC, 4/27/98, p.A5)
1998 May 1, The grand opening of
the new 2,056-seat Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Performance Hall in Fort
Worth was held. It was designed by David M. Schwarz.
(WSJ, 5/22/98, p.W5)
1998 Jun 5, In Texas an estimated
22,000 trout died in the Guadalupe River after eating dead fire ants
that fell into the river after mating.
(SFC, 6/6/98, p.A4)
1998 Jun 7, James Byrd Junior, a
49-year-old black man, was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his
death in Jasper, Texas. Three white men were arrested; 2 of the men
were sentenced to death and the 3rd received life in prison. [see Jun 9]
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A3)(AP, 6/7/00)
1998 Jun 9, Three white men, Shawn
Allen Berry (23), Lawrence Russell Brewer (31) and John William King
(23), were charged for the Jun 7 murder of James Byrd Jr. King was
convicted of murder Feb 23, 1999, and was sentenced to death. Brewer
was found guilty of capital murder on Sep 20, 1999 and was sentenced to
death Sep 23. Berry was sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.A3)(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A1)(SFC,
9/14/99, p.A10)(SFC, 9/21/99, p.A3)(SFC, 9/24/99, p.A3)(SFC, 11/19/99,
p.A3)
1998 Jun 26, Gov. George W. Bush
agreed to commute the death sentence of Henry Lee Lucas in the "Orange
Socks" murder case. Lucas was serving 6 life terms, 2 75 year terms and
one 60 year term for nine other murders.
(SFC, 6/27/98, p.A3)
1998 Jun, Clifford Boggess was
executed in Huntsville, 12 years after he had murdered 2 old men in
separate robberies. A documentary film of his crimes and executions was
shown in 1999 on Frontline.
(SFC, 2/9/99, p.A20)
1998 Jul 7, In Texas 2 Border
Patrol agents were killed in a gun battle with Ernest Moore who was
suspected of killing a woman and her daughter. Moore soon after died of
wounds at a hospital.
(SFC, 7/8/98, p.A2)
1998 Jul 10, Bringing to a close
one of the biggest sex scandals ever to hit the Roman Catholic Church,
the Diocese of Dallas agreed to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar
boys who said they had been molested by a priest.
(AP, 7/10/99)
1998 Jul 14, Flash floods hit
Tennessee and Alabama and 2 people were reported killed. Meanwhile hot
weather in Texas was responsible for some 23 deaths where temperatures
hit over 100 for the last 26 days.
(SFC, 7/15/98, p.A3)
1998 Jul, In Houston six police
officers without a warrant stormed the home of Pedro Navarro (22) on a
drug tip. No drugs were found and Navarro was killed after being shot
12 times, 9 times in the back. The officers were later fired.
(SFC, 11/3/98, p.A3)
1998 Aug 24, Tropical Storm
Charley dropped a foot of rain on South Texas and northern Mexico and
left at least 14 people dead and over 60 missing.
(SFC, 8/25/98, p.A1)
1998 Sep 11, Tropical Storm
Frances hit the middle of the Texas coast. In Louisiana one person was
killed and 6 were injured. In Houston the streets were flooded.
(SFC, 9/11/98, p.A3)
1998 Oct 8, In Port Arthur an
incinerating plant operated by Waste Management began burning a diluted
batch of napalm.
(USAT, 10/9/98, p.20A)
1998 Oct 18, A weekend storm in
Texas killed at least 14 people after 12 inches of rain fell. The death
toll increased to 22 and later 28.
(SFC, 10/19/98, p.A2)(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A3)(WSJ,
10/23/98, p.A1)
1998 Oct 23, In Texas the Natural
Resource Conservation Commission voted against issuing a license for a
radioactive waste dump at Sierra Blanca, 16 miles from the Mexican
border.
(SFC, 10/23/98, p.A10)
1998 Oct, Zacchaeus Field was shot
to death. John Turnbow was convicted of killing Field, a black man and
complete stranger, as a hate crime and sentenced to life in prison in
2001.
(SFC, 7/4/01, p.A5)
1998 Nov 27, In Texas Martin E.
Gurule became the first inmate to escape from Death Row at Huntsville.
He was convicted for a double murder in 1992. He was found drowned to
death on Dec 3.
(SFC, 11/28/98, p.A1,8)(SFC, 12/4/98, p.A3)
1998 Dec 16, Philip True (50), a
reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, was found dead in a remote
mountain range between Jalisco and Nayarit states in Mexico. He went
hiking the area Nov 29 to photograph and write about the Huichol
Indians and apparently fell into a deep ravine. A coroner’s report
later indicated that he had been strangled and dropped into the ravine.
In 2002 an appeals court overturned the acquittal of 2 Huichol Indians,
who were arrested with True’s camera and backpack. In 2005 Robert
Rivard authored “Trail of Feathers: Searching for Philip True.”
(SFC, 12/18/98, p.D6)(SFC, 5/31/02, p.A22)(SSFC,
12/11/05, p.M2)
1998 Dec 20, In Houston Nken
Chukwu gave birth to 5 girls and 2 boys 12 days after giving birth to
another girl.
(SFC, 12/21/98, p.A1)
1998 Dec 27, In Texas the smallest
of the Chukwu octuplets died.
(SFC, 12/28/98, p.A1)
1998 Mark Lund (46) was killed for
his $5,000 gun collection by a hit man, Billy Don Williams [Wilson],
who was hired by Lund's son Brandon Lund (16). Brandon tried
unsuccessfully to renege on the deal. He was convicted and sentenced to
2 years in juvenile prison. Wilson (23) was convicted of capital murder
in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison.
(SFC, 4/7/99, p.A2)(SFC, 4/9/99, p.A3)
1999 Jan 21, In Texas LaTausha
Curry (25) was abducted while trying to make a call at a pay phone.
Derrick Lamone Johnson later confessed that he and an accomplice had
raped and murdered her. In 2009 Johnson (25) was executed.
(SFC, 5/1/09,
p.A8)(www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/73765.htm)
1999 Feb 16, Testimony began in
the Jasper, Texas, trial of John William King, charged with murder in
the gruesome dragging death of James Byrd Jr. King was accused of
beating Byrd with a bat and then dragging him behind a truck until the
African-American man died from decapitation. King was later convicted
and sentenced to death.
(AP,
2/16/00)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Byrd)
1999 Feb 23, A jury in Jasper,
Texas convicted white supremacist John William King of murder in the
gruesome dragging death of a black man, James Byrd Jr.; King was
sentenced to death two days later.
(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A1)(AP, 2/23/00)
1999 Mar 11, Gov. George W. Bush
declared an emergency in 167 of the states 254 counties due to a dry
winter and in fear of a summertime drought.
(SFC, 3/12/99, p.A3)
1999 Mar 29, In Abilene Arthur
Goodman (19) killed his girlfriend and 3 of her friends. His
girlfriend, Sandy Witt (20) apparently refused to supply him with an
alibi in a crime for which he was suspect. Goodman was killed by police
the next day when he pointed a gun at officers.
(SFC, 3/31/99, p.A11)(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A3)
1999 Apr 22, The Dallas Board of
Education named SF Superintendent Bill Rojas as its choice to run the
Dallas school district. The SF Board of Supervisors were not pleased.
Rojas was given a 3-year contract at $260,000 per year plus benefits,
and was scheduled to begin work in August.
(SFC, 4/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 5/26/99, p.A18)
1999 Apr 28, Plans for the new $20
million Cathedral of Hope church by architect Philip Johnson (92) were
unveiled. The congregation consisted primarily of gay and lesbian
Christians.
(SFC, 4/27/99, p.A1)
1999 May 2, Minister Norman Sirnic
(46) and his wife Karen (47) were found dead inside their home near
railroad track in Weimar. Rafael Resendez-Ramirez was suspected of the
murder.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A3)
1999 May 17, The House followed
the Senate and approved a bill that designated March 31 as "Cesar
Chavez Day."
(SFC, 5/18/99, p.A3)
1999 May 19, In Houston Troy
Blando, a police auto theft detective, was shot and killed. Bicycle
patrol officers quickly arrested a suspect.
(SFC, 5/20/99, p.A7)
1999 May 30, Nidia and Patricio
Leal were killed when their Ford Explorer skidded into a ditch near
Brownsville, Tx., following the unraveling of a Firestone tire.
Relatives settled with Bridgestone/Firestone in 2000 in the 1st product
liability suit following an August, 2000, tire recall.
(SFC, 10/24/00, p.A8)
1999 Jun 4, Josephine Konvicka
(73) was found slain inside her home in Fayette County. Rafael
Resendez-Ramirez was suspected of the murder.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A3)
1999 Jun 5, Noemi Dominguez (26) a
Houston schoolteacher was found beaten to death in her home. Rafael
Resendez-Ramirez was suspected of the murder.
(SFC, 6/22/99, p.A3)
1999 Jun 17, It was reported that
Rafael Resendez-Ramirez (39), a drifter from Mexico, was being sought
for the suspected murders of at least 5 people near railroad tracks
between Houston and San Antonio. His real name was later found to be
Angel Leoncio Reyes Recendis [Angel Maturino Resendez, Resendiz].
Ramirez surrendered to police in El Paso on July 13. His sister,
Manuela Karkiewicz of New Mexico, arranged for the surrender and was
awarded $86,000 in reward money. Resendiz was convicted in 2000 for the
murder and rape of a doctor. He asked the judge for the death penalty
and was sentenced to death.
(SFC, 6/17/99, p.A3)(SFC, 6/29/99, p.A3)(SFC,
7/14/99, p.A3)(SFC, 7/30/99, p.A6)(SFC, 5/19/00, p.A3)(SFC, 5/23/00,
p.A2)
1999 cJun 19, The Dallas Stars won
their first Stanley Cup hockey championship by 4 games to 2 over the
Buffalo Sabres 2-1 in triple overtime.
(WSJ, 6/21/99, p.A1)
1999 Jun 25, The San Antonio Spurs
beat the New York Knicks 78-77 in their 5th game and clinched the NBA
title.
(SFC, 6/26/99, p.E1)
1999 Jul 13, Angel Maturino
Resendiz, suspected of being the "Railroad Killer," surrendered in El
Paso, Texas. He was subsequently tried, convicted and executed on July
27, 2006 at Huntsville Prison in Texas. He had been suspected of
killings in 15 cases in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
(AP, 7/13/00)
1999 Jul 20, In Tulia, Texas, an
indictment was handed down for the arrest of 46 people on drug charges
under the testimony of undercover agent Tom Coleman. A probe into the
arrests was opened in 2002 and in 2003 Gov. Rick Perry pardoned 35
defendants. In 2004 45 of those arrested split a $6 million civil
rights settlement. In 2005 Tom Coleman, former undercover drug agent,
was sentenced to 6 years on probation for perjury in the bogus drug
busts. In 2005 Nate Blakeslee authored “Tulia: Race, Cocaine and
Corruption in a Small Texas Town.”
(SFC, 6/3/03, p.A3)(SFC, 8/23/03, p.A3)(SFC,
1/15/05, p.A6)(SSFC, 11/6/05, p.M3)
1999 Aug 6, In Texas a jury
awarded Debbie Lovett $23 million for heart-valve problems that she
blamed on the diet drug combination fen-phen.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A3)
1999 Aug 14, Some 20 million dead
menhaden fish were reported washed up at the banks of the Arroyo
Colorado. It was the worst kill in 4 years and low oxygen levels from
algal bloom were blamed.
(SFC, 8/14/99, p.A6)
1999 Aug 22, Hurricane Bret hit
the US-Mexican border near Brownsville late on this day. Winds hit 125
mph but the storm missed populated areas.
(SFEC, 8/22/99, p.A2)(SFC, 8/23/99, p.A1)
1999 Sep 5, The Houston Comets won
their third straight WNBA championship, beating the New York Liberty,
59-to-47.
(AP, 9/5/00)
1999 Sep 5, Katie Webster, blues
singer and pianist known as the "Swamp Boogie Queen," died at age 63.
(SFC, 9/10/99, p.D6)
1999 Sep 15, In Fort Worth, Texas,
lone gunman Larry Gene Ashbrook (47) of Forest Hill killed 7 people,
aged 14-36, at the Wedgewood Baptist Church before killing himself.
(SFC, 9/16/99, p.A1)(USAT, 9/17/99, p.1,3A)
1999 Sep, In Lubbock the new Buddy
Holly Museum was scheduled to open on Labor Day.
(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.T3)
1999 Oct 6, The US NFL voted to
place an expansion team in Houston after Bob McNair agreed to pay $700
million for a franchise to begin in 2002.
(SFC, 10/7/99, p.A1)
1999 Oct 10, In Texas 6 college
students were killed just after midnight as they got out of their cars
for a party at Tau Kappa Epsilon in College Station. The driver of a
pickup had fallen asleep.
(SFC, 10/11/99, p.A3)
1999 Oct 13, In Texas 3 Pleasanton
law officers, Mark Stephenson, Thomas Monse and Terry Miller were shot
and killed by Jeremiah Engleton (21), who had been arrested earlier for
beating his wife.
(SFC, 10/14/99, p.A8)
2000 Oct, The $25 million
renovated Dallas Opera Hall in Fair Park will reopen as the first major
museum dedicated to the contributions of women to American life.
(SFC, 3/19/98, p.A9)
1999 Nov 18, In College Station,
Texas, a pyramid of logs for a traditional football bonfire collapsed
and killed 11 students. One of 28 injured died the next day.
(SFC, 11/19/99, p.A1)
1999 Dec 31, Kaylene Harris (13)
was killed at her parents mobile home near Del Rio. In 2000 Tommy Lynn
Sells (36), a former carnival worker, was sentenced to death for the
murder. Authorities said Sells had confessed to at least a dozen
murders across the country.
(SFC, 9/21/00, p.A6)
2000 Jan 1, In Dallas Mitch
Maddox, renamed as DotComGuy, began his one year isolation in a house
with only a laptop computer to order all his personal needs.
(SFEC, 1/2/00, p.A19)
2000 Jan 20, Enron Corp. announced
a deal with Sun Microsystems in which it would buy 18,000 computer
servers, just before it released its earnings statement. It was later
learned that at least one Enron partnership removed a hedge to limit
price swings and made a gain of $80-100 million as Enron stock soared.
The sun deal died within 6 months.
(WSJ, 2/15/02, p.C1)
2000 Jan 25, In Texas a tanker
truck with 9000 gallons of furfural overturned and spilled the toxic
chemical, which is used in manufacturing, into a drainage ditch that
flows into San Martin Lake. An estimated 6 million fish and dozens of
ducks were soon found dead.
(SFC, 2/12/00, p.A9)
2000 Jan, Mark Cuban, Internet
tycoon (Yahoo), bought the Dallas Mavericks basketball team for $280
million.
(WSJ, 4/22/03, A1)
2000 Feb 12, Tom Landry, former
coach of the Dallas Cowboys, died at age 75 in Irving, Tx.
(WSJ, 2/14/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.A26)
2000 Feb 24, Betty Lou Beets was
executed for the 1983 murder of her 5th husband. She was the 2nd woman
executed in Texas since the Civil War.
(SFC, 2/25/00, p.A3)
2000 Mar 4, Homar Hernandez,
Tejano songwriter, died at age 57. His compositions included the 1985
hit "Rosas para una Rosa."
(SFC, 3/11/00, p.A17)
2000 Mar 10, In Texas a medical
helicopter crashed and its 3-person crew were killed along with a
4-month-old baby near Dalhart. West of Longview on I-20 a 5 vehicle
crash in heavy rain left at least 2 people dead.
(SFC, 3/11/00, p.A6)
2000 Mar 20, In Texas Robert Wayne
Harris (28) shot 5 people to death and critically injured one person at
the Mi-T-Fine Car Wash in Irving. Harris was arrested the next day. He
had recently been fired for exposing himself to 2 women at the
business. Harris was sentenced to death on Sep 29.
(SFC, 3/21/00, p.A5)(SFC, 3/22/00, p.A4)(SFC,
9/30/00, p.A2)
2000 Mar 28, A tornado hit fort
Worth, Texas, and 4 people were killed with over 100 injured. It cut a
2-mile swath and inflicted $450 million in damages.
(SFC, 3/29/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/6/02, p.A1)
2000 Apr 13, Shareholders led by
Edward Rose III of Dallas filed a 58-page suit against the Terayon
Communications for securities fraud, one day after the stock fell 26%.
Rose, a short seller and founder of Cardinal Investment Co. had
partnered with George Bush in the 1989 bid for the Texas Rangers.
(SSFC, 11/9/03, p.A20)
2000 Apr 26, In Texas a prison
riot between Blacks and Hispanics left one person dead and 31 injured.
(WSJ, 4/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr, Gov. George W. Bush
signed a proclamation that declared June 10 to be Jesus Day.
(SFEC, 8/6/00, p.A14)
2000 May 4, Tommy Ray Jackson (43)
was executed for the 1983 murder of Rosalind Robison (24), a student at
the Univ. of Texas. Jackson was arrested driving her car and carrying
her bank teller card but maintained his innocence to the end.
(SFC, 5/5/00, p.A6)
2000 Jun 8, A Texas appeals court
declared the state’s 1860 sodomy law unconstitutional. Criminal
penalties for partners of the opposite sex were dropped in 1974.
(SFC, 6/9/00, p.A4)
2000 Jun 10, Jesus Day. In April
Gov. George W. Bush signed a proclamation that declared June 10 to be
Jesus Day.
(SFEC, 8/6/00, p.A14)
2000 Jun 22, In Texas Gary Graham
was executed for the 1981 murder of Bobby Lambert near a Houston
supermarket. Graham claimed his innocence to the very end.
(SFC, 6/23/00, p.A3)
2000 Jun 29, Jessy Carlos San
Miguel was executed by lethal injection for the 1991 shooting spree
that left 4 people dead in a Taco Bell restaurant.
(SFC, 6/30/00, p.A10)
2000 Jul 14, In Waco, Texas, a
federal jury decided that federal agents were not responsible for the
deaths of 80 Branch Davidians in 1993.
(SFC, 7/15/00, p.A1)
2000 Aug 9, In Texas Brian Keith
Roberson (36) was executed for the 1986 stabbing deaths of an elderly
couple in Dallas. Oliver Cruz (33) was executed for the 1988 abduction,
rape and fatal stabbing of a 24-year-old woman in San Antonio. Cruz’s
IQ tests measured as low as 63.
(SFC, 8/10/00, p.A2)(SFC, 11/15/00, p.A11)
2000 Sep 5, Oyster harvesting was
shut down in Galveston Bay as a large toxic algal bloom began to spread
from the Texas Gulf Coast to the Florida panhandle. Million of fish
began to die.
(SFC, 9/30/00, p.B10)
2000 Oct 3, HUD officials took
over the Beaumont Housing Authority due to patterns of discrimination
that dated back to the 1960s.
(SFC, 10/4/00, p.A3)
2000 Oct 11, Sheriff’s Sgt. Rudy
Lopes (42) was found bound and shot to death in San Antonio.
(SFC, 10/19/00, p.A21)
2000 Oct 17, Police in San
Francisco captured Joshua Maxwell and Tessie McFarland of Indianapolis,
wanted for killings in two states following a gun-shooting chase.
Maxwell and McFarland were wanted for the murder of Sgt. Rudy Lopes in
San Antonio, Texas, and for the murder of Robby Bott in Brooklyn,
Indiana.
(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A1,5)
2000 Nov 3, Five people died in
central Texas over the last 2 days in car accidents due to flooding.
(SFEC, 11/5/00, p.A7)
2000 Dec 5, Garry Dean Miller (33)
was executed for the 1988 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl. Miller
was the 38th person executed in Texas this year.
(SFC, 12/6/00, p.A13)
2000 Dec 7, Claude Howard Jones
was executed for the 1987 slaying of Allen Hilzendager. Jones was the
40th execution this year and the 239th since 1982.
(SFC, 12/8/00, p.D4)
2000 Dec 13, Seven inmates made a
daring escape from the maximum security the Connally Unit state prison
in Kenedy, Texas. Police in Colorado caught 4 escaped convicts on Jan
22, 2001. A 5th committed suicide. The 2 at large were caught Jan 23.
The surviving six were sentenced to death for killing a Dallas-area
police officer during a robbery.
(SFC, 12/15/00, p.A11)(SFC, 1/23/01, p.A3)(SFC,
1/24/01, p.A2)(AP, 12/13/05)
2000 Dec 21, President-elect
George W. Bush resigned as governor of Texas; Lt. Gov. Rick Perry
(Republican) was sworn in to replace him.
(AP, 12/21/01)(SFC, 12/22/00, p.A11)
2000 Dec 24, A group of 7 escaped
convicts robbed a sporting goods store in Irving, Texas; a police
officer, Aubrey Hawkins, was killed during the robbery. George Rivas, a
recent escapee from Connally State prison, killed the officer during a
holdup at a sporting goods store. Rivas was convicted for the murder in
2001 and was executed on Aug 14, 2008.
(SFC, 8/22/01, p.A4)(SFC, 8/30/01, p.A6)(AP,
12/24/05)(AP, 8/15/08)
2000 Dec 28, In the US recent bad
weather was blamed for 41 deaths: including 22 in Texas and 11 in
Oklahoma.
(SFC, 12/29/00, p.A6)
2000-2001 Nurse Vickie Dawn Jackson injected 10 Texas
hospital patients with lethal drug doses at Nocona General Hospital. In
2006 Jackson pleaded no contest to capital murder and was sentenced to
life in prison.
(WSJ, 10/6/06,
p.A1)(http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2531512)
2001 Jan 24, The last two of seven
escaped convicts from Texas were captured in Colorado after 42 days on
the run; four others were captured earlier, and one committed suicide.
(AP, 1/24/02)
2001 Feb 12, In Katy Timothy Lee
Rumsey (42) shot to death his 2 children and a step daughter and then
killed himself.
(SFC, 2/13/01, p.D2)
2001 Feb, Tom Lea, writer and
artist, died at age 93. His books included "The Brave Bulls" and "The
Wonderful Country," which was made into a film in 1959. He also
authored "A Picture Gallery," "In the Crucible of the Sun" and "The
Hands of Cantu."
(SFC, 7/2/97, p.E2)
2001 Apr 5, Wang Zhizhi of China,
7 feet and 1 inch tall, made his NBA debut for the Dallas Mavericks.
Wang Zhizhi became the first Chinese player to play in the NBA when he
took the court for Dallas against Atlanta. He scored six points and
grabbed three rebounds as the Mavericks beat the Hawks 108-to-94.
(SSFC, 4/15/01, p.A17)(AP, 4/5/02)
2001 May 2, In Dallas John
Battaglia (45), accountant, shot and killed his 2 daughters Liberty (6)
and Faith (9). Battaglia was convicted of murder in 2002.
(SFC, 5/4/01, p.A7)(SFC, 4/25/02, p.A7)
2001 May 11, Gov. Rick Perry
signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act.
(SFC, 5/12/01, p.A3)
2001 Jun 10, Tropical storm
Allison hung over Texas and Louisiana and killed at least 16 people.
Pres. Bush declared 28 counties disaster areas due to flooding.
(SSFC, 6/10/01, p.A12)(WSJ, 6/11/01, p.A1)
2001 Jun 17, Gov. Rick Perry
vetoed legislation that would have put a ban on the execution of
mentally retarded criminals.
(SFC, 6/18/01, p.A3)
2001 Jun 19, Juan Raul Garza (44),
Texas drug kingpin, was executed by injection in Terra Haute, Ind. He
was the 2nd federal inmate to die since 1963.
(SFC, 6/20/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 6/20/01, p.A1)
2001 Jun 20, Andrea Yates (36) of
Houston, Texas, drowned her 5 children, ages 6 months to 7 years, at
her home near the Johnson Space Center. Yates had been under medication
for post-partum depression. In 2002 a jury found Yates guilty of
capital murder and sentenced her to life in prison. Her conviction was
overturned in 2005 by an appeals court which ruled a prosecution expert
witness gave false testimony at her trial. In 2006 a jury found her not
guilty by reason of insanity.
(SFC, 6/21/01, p.A6)(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A1)(SFC,
3/16/02, p.A1)(AP, 1/6/05)(SFC, 7/27/06, p.A3)
2001 Jul 18, A natural gas well
exploded in buffalo and 2 people were killed.
(SFC, 7/19/01, p.A6)
2001 Jul 20, Vanessa Leggett, a
fledgling crime writer, was jailed on contempt charges for refusing to
hand over her research notes on Robert Angleton to a federal grand
jury. Leggett was released Jan 4, 2002.
(SFC, 1/4/02, p.A17)(SFC, 1/5/02, p.A6)
2001 Jul, Mel Spillman, San
Antonio probate clerk, was arrested in a sting operation. He had stolen
some $5 million over the last 15 years from the estates of at least 122
people. He pleaded guilty and faced 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 5/18/02, p.A16)
2001 Aug 8, US Federal authorities
announced the arrests of 100 people nationwide in an Internet child
pornography operation, Landslide Productions Inc., based in Fort Worth,
Tx.
(SFC, 8/9/01, p.A3)
2001 Aug 14, Jeffrey K. Skilling
stepped down as CEO of Enron Corp. after 6 months in the top job.
(SFC, 2/7/02, p.A8)
2001 Aug 14, In Houston 3 people
died from heroin overdoses and joined 15 others who died over the
weekend.
(SFC, 8/15/01, p.A4)
2001 Aug 2, Houston launched
SimHouston, a program to provide each of its 1.8 million residents with
free e-mail accounts and access to word processing software.
(SFC, 8/21/01, p.C1)
2001 Aug 15, A Texas appeals court
halted the execution of Napoleon Beazley just hours before he was
scheduled to die for a murder he had committed as a teenager. He was
executed in May 2002.
(AP, 8/15/02)
2001 Aug 29, George Rivas, the
ringleader of the biggest prison breakout in Texas history, was
sentenced to death for killing an Irving, Tx., policeman, Aubrey
Hawkins, while on the run.
(AP, 8/29/02)
2001 Sep 15, Four barges smashed
into the Queen Isabella Causeway between South Padre Island and the
mainland. At least 5 people were killed.
(SSFC, 9/16/01, p.A28)(SFC, 9/17/01, p.A18)
2001 Oct 15, In Texas the last 2
of 5 escaped convicts were captured after one shot another and freed a
farm couple that was held hostage.
(SFC, 10/16/01, p.B6)
2001 Oct 16, Robert Durst failed
to appear for a court hearing in the dismemberment death of Morris
Black (71) in Galveston, Texas. Durst was also a suspect in the Dec,
2000, shooting death of author Susan Berman. In 1982 Kathleen Durst
(29) had disappeared after spending a weekend at the family cottage in
South Salem. Robert Durst, her husband, reported her missing Feb 5.
Durst was arrested Nov 30, 2001, in Bethlehem, Pa., for shoplifting. A
Texas jury acquitted Durst of Black's murder in 2003.
(SFC, 10/13/01, p.A15)(SFC, 12/1/01, p.A3)(SFC,
11/12/03, p.A1)
2001 Oct 21, A moratorium against
state collection of Internet taxes was due to expire.
(SFC, 8/21/01, p.C2)
2001 Oct 26, In Fort Worth, Texas,
Chante Jawan Mallard (25), a nurse's aide, ran into Gregory Biggs (37),
a homeless man, after a night of partying. Biggs was left to die in the
windshield. In 2003 Mallard was convicted of murder and sentenced to 50
years in prison.
(SFC, 6/27/03, p.A13)
2001 Oct 27, The body of an
unidentified woman was found in a Montgomery County lake. 2 men were
arrested 3 days later and told authorities that there were 2 more
bodies south of lake Conroe, where the bodies of 2 teenage boys were
found.
(SFC, 11/1/01, p.C2)
2001 Oct, A one-day workshop on
deflecting asteroids was held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in
Houston. The B612 Foundation formed soon thereafter to promote an
asteroid defense system. B612 is the asteroid home of the Little Prince
in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's child's story The Little Prince.
(SFCM, 10/8/06, p.13)(www.b612foundation.org)
2001 Nov 16, Texas storms abated
and left 9 people dead.
(SFC, 11/17/01, p.A15)
2002 Nov 30, Enron executives
awarded themselves big bonuses 2 days before the company filed for
bankruptcy (Dec 2). They soon reneged on severance pay promised to
4,500 laid-off employees.
(SFC, 2/6/02, p.A1)
2001 Dec 2, Enron Corp. under CEO
Kenneth Lay filed for bankruptcy. Employee fury in Nov persuaded Lay to
give up a severance package worth about $60 million.
(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D8)
2001 Dec 5, Marjorie Dabney (70)
of Bakersfield, Ca., disappeared from the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. In
2008 DNA evidence identified her remains, which were found in a field
15 miles from the airport.
(SFC, 12/8/08, p.A4)
2001 Dec 22, A cloned cat was born
following a year of experimentation by scientists at Texas A&M.
(SFC, 2/15/02, p.A1)
2001 Dec 28, Oklahoma led the US
in prisoner executions this year over Texas in with 18 vs. 17.
(SFC, 12/28/01, p.A9)
2002 Jan 22, Stanley Marcus
(b.1905), former president and chairman of the Texas based Nieman
Marcus department store chain, died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Marcus)
2002 Jan 23, Enron CEO Kenneth Lay
(59) resigned under pressure.
(SFC, 1/23/02, p.A1)
2002 Jan 25, J. Clifford Baxter, a
former Enron vice-chairman, was found dead of apparent suicide in Sugar
Land, a Houston suburb.
(SFC, 1/26/02, p.A1)(SFC, 4/12/02, p.A14)
2002 Feb 6-7, The 4 inmates who
escaped from the Montague County Jail on Jan 28 were captured in
Ardmore, Oklahoma.
(SFC, 2/8/02, p.A2)
2002 Feb 8, In Texas a $60 million
casino run by the Tigua Indians was shut down following lobbying
efforts by religious activist Ralph Reed and Washington lobbyists Jack
Abramoff and Michael Scanlon. Abramoff and Scanlon then persuaded the
tribe to pay $4.2 million to lobby Congress to reopen it. Senate
hearings on the process opened in 2004.
(SSFC, 9/26/04, p.A10)
2002 Feb 23, James D. Smallwood
Jr. (33) shot and killed his 3 children and then himself outside the
home of his estranged wife in Throckmorton.
(SFC, 2/25/02, p.A5)
2002 Feb 26, Former Enron chief
executive Jeffrey Skilling, at times combative, insisted during a
Senate hearing that he knew nothing about manipulation of company books
and denied misleading Congress as alleged by some lawmakers and Enron
officials.
(AP, 2/26/07)
2002 Mar 12, In Houston a jury
found Andrea Pia Yates (37) guilty of capital murder for drowning her 5
children. On Mar 15 she was sentenced to life in prison. Her conviction
was overturned in 2005 by an appeals court which ruled a prosecution
expert witness gave false testimony at her trial. In 2006 a jury found
her not guilty by reason of insanity.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A1)(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A1)(SFC,
7/27/06, p.A3)
2006 Mar 13, Deadly tornadoes
raked the Midwest while wildfires scorched the Texas Panhandle.
(AP, 3/13/07)
2002 Mar 15, A Houston jury spared
Andrea Yates’ life after prosecutors stopped short of demanding the
death penalty for the tormented mother who’d drowned her five children
in the bathtub. Yates was sentenced to life in prison; however, she was
later acquitted by reason of insanity in a retrial.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2002 Mar 15, In Lewisville, Texas,
Jackson Carr (6) was killed and buried by his older sister (15) and
brother (10). His body was found the next day.
(SFC, 4/17/02, p.A5)
2002 Mar, In Freeport, Texas, a
group of private investors formed Freeport Waterfront Properties with
hopes of developing a private marina. Their development plans led to
the city’s filing for eminent domain to acquire land owned by Western
Seafood, a private shrimping business. In 2007 Carla T. Main authored
“Bulldozed,” an account of this ongoing struggle.
(WSJ, 12/18/07, p.D5)
2002 May 5, A tornado in Texas
killed 2 people.
(SFC, 5/6/02, p.A3)
2002 May 28, Napoleon Beazley (26)
was executed for the 1994 murder of John Luttig (63), the father of a
federal judge, in a botched carjacking in Tyler.
(SFC, 8/14/01, p.A3)(SFC, 8/16/01, p.A3)(SFC,
5/29/02, p.A4)
2002 Jun 2, C. Dana Rice (47),
senior VP and treasurer at El Paso Corp., was found dead by suicide at
his Houston suburb home.
(WSJ, 6/4/02, p.A3)
2002 Jun 13, US Catholic Bishops
in Texas opened a 2-day summit on clerical sex abuse. 3 men and a woman
told how their lives had been devastated by abuse and subsequent ill
treatment by the church.
(WSJ, 6/14/02, p.A1)(AP, 6/13/04)
2002 Jun 14, US Roman Catholic
bishops meeting in Dallas voted to remove any priest from his ministry
who abuses a minor but stopped short of zero tolerance, as pushed by
some victims.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A1)(AP, 6/14/03)
2002 Jun 26, Chinese basketball
star Yao Ming was selected first overall by the Houston Rockets in the
NBA draft.
(AP, 6/26/03)
2002 Jul 4, In central Texas
70,000 cubic feet of water gushed down a spillway from Canyon Lake
toward the Guadalupe River for three days, scraping off vegetation and
topsoil and leaving only limestone walls. The mile-and-a-half-long
Canyon Lake Gorge, up to 80 feet deep, was dug out from what had been a
nondescript valley covered in mesquite and oak trees.
(AP, 10/5/07)
2002 Jul 5, The Medina River near
San Antonio, Texas, overflowed along with the Guadalupe River and
flooding left at least 7 people dead.
(SFC, 7/6/02, p.A3)
2002 Jul 28, Police in Dallas
found 2 bodies in a tractor trailer from which some 40 suspected
illegal immigrants had escaped earlier.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A9)
2002 Jul 24, In Houston, Texas,
Clara Harris ran over her cheating husband with her Mercedes after
catching him with his mistress. Harris (45) was convicted of murder Feb
13, 2003.
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A5)
2002 Aug 4, In Dallas, Tx., a man,
woman and 3 children were shot to death. The woman’s husband was taken
into custody.
(SFC, 8/5/02, p.A7)
2002 Aug 14, Texas Gov. Rick Perry
denied a reprieve for Javier Suarez Medina and authorities in
Huntsville gave Suarez a lethal injection as he sang the hymn "Amazing
Grace."
(AP, 8/15/02)
2002 Aug 15, President Vicente Fox
canceled a meeting with President Bush to express anger over the Texas
execution of a drug smuggler and police killer despite pleas from the
Mexican leadership. Javier Suarez Medina, a Mexican national, was never
told he could contact the Mexican consulate for help after his 1988
arrest, a violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention of Consular Relations.
(AP, 8/15/02)
2002 Aug 28, In Texas Toronto
Patterson was executed for the 1995 killing of a cousin when he was 17.
(SFC, 8/30/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 31, It was reported that
Mexican police had arrested Juan Heriberto Carrillo Olivas, a Mexican
citizen, headed a gang in El Paso, Texas, that used a fleet of
tractor-trailers to transport cocaine to other U.S. cities.
(AP, 8/31/02)
2002 Oct 20, Yao Ming (22), a
7-foot-5 basketball player from China, arrived in Texas to join the
Houston Rockets.
(WSJ, 10/22/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 31, US executions for the
year rose from 66 to71 with 33 in Texas.
(SSFC, 12/29/02, p.A3)
2002 Dec, In Fort Worth, Texas,
the $65 million Modern Art Museum, opened. It was designed by Tadao
Ando of Japan.
(WSJ, 12/17/02, p.D8)
2003 Jan 5, In Edinburg, Texas, 6
men were shot to death in a home invasion that involved weapons and
drugs.
(SFC, 1/6/03, p.A8)
2003 Jan 15, The San Antonio Spurs
beat the New Jersey Nets 88-77 in game 6 to win the NBA finals.
(SFC, 6/16/03, p.C1)
2003 Jan 23, In Texas 2 military
helicopters collided and 4 marine reservists were killed.
(WSJ, 1/24/03, p.A1)
2003 Feb 1, Space shuttle Columbia
broke apart in flames over Texas, killing all 7 astronauts just 16
minutes before they were supposed to glide to ground in Florida. The
astronauts included Michael P. Anderson (b.1959), David M. Brown
(b.1956), Laurel Clark (b.1962), Kalpana Chawla (b.1962), Rick Husband
(b.1957), William C. McCool (b.1961) and Ilan Ramon (b.1954).
(AP, 2/1/03)(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.A8)
2003 Feb 13, Clara Harris, who'd
run down her cheating husband with her Mercedes after catching him with
his mistress, was convicted by a Houston jury of murder despite her
claim that she'd hit him accidentally while in a heartsick daze. She
was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
(AP, 2/13/04)
2003 Feb 13, Prof. Walt W. Rostow
(86), adviser to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, died in
Austin, Texas. His over 30 books included "Theorists of Economic Growth
from David Hume to the Present, with a Perspective on the Next Century"
(1990), and "The Stages of Economic Growth" (3rd ed. 1990).
(SFC, 2/15/03, p.A24)
2003 Mar 10, Natalie Maines, lead
singer of the Dixie Chicks, told a London audience: "Just so you know
... we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
(AP, 3/10/08)
2003 Mar 10, In Brownsville,
Texas, a woman and her common-law husband killed and beheaded their 3
children, ages 3 years to 2 months.
(SFC, 3/13/03, p.A6)
2003 Mar 20, Texas executed its
300th inmate since restoring the death penalty in 1982.
(WSJ, 3/21/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 24, In Texas a fire in a
sugar-cane field killed 5 illegal Mexican immigrants hiding there.
(WSJ, 3/25/03, p.A1)
2003 May 9, In Tyler, Texas,
Deanna LaJune Laney (38) bludgeoned to death her 2 sons Joshua (8) and
Luke (6). A toddler was in critical condition. In 2004 a jury found
Laney legally insane.
(SFC, 5/13/03, p.A6)(AP, 4/4/04)
2003 May 12, Texas Democrats fled
to a Holiday Inn in Oklahoma to thwart a Republican drive to redraw the
state's congressional districts.
(AP, 5/13/03)
2003 May 14, In Texas Victoria
County Sheriff's deputies found 17 people dead in and around a
tractor-trailer rig at a South Texas truck stop. Another died at
hospital. The victims were illegal immigrants. In 2006 a Texas jury
convicted 3 US citizens for the suffocation of 19 smuggled immigrants
in an airtight truck. In 2007 truck driver Tyrone Williams (36) was
sentenced to life in prison for his role in the smuggling. In 2008 the
last of 14 people indicted in the smuggling pleaded guilty.
(WSJ, 5/15/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 2/9/06, p.A1)(SFC,
1/19/07, p.A3)(SFC, 4/15/08, p.A3)
2003 May 15, The three-year
championship reign of the Los Angeles Lakers came to a decisive end as
the San Antonio Spurs overpowered the Lakers 110-82 to win the Western
Conference semifinal series 4 games to 2.
(AP, 5/15/04)
2003 May 15, Runaway Texas
Democrats boarded two buses and returned home after a self-imposed
weeklong exile in Oklahoma that succeeded in killing a redistricting
bill they opposed.
(AP, 5/15/04)
2003 May 22, Annika Sorenstam
became the first woman since Babe Didrikson Zaharias in 1945 to tee off
against the men on the pro tour, playing in the first round of the
Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. Sorenstam missed the cut
the next day by four shots.
(AP, 5/22/08)
2003 May 23, Golfer Annika
Sorenstam failed to make the 36-hole cut at the PGA Tour in Fort Worth,
Texas, missing the cut by four strokes. She was the first woman to play
in a PGA Tour event in 58 years.
(AP, 5/23/08)
2003 Jun 11, Patrick James Dennehy
(21), a Baylor Univ. basketball player, disappeared in Waco, Texas, and
was feared to have been killed by team mates. Carlton Dotson (21) later
confessed to the slaying and was arrested in Maryland on Jul 21.
Dennehy's body was found Jul 25. In 2005 Dotson was sentenced to 35
years in prison.
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.A25)(SFC, 7/22/03, p.A1)(SSFC,
7/27/03, p.A1)(SFC, 6/16/05, p.B5)
2003 Jun 26, The US Supreme court
struck down a Texas sodomy law and proclaimed that gay Americans have a
right to private sexual relations. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3
decision, struck down state bans on gay sex.
(SFC, 6/27/03, p.A1)(AP, 6/26/08)
2003 Jun 26, A jury in Fort Worth,
Texas, convicted former nurse's aide Chante Mallard of murder for
hitting a homeless man with her car, driving home with his mangled body
jammed in the windshield and leaving him to die in her garage. Mallard
was later sentenced to 50 years in prison.
(AP, 6/26/04)(AP, 6/26/08)
2003 Jul 21, Carlton Dotson Jr.,
the roommate of missing Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy, was
arrested and charged with Dennehy's murder. Dotson later pleaded guilty
and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
(AP, 7/21/08)
2003 Aug 22, Texas Gov. Rick Perry
pardoned 35 people arrested in the 1999 Tulia drug busts and convicted
on the testimony of a lone undercover agent later charged with perjury.
The agent, Tom Coleman, was later found guilty of aggravated perjury
and sentenced to 10 years probation. He's been appealing his conviction.
(AP, 8/22/08)
2003 Sep 28, In Linden, Texas
Billy Ray Johnson (42) was lured to an all-white party where underage
drinkers fed him alcohol and picked on him. In 2007 a jury awarded $9
million to Johnson, a mentally disabled black man who suffered
permanent brain damage after being beaten and dumped in a field by 4
white men.
(AP, 4/22/07)
2003 Sep, Carlo Benetton sold his
11,000 acre Buffalo Ranch to the state of Texas for use by the prison
system.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.30)
2003 Oct 1, A federal judge in
Texas ruled that former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and Northern Trust
Corp., can be sued for allegedly failing to protect the Enron employee
pension plan.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct 11, A team of 18 doctors
in Dallas, Texas, began a complicated separation surgery in an attempt
to give Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim, 2-year-old conjoined twins from
Egypt, a chance at independent lives. The 34-hour went well.
(AP, 10/11/03)(SSFC, 10/11/03, p.A2)(SFC, 10/14/03,
p.A3)
2003 Oct 13, Texas Gov. Rick Perry
signed into law a controversial redistricting bill designed to put more
Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation.
(AP, 10/13/04)
2003 Oct 13, In Louisiana a bus
crash on I-20 killed 8 members of a Texas church group after the driver
fell asleep.
(WSJ, 10/14/03, p.A1)
2003 Oct, Raymond D. Nasher,
Dallas real-estate developer, opened the $70 million Nasher Sculpture
Center designed by Renzo Piano.
(WSJ, 11/4/03, p.AD8)
2003 Nov 11, In Galveston, Texas,
Robert A. Durst, NY multimillionaire who admitted to butchering his
neighbor Morris Black, was acquitted of the man's murder.
(SFC, 11/12/03, p.A1)
2003 Dec 15, In Cleburne, Texas,
Joanne Webb, housewife and sales rep for Passion Parties, answered to
obscenity charges for selling a vibrator to undercover narcotics
officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple.
(SFC, 12/16/03, p.A2)
2003 Dec 24, Caroline Weiss Law,
Texas oil heiress, died on her 85th birthday. She left 52 major art
works, valued at $60-85 million, and $25 million cash to establish an
endowment for the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.
(SFC, 2/13/04, p.D12)
2003 Jeff Bezos (39), founder of
Amazon.com, began buying property east of El Paso, Texas, for Blue
Origin LLC, his commercial space venture. By 2006 he had acquired
290,000 acres. Commercial operations were planned to start in 2010.
(WSJ, 11/10/06, p.A1)
2004 Jan 1, Houston's $324
million, 7.5 mile, light rail system made its inaugural trips.
(AP, 1/2/04)(WSJ, 1/22/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 1, In Texas entertainer
Janet Jackson covered her breast after singer Justin Timberlake ripped
off one of her chest plates during the halftime Super Bowl performance
in Houston. New England Patriots fans turned rowdy after their team's
32-29 win over the Carolina Panthers.
(AP, 2/1/04)(SFC, 2/2/04, p.A2)
2004 Feb 20, In Texas a strain of
avian flu was reported in Gonzales County. Further checks revealed that
it was highly pathogenic, but posed little risk to humans.
(SFC, 2/24/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 18, Jahari, a 13-year-old
lowland gorilla, broke out of the Dallas Zoo and was shot to death
after snatching up a toddler with his teeth and attacking 3 people.
(SFC, 3/20/04, p.A2)
2004 Mar, Jamie Olis, former
tax-planning executive at Dynegy, was sentenced to 24 years in jail for
his role in Project Alpha, an accounting fraud that inflated the Texas
energy company’s cashflow by $300 million. In 2005 an appeals court
upheld the conviction, but threw out the sentence.
(Econ, 11/5/05, p.68)
2004 Apr 8, Reliant Energy, based
in Houston, Texas, was indicted over an alleged plot to boost power
prices in June, 2000, at a cost to consumers of as much as $32 million.
On August 15, 2005, Reliant announced that it had reached a $460
million settlement with the states of California, Oregon and
Washington, resolving civil litigation claims against the company
related to the sale of electricity in the California electricity crisis
of 2000 and 2001. In March 2007, Reliant agreed to pay a $22.2 million
penalty in addition to a $13.8 million credit provided in a previous
settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Energy)(SFC,
4/9/04, p.A1)
2004 May 3, Production began for
the US Mint’s Texas quarter, designed by Daniel Miller. The unveiling
was set for June 10.
(USAT, 5/18/04, p.17A)
2004 May 4, William J. Krar (63)
of East Texas was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for
stockpiling weapons that included a sodium-oxide bomb capable of
killing everyone inside a midsize civic building.
(SFC, 5/5/04, p.A9)
2004 Jun 16, Myron Dukes, his 2
children, and another child, on convention with the Baptist Church of
Chicago, drowned at the Fort Worth Water Gardens.
(SFC, 6/18/04, p.A7)
2004 Jun 24, The US Census Bureau
reported that San Antonio had eclipsed Dallas as the nation's
8th-largest city.
(AP, 6/23/04)
2004 Jun 28, In Texas 2 freight
trains collided in San Antonio and one engineer was killed. Derailed
train cars released clouds of chlorine gas and ammonium nitrate. 2
people died from the toxic gases.
(USAT, 6/29/04, p.3A)(WSJ, 6/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Jul 8, Kenneth Lay, former
CEO of Enron Corp., was charged in Houston, Texas, with 11 counts of
conspiracy and fraud.
(WSJ, 7/8/04, p.A1)(USAT, 7/9/04, p.1B)
2004 Aug 7, Paul N. Adair
(b.1915), Texas oil field firefighter, died. The 1968 film
“Hellfighter” with John Wayne was based on his life.
(SFC, 8/9/04, p.B6)(Econ, 8/14/04, p.78)
2004 Oct 5, Texas executed Edward
Green despite pleas by Houston’s police chief for a moratorium because
of suspect work by the city’s crime lab.
(WSJ, 10/6/04, p.A1)
2004 Oct 7, US House Democratic
leader Nancy Pelosi called on Texas Rep. Tom DeLay to step down or be
ousted after his 3rd rebuke from the ethics committee in a week.
(SFC, 10/8/04, p.A3)
2004 Nov 3, A Houston jury
convicted 4 former Merrill Lynch executives and a former mid-level
Enron Corp, executive for a 1999 bogus sale of power plants off the
coast of Nigeria.
(SFC, 11/4/04, p.C3)
2004 Nov 17, US House Republicans
adopted a rule change to allow majority leader Tom DeLay of Texas to
keep his post if he is indicted on state corruption charges. In 2004
the change was rescinded.
(SFC, 11/18/04, p.A3)(WSJ, 11/18/04, p.A1)(WSJ,
1/4/05, p.A1)
2004 Nov 29, A US Army Black Hawk
helicopter crashed near Fort Hood, Texas, and 7 soldiers were killed.
(SFC, 11/30/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 23, Two men were
convicted in Houston for their role in a smuggling attempt that
resulted in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants crammed in a
tractor-trailer.
(AP, 12/23/05)
2004 The new $480 million Gaylord
Texan Resort & Convention Center opened in Grapevine, Texas. It
covered 2.5 million square feet on 150 acres.
(WSJ, 8/11/04, p.B1)
2004 Catherine Rohr, a venture
capitalist, founded the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) in Texas
to engage prisoners in studying business.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.36)
2005 Jan 6, Andrea Yates' murder
conviction for drowning her children in the bathtub on June 20, 2001,
was overturned by a Texas appeals court. On July 26, 2006, after three
days of deliberations, Yates was found not guilty by reason of
insanity, as defined by the state of Texas.
(AP,
1/6/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Yates)
2005 Jan 14, Army Specialist
Charles Graner Jr., the reputed ringleader of a band of rogue guards at
the Abu Ghraib prison, was convicted at Fort Hood, Texas, of abusing
Iraqi detainees. He was later sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(AP, 1/14/06)
2005 Jan 15, A military court at
Fort Hood, Texas, sentenced Army Specialist Charles Graner Jr. to 10
years behind bars for physically and sexually mistreating Iraqi
prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
(AP, 1/15/06)
2005 Jan 18, Oscar Sanchez, owner
of a family restaurant in Dallas, was kidnapped in what police believed
was a stage car wreck. His body was found a week later. Jose Felix, a
former teacher, and Edgar "Richie" Acevedo, a waiter at the
restaurant, were responsible for the kidnapping and slaying. Within
weeks Felix was captured in Chicago. In October Mexican federal
authorities captured Edgar "Richie" Acevedo in Cabo San Lucas.
(AP, 10/15/05)
2005 Jan 21, The body of Megan
Leann Holden (19) was found near Stanton, Texas. Her abduction from a
Wal-Mart parking lot 2 days earlier was captured on surveillance
videotape. Johnny Lee Williams (24), the suspect in her murder, was
arrested at an Arizona hospital after he shot during a robbery attempt.
(SFC, 1/22/05, p.A3)
2005 Feb 17, Two US Border Patrol
agents in Texas stopped a van carrying 743 pounds of marijuana and shot
Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, an admitted Mexican drug smuggler, as he fled
back across the Rio Grande. In 2006 agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose
Compean were sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison for offenses that
included violating the smuggler’s civil rights and failure to report
the shooting to superiors. In 2007 Latino gang members beat Ignacio
Ramos at the Yazoo City Federal Correctional Complex in Mississippi.
Both agents were freed in 2009 following a commute of their sentences
by outgoing Pres. George Bush.
(SFC, 10/20/06, p.A6)(SSFC, 2/18/07, p.A11)(SFC,
2/18/09, p.A6)
2005 Mar 23, In Texas City, Texas,
an explosion at BP's 1,200-acre plant near Houston killed 15 and
injured more than 100 others. BP later acknowledged faulty equipment at
the plant.
(AP, 3/24/05)(SFC, 3/25/05, p.A4)(WSJ, 7/27/05, p.A1)
2005 May 4, A military judge at
Fort Hood, Texas, threw out Pvt. 1st Class Lynndie England's guilty
plea to abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, saying he was not
convinced the Army reservist knew her actions were wrong at the time.
England was later convicted in a court-martial and sentenced to three
years in prison.
(AP, 5/4/06)
2005 May 16, Army Specialist
Sabrina Harman was convicted at Fort Hood, Texas, of six of the seven
charges she faced for her role in the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners
at Abu Ghraib. She was sentenced to six months in prison after
testimony about her acts of kindness toward Iraqis before she became an
Abu Ghraib guard.
(AP, 5/16/06)
2005 May 24, Texas lawmakers
tentatively voted to give juries the option of sentencing murderers to
life in prison without parole.
(SFC, 5/25/05, p.A3)
2005 May 25, The US Senate
confirmed Texas Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen to serve on the US
Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
(SFC, 5/26/05, p.A3)
2005 Jun 5, Texas Gov. Rick Perry
signed anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation at the Calvary Christian
Academy in Fort Worth.
(SFC, 6/6/05, p.A3)
2005 Jun 11, US officials said a
cow had tested positive for mad cow disease in November, opening the
door to possible changes in testing procedures in the US beef industry.
The cow was later identified as being calved in Texas in 1993.
(AP, 6/11/05)(WSJ, 6/30/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 18, Former Texas
Congressman J.J. “Jake” Pickle died in Austin at age 91.
(AP, 6/18/06)
2005 Jun 20, Jack Kilby (b.1923),
Nobel Prize winner and co-inventor of the integrated circuit (1958),
died in Dallas.
(SFC, 6/22/05, p.A5)(Econ, 7/25/05, p.75)
2005 Jun 23, The San Antonio Spurs
won a thrilling Game 7 over Detroit Pistons, 81-74, to claim the NBA
championship.
(AP, 6/23/06)
2005 Jun 24, US Agriculture
officials said a 2nd case of mad cow disease was confirmed in a cow
from Texas. This case of the disease, as well as one from Alabama in
2006, was later reported as atypical.
(SFC, 6/25/05, p.A3)(SFC, 6/12/06, p.A6)
2005 Jun 27, The US Supreme Court
ruled 5-4 that Kentucky cannot display framed copies of the Ten
Commandments in county courthouses, and allowed the Texas statehouse to
keep the commandments as part of a display on its grounds.
(AP, 6/27/05)(SFC, 6/28/05, p.A1)
2005 Jul 22, In Irving, Texas,
Kimberly-Clark Corp., maker of Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers,
said it plans to cut about 6,000 jobs and sell or close up to 20
manufacturing plants.
(AP, 7/22/05)
2005 Aug 11, President Bush
expressed sympathy for war protesters like Cindy Sheehan, the mother
camped outside his Texas ranch demanding answers for her solider-son's
death, but said he believed it would be a mistake to bring U.S. troops
home immediately.
(AP, 8/11/06)
2005 Aug 17, Hundreds of anti-war
vigils were held nationwide, part of an effort spurred by Cindy
Sheehan's protest near President Bush's Texas ranch in memory of her
son Casey, who was killed in Iraq.
(AP, 8/17/06)
2005 Aug 19, A Texas jury awarded
Carol Ernst, widow of Robert Ernst, $253 million charging Merck Corp.
liable for the heart-related death of Robert Ernst. $229 million was in
punitive damages. Texas caps on punitive damages reduced that figure to
about $26 million; Merck planned to appeal.
(WSJ, 8/22/05, p.A1)(AP, 8/19/06)
2005 Aug 31, At least 25,000 of
Hurricane Katrina's refugees, a majority of them at the New Orleans
Superdome, began traveling in a bus convoy to Houston and will be
sheltered at the 40-year-old Astrodome, which hasn't been used for
professional sporting events in years.
(AP, 8/31/05)
2005 Sep 21, Hurricane Rita
intensified into a Category 5 storm with 140 mph winds and threatened
to devastate the Texas coast or already-battered Louisiana by week's
end. More than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were evacuated
The death toll from Katrina topped 1,000.
(AP, 9/21/05)(SFC, 9/22/05, p.A1)(AP, 9/21/06)
2005 Sep 22, Hurricane Rita,
weakened to Category 4 status, closed on the Texas coast, sending
hundreds of thousands of people fleeing on a frustratingly slow,
bumper-to-bumper exodus.
(AP, 9/22/06)
2005 Sep 23, Hurricane Rita,
dropped to Category 4, moved toward the Texas and Louisiana coast with
135 mph winds, creating monumental traffic jams along evacuation routes
and raising fears of a crippling blow to the nation's oil-refining
industry.
(AP, 9/23/05)
2005 Sep 23, In Texas a bus
carrying elderly evacuees from Hurricane Rita caught fire and was
rocked by explosions on a gridlocked highway near Dallas, killing 23
people. In 2006 James Maples (65), owner of the bus, was acquitted of a
safety violation but convicted on 2 lesser counts. His company Global
Limo was found guilty on all charges.
(AP, 9/23/05)(SFC, 10/4/06, p.A3)
2005 Sep 24, Hurricane Rita,
reduced to Category 3, made landfall east of Sabine Pass, on the
Texas-Louisiana line, smashing windows, sparking fires and knocking
power out to more than 1 million customers, but largely sparing
vulnerable Houston and already reeling New Orleans. Within hours it
weakened to Category 2.
(AP, 9/24/05)
2005 Sep 26, A military court in
Texas convicted Pfc. Lynndie England (22) on 6 of 7 counts of
conspiracy and maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
England was found guilty of one count of conspiracy, four counts of
maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act. She
was acquitted on a second conspiracy count. She was the next day
sentenced to 3 years in prison.
(SFC, 9/27/05, p.A1)(AP, 9/28/05)
2005 Sep 26, A judge in El Paso,
Texas, cited conventions against sending a person to a country where he
could face torture. Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban militant, was wanted
in Venezuela for a 1976 airliner bombing. President Hugo Chavez said
the decision by a US immigration judge in the case of Posada protects a
terrorist and shows the "cynicism of the empire," a term he uses for
President Bush's government.
(AP, 9/28/05)
2005 Sep 28, Tom DeLay, a powerful
political ally of President George W. Bush, stepped down as head of the
Republican majority in the House of Representatives after being
indicted in Texas on a campaign finance charge. He was the 1st House
leader to be indicted in more than a century.
(AFP, 9/29/05)(SFC, 9/29/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 3, Representative Tom
DeLay, a powerful ally of President George W. Bush, was indicted on a
new charge of money laundering as his lawyers moved to dismiss a
previous conspiracy indictment filed last week.
(AP, 10/4/05)
2005 Oct 15, In Texas the
Government Canyon State Natural Area officially opened. The over 8,600
acre area was set aside to protect the Edwards Aquifer, which provided
drinking water for San Antonio.
(LP, Spring 2006, p.55)
2005 Oct 19, The Houston Astros
defeated the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League title. They
will face the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
(WSJ, 10/20/05, p.A1)
2005 Oct 20, US Rep. Tom DeLay
turned himself in at the sheriff's office in Travis County, Texas,
where he was fingerprinted, photographed and released on $10,000 bail
on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.
(AP, 10/20/06)
2005 Oct 21, Oscar Wyatt (81),
former chairman of Coastal Corp., was arrested at his home in Houston
for paying millions in kickbacks to the government of Saddam Hussein in
exchange for rights to buy discounted Iraqi oil under the UN’s
oil-for-food program. 2 Swiss associates were also indicted. In 2007
Wyatt was sentenced to over a year in jail after admitting that he
agreed to a surcharge of about $200,000 to be paid to bank account in
Jordan controlled by officials of Iraq’s State Oil Marketing
Organization in Dec 2001.
(SFC, 10/22/05, p.A3)(WSJ, 11/28/07, p.B10)
2005 Oct 26, The Chicago White Sox
beat the Houston Astros 1-0 to win their first World Series title since
1917.
(AP, 10/27/06)
2005 Oct 28, Rice University
professor Richard Smalley (62), who shared a 1996 Nobel Prize in
chemistry for the discovery of "buckyballs," died in Houston of cancer.
(AP, 10/28/05)(Econ, 11/12/05, p.91)
2005 Nov 3, In Texas convicted
killed Charles Victor Thompson (35) escaped from Harris County Jail. He
was captured Nov 6 in Shreveport, La., drunk and talking on a pay
phone. Thompson had been sentenced to death for the murder of his
ex-girlfriend and her lover in 1998.
(SSFC, 11/6/05, p.A8)(AP, 11/7/05)
2005 Nov 8, Texas voters
overwhelmingly approved a constitutional ban on gay marriage.
(AP, 11/9/05)
2005 Nov 20, Chris Whitley (45), a
chameleon singer-songwriter who oscillated between roots rock 'n' roll,
blues and alt-rock, died of lung cancer in Houston. He recorded 11
albums since his 1991 debut, "Living with the Law," including “Dirt
Floor" (1998) and this year's "Soft Dangerous Shores."
(AP, 11/23/05)
2005 Dec 27, Grass fires burned in
drought-stricken Texas and Oklahoma. Over three days, nearly 200 homes
were lost and the fires blamed for at least four deaths.
(AP, 12/27/06)
2005 Dec 28, Firefighters searched
for missing people and hoped for cooler, calmer weather after deadly
wildfires raced across thousands of acres of grassland dried out by
Texas' worst drought in decades and destroyed dozens of homes.
(AP, 12/28/05)
2005 Murders in Houston, Texas,
for the year totaled 334, many of which were linked to refugees from
Hurricane Katrina.
(Econ, 9/16/06, p.41)
2005 Fort Bliss, Texas, had some
25,000 inhabitants. Due to expansion plans a 2008 estimate expected
90,000 people by 2013.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.39)
2006 Jan 2, Grass fires in New
Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas left at least 4 people dead with over 250
structures burned.
(SFC, 1/3/06, p.A4)
2006 Jan 4, The Univ. of Texas
Longhorns scored a 41-38 win over Southern California in the Rose Bowl.
Official tickets sold for $175 and resellers on the internet hawked
them for as much as $3000.
(AP, 1/5/06)(Econ, 1/7/06, p.58)
2006 Jan 7, US Representative Tom
DeLay (R-Texas), facing corruption charges, stepped down as House
majority leader.
(AP, 1/7/07)
2006 Jan 8, Wildfires in the
southwest US spread to Arkansas and Colorado destroying 9 more homes.
Over the last 2 weeks the fires in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas have
destroyed 475 homes and left 5 people dead.
(SFC, 1/9/06, p.A3)
2006 Jan 12, Houston became the
largest school district in the country to adopt a merit pay plan for
teachers that focuses on students' tests scores.
(AP, 1/13/06)
2006 Jan 27, Police in Houston,
Texas, said they had arrested 8 gang members from New Orleans as
suspects in 11 slayings.
(SFC, 1/28/06, p.A3)
2006 Jan, Arthur Mumphrey was
released from prison in Texas after his lawyer found DNA evidence
clearing him in the rape of a 13-year-old girl. Mumphrey had been
sentenced in 1986 to 35 years in prison. He awarded more than $450,000
after spending 18 years in prison for a sexual assault conviction. His
brother, Charles, confessed to the rape while serving time in jail for
unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, shortly after his brother's
release.
(AP, 11/10/06)
2006 Feb 11, Vice President Dick
Cheney accidentally shot Harry Whittington (78), a hunting companion,
during a weekend quail hunting trip at the 50,000-acre Armstrong ranch
in Texas. Whittington, peppered with bird shot, was in stable condition.
(AP, 2/13/06)
2006 Feb 14, In Texas lawyer Harry
Whittington, who was accidentally injured 3 days earlier by birdshot
fired by VP Cheney, suffered a minor heart attack.
(SFC, 2/15/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 7, Dena Schlosser,
charged with murder for cutting off her baby daughter Margaret's arms
in what her lawyers portrayed as a religious frenzy, was found not
guilty by reason of insanity by a judge in McKinney, Texas.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2006 Apr 22, In Spring, Texas 2
white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a Hispanic boy (16) who had
tried to kiss a Hispanic girl (12). David Henry Tuck and 17-year-old
were later charged with aggravated sexual assault. The beaten boy was
in critical condition.
(SFC, 4/28/06, p.A8)
2006 May 9, Tornadoes swept
through two North Texas towns after dark, reducing houses to bare
concrete slabs in a path of destruction that left three people dead and
10 injured.
(AP, 5/10/06)
2006 May 23, Lloyd Bentsen
(b.1921), former Texas senator, died at his home in Houston. In 1988
Michael Dukakis picked him as his vice-president candidate. In 1993 he
became Bill Clinton’s first treasury secretary.
(SFC, 5/24/06, p.A2)(Econ, 6/3/06, p.84)
2006 May 25, In Texas a jury found
former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling guilty of fraud
and conspiracy in the collapse of the energy giant. Mr. Lay died on
July 25 and in October a judge vacated the conviction; Skilling was
sentenced to 24 years in prison.
(WSJ, 10/18/06, p.A1)(AP, 5/26/07)
2006 Jun 1, Texas Gov. Rick Perry
announced a plan to use night-vision Webcams along the border and let
Internet users serve as volunteer sentinels.
(http://tinyurl.com/k7z7a)(WSJ, 6/9/06, p.A1)
2006 Jun 7, In Houston, Texas,
Gabriel Granillo (14) was beaten by about a dozen gang members with
baseball bats and tire irons. A teenage girl in the group stabbed him
to death.
(SFC, 6/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Jun 27, Railroad Killer''
Angel Maturino Resendiz, linked to 15 murders, was executed in Texas
for the slaying of physician Claudia Benton in 1998.
(AP, 6/27/07)
2006 Jun 30, US prosecutors asked
a federal judge to force former Enron chief executives Ken Lay and
Jeffrey Skilling to forfeit $183 million for their crimes at the
collapsed energy company.
(Reuters, 6/30/06)
2006 Jul 5, Kenneth Lay (64).
Enron Corp. founder and chief executive, died of a heart attack at his
vacation home in Colorado. He was convicted in May for his role in the
in the Houston-based company's downfall.
(Reuters, 7/5/06)(Econ, 7/8/06, p.81)
2006 Jul 24, It was reported that
Jeff Bezos (42), founder of Amazon.com, planned to develop a private
spaceport at his private ranch in West Texas. A draft environmental
review was filed with the FAA and a timetable set commercial flights to
begin in 2010.
(SFC, 7/24/06, p.A2)
2006 Jul 26, In a dramatic
turnaround from her first murder trial, a jury in Houston found Andrea
Yates not guilty by reason of insanity in the drowning of her children
in the bathtub; she was committed to a state mental hospital.
(AP, 7/26/07)
2006 Aug 11, In Michigan 3
Palestinian American men from Texas were arrested after buying dozens
of cell phones at a Wal-Mart store. They were found with a 1000 cell
phones and later charged with federal fraud conspiracy and money
laundering. Initial terrorism charges were dropped.
(SFC, 8/17/06, p.A3)
2006 Sep 5, Dan Rather said he has
donated $2 million to his alma mater, Sam Houston State University, the
largest single monetary gift in the school's 127-year history.
(AP, 9/6/06)
2006 Sep 13, Ann Richards
(b.1933), former Texas Gov. (1990-1994), died after a battle with
cancer. As governor, Richards appointed the first black University of
Texas regent, the first crime victim on the state Criminal Justice
Board, the first disabled person on the human services board and the
first teacher to lead the State Board of Education. Under Richards, the
fabled Texas Rangers pinned stars on their first black and female
officers.
(AP, 9/14/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.96)
2006 Sep, Irving, Texas, a city of
some 200,000 people, signed up for the US government’s Criminal Alien
Program (CAP), run by the Immigration and Customs agency. By the end of
2007 some 1,700 people from Irving were handed over for deportation.
(Econ, 12/15/07, p.36)
2006 Oct 14, Freddy Fender
(b.1937), Tex-Mex singer born as Baldemar Huerta, died in San Benito,
Texas. His hit songs included “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” and
“Before the Next Teardrop Falls” (1975).
(SFC, 10/16/06, p.B6)
2006 Oct 16, In southeast Texas
heavy rains and a tornado left 3 people dead.
(WSJ, 10/17/06, p.A1)
2006 Oct 19, In Texas a death-row
inmate slit his own throat with a makeshift knife, committing suicide
about 15 hours before he was scheduled to be executed. Michael Dewayne
Johnson (29) was on death row for the 1995 killing of a convenience
store clerk near Waco. Johnson had denied gunning down Jeff Wetterman
(27), who helped pump gas at the family store off Interstate 35 near
Waco. Johnson blamed his companion, David Vest, for the killing. Vest
blamed the shooting on Johnson, took an eight-year prison term in a
plea deal and testified against his friend. Vest is now free.
(AP, 10/19/06)
2006 Oct 25, Texas executed
Gregory Summers (48), a man convicted in the stabbing deaths of his
parents and an uncle. He paid a hit man to kill his parents in 1990 in
an attempt to collect their life insurance and an inheritance.
(AP, 10/26/06)
2006 Nov 5, Rockwall County,
Texas, prosecutor Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr. killed himself as police
tried to serve him with an arrest warrant alleging he had solicited sex
with a minor online.
(AP, 11/5/07)
2006 Nov 26, In Mexico bands of
youths rampaged through downtown Oaxaca, torching buildings and cars
hours after federal police used tear gas to drive off a violent mob of
leftists in the latest spasm of protests against the state governor. 30
to 40 armed men entered the La Barranca hunting ranch near the US
border and kidnapped five men including 3 Texans. Librado Pina Jr.
(49), owns the popular deer-hunting ranch near Hidalgo, was released on
Dec 18. His son and 2 others had been released earlier. There was no
word on the ranch's Mexican cook, Marco Ortiz.
(AP, 11/26/06)(AP, 11/29/06)(AP, 12/18/06)
2006 Nov 7, Dan Patrick,
conservative talk show host from Houston, was elected to the state
Senate. He planned to continued broadcasting from Austin.
(Econ, 12/16/06, p.33)
2006 Dec 4, Truck driver Tyrone
Williams was convicted in Houston of the deaths of 19 illegal
immigrants crammed into a sweltering tractor-trailer in May 2003.
(AP, 12/4/07)
2006 Dec 12, In Texas former
Congressman Ciro Rodriguez defeated seven-term Republican Henry Bonilla
in a runoff election, adding another Democrat to Congress.
(AP, 12/13/06)
2006 Dec 26, A 21,000 gallon oil
spill off the Texas coast resulted when a ship anchor hit an oil line.
(WSJ, 12/27/06, p.A1)
2007 Jan 8, In Texas police shut
down 10 blocks of businesses in the heart of downtown Austin after
dozens of birds were found dead.
(AP, 1/8/07)
2007 Jan 17, In Texas James
Waller, who spent 10 years behind bars for the rape of a boy, became
the 12th person in Dallas County to be cleared by DNA evidence.
(AP, 1/19/07)(http://tinyurl.com/27evec)
2007 Jan 17, A US snow and ice
storm was blamed for at least 64 deaths in nine states. These included
20 deaths in Oklahoma, 9 in Missouri, 8 in Iowa, 4 in New York, 5 in
Texas, 4 in Michigan, 3 in Arkansas, and 1 each in Maine and Indiana.
(AP, 1/17/07)(SFC, 1/18/07, p.A3)
2007 Jan 18, Truck driver Tyrone
Williams was spared the death penalty and sentenced in Houston to life
in prison for his role in the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants crammed
in a sweltering tractor-trailer.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2007 Jan 31, Molly Ivins (b.1944),
political columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, died of breast
cancer.
(SFC, 2/1/07, p.B7)
2007 Feb 2, Gov. Rick Perry issued
an order making Texas the 1st state to require schoolgirls get
vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical
cancer.
(SFC, 2/3/07, p.A3)
2007 Feb 14, The Milton Friedman
Foundation said each high school dropout costs Texas $3,168 a year in
lost revenue, plus Medicaid and prison expenses.
(WSJ, 2/15/07, p.A1)
2007 Feb 26, Texas' largest
electricity producer, said it has agreed to be sold to a group of
private-equity firms for about $32 billion in what would be the largest
private buyout in US corporate history if shareholders go along.
(AP, 2/26/07)
2007 Mar 10, In Texas Valerie
Lopez (19), the mother of two young children whose decomposing bodies
were found wrapped in plastic bags beneath a house this week, was
arrested and charged with capital murder.
(AP, 3/11/07)
2007 Mar 11, Halliburton CEO Dave
Lesar announced that his oil services company will soon shift its
corporate headquarters from Houston to the Mideast financial powerhouse
of Dubai.
(AP, 3/13/07)
2007 Mar 21, In Texas
investigators said Timothy Wayne Shepherd (27) confessed to strangling
Tynesha Stewart (19) because he was angry she had begun a new
relationship. Shepherd had dismembered and burned her body on a patio
grill.
(AP, 3/25/07)
2007 Mar 27, Texas Governor Rick
Perry's office said that he had signed a new law that expands Texans'
existing right to use deadly force to defend themselves "without
retreat" in their homes, cars and workplaces. The new law takes affect
on September 1.
(Reuters, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar, Some 47 bodies of
bottlenose dolphins washed up on the shores near Galveston, Texas.
Toxins off the Louisiana coast were suspected.
(SFC, 3/19/07, p.A2)
2007 Apr 20, William Phillips, a
NASA contract worker, shot and killed David Beverly, a NASA civil
servant, and then killed himself at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Texas.
(SFC, 4/21/07, p.A3)
2007 Apr 24, A tornado in the
Texas border town of Eagle Pass killed at least 10 people and destroyed
two schools and more than 20 homes. The storm killed 2 more people in
Arkansas and Louisiana.
(AP, 4/25/07)(SFC, 4/26/07, p.A3)
2007 May 8, A federal judge in El
Paso, Texas, dismissed immigration fraud charges against Luis Posada
Carriles (79), a former CIA operative accused of masterminding a 1976
bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane along with 1997 bombings in Havana.
(SFC, 5/10/07, p.A6)
2007 May 12, Voters in Farmers
Branch, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, became the first in the nation to
prohibit landlords from renting to most illegal immigrants. Texas
courts quickly issued a restraining order against the city to prevent
the ordnance from taking effect.
(AP, 5/13/07)(Econ, 6/16/07, p.35)
2007 May 25, In central Texas two
days of storms and flooding left 5 people dead and one missing.
(AP, 5/26/07)
2007 May 29, In Hudson Oaks,
Texas, Gilberta Estrada (25) was found hanged by suicide along with 3
of her 4 children. An 9-month-old infant survived her noose.
(SFC, 5/30/07, p.A8)
2007 Jun 11, In Texas 3 National
Guardsmen were arraigned on charges of conspiring to transport illegal
immigrants.
(SFC, 6/12/07, p.A5)
2007 Jun 12, In Texas Sgt.
Lawrence G. Sprader (25), an experienced soldier who lost contact
during a training exercise on the sprawling Fort Hood Army base, was
found dead after four days.
(AP, 6/13/07)
2007 Jun 14, The San Antonio Spurs
won their fourth NBA title in nine years as they defeated the Cleveland
Cavaliers 83-82 in Game 4.
(AP, 6/14/08)
2007 Jun 14, Abel Diaz Lucas, also
known as Jorge Guevara-Perez, was arrested in El Paso, Texas. The next
day he was handed to Mexican authorities, who had been trying to find
Diaz for five years. They accused him of running a central Mexico gang
notorious for cutting off the fingers and ears of their victims and
sending them to their families to demand ransom money.
(AP, 6/15/07)
2007 Jun 18, Torrential overnight
rainfall flooded a handful of North Texas towns killing at least 4.
People and their pets were stranded on the roofs of their homes
awaiting rescue.
(AP, 6/18/07)(WSJ, 6/19/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun 19, In Austin, Texas, 3-4
people beat a man to death after the car he was riding in apparently
struck and injured a child.
(AP, 6/20/07)(SFC, 6/22/07, p.A5)
2007 Jun 26, Patrick Knight was
executed in Huntsville, Texas, for the 1991 murder of a couple from the
Amarillo area.
(SFC, 6/27/07, p.A2)
2007 Jun 27, Torrential storms
flooded parts of central Texas, stranding people on roofs, in trees and
in vehicles. Constant downpours claimed 11 lives in the last 11 days.
(AP, 6/27/07)(AP, 6/28/07)
2007 Jul 11, Lady Bird Johnson
(b.1912), widow of former US Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969), died
in Austin, Texas.
(SFC, 7/12/07, p.A2)(Econ, 7/21/07, p.85)
2007 Jul 18, NYC and New Jersey
claimed $170.2 million in anti-terrorism funds, LA and Long Beach, Ca.,
claimed $72.6 million, DC claimed $61.7 million, Chicago got $47.3
million, the SF Bay Area got $34.1 million and Houston got $25 million.
(SFC, 7/19/07, p.B3)
2007 Jul 20, Kevin Andre Smoot
(43), a former executive of Eagle Global Logistics’ freight forwarding
station in Houston, a company that shipped military cargo to Iraq,
pleaded guilty to lying about a fraud scheme that bilked the government
out of more than a million dollars. Smoot admitted that he lied to
federal investigators who questioned him about a scheme to inflate
invoices by adding a "war risk surcharge" of 50 cents for each kilogram
of freight transported to Baghdad.
(AP, 7/21/07)
2007 Jul, Riley Ann Sawyers (2)
died after being whipped with belts and flung across a room like a rag
doll. In October her body (dubbed Baby Grace) was found inside a
plastic box in Galveston Bay. In 2009 a jury convicted Riley's mother,
Kimberly Dawn Trenor (20), of capital murder. The conviction brought an
automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. Her husband, Royce
Clyde Zeigler II (25), also charged with capital murder, still faced
trial.
(AP, 2/3/09)
2007 Aug 19, Fierce storms from
the upper Mississippi to Texas since last week left 22 people dead. Six
people died in floodwaters across Oklahoma after heavy rains from the
remains of Tropical Storm Erin drenched the state. As much as 9 inches
of rain fell across a wide swath of Oklahoma, leaving roadways under 5
feet of water. 8 people were reported dead in Texas and 6 dead in
Minnesota.
(Reuters, 8/20/07)(SFC, 8/21/07, p.A6)(AP, 8/22/07)
2007 Aug 22, The Texas Rangers
became the first team in 110 years to score 30 runs in a game, setting
an American League record in a 30-3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles in
the first game of a doubleheader.
(AP, 8/22/08)
2007 Aug 22, The death toll across
the Upper Midwest and from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin that
swept Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri over the past week rose to at least
26. Three people were electrocuted by lightning at a bus stop in
Madison, Wis.
(AP, 8/23/07)
2007 Aug 27, Police arrested Paul
Devoe III (43) in Shirley, NY, following 5 recent murders in Texas and
one in Pennsylvania. On December 19, 2007, the Texas Travis County
District Attorney announced his office's intention to pursue the death
penalty.
(SFC, 8/28/07,
p.A6)(www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/us/28texas.html)
2007 Sep 8, In Odessa, Texas, 2
police officers responding to a domestic disturbance were killed and a
third was critically wounded by a gunman who led authorities on an
hours-long standoff. Gunman Larry White (58) was shot in the abdomen
but was in stable condition.
(AP, 9/9/07)
2007 Sep 13, Humberto, the first
hurricane to hit the US Gulf Coast in two years, sneaked up on
southeast Texas overnight and crashed ashore with heavy rains and 80
mph winds. One man died when a carport collapsed on him.
(AP, 9/13/07)
2007 Sep 25, NRG Energy of
Princeton, NJ, submitted permission to build 2 nuclear reactors in
Texas.
(SFC, 9/25/07, p.A3)
2007 Sep 27, The US Supreme Court
halted the execution of Carlton Turner Jr. (28), a man convicted of
killing his parents in Texas, after already agreeing to review lethal
injection procedures in Kentucky. Turner was 19 when he shot Carlton
Turner Sr., (43) and Tonya Turner (40) several times in the head.
Turner was executed on Jul 10, 2008.
(AP, 9/28/07)(SFC, 7/10/08, p.A4)
2007 Oct 9, In Texas Ronald Taylor
(47), who spent a dozen years in prison for a rape he didn't commit,
was freed based on DNA evidence. He became the third inmate to be
released because of problems with the Houston Police Department's crime
lab.
(AP, 10/9/07)
2007 Oct 22, A federal judge in
Dallas declared a mistrial for former leaders of the Texas-based Holy
Land Foundation, a Muslim charity accused of funding terrorism.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2007 Nov 14, In Texas Joe Horn
(62) shot and killed two suspected burglars, with bags in hand,
crawling out of windows from his neighbor's home in the Houston suburb
of Pasadena. In 2008 a jury acquitted Horn of murder.
(AP, 7/1/08)
2007 Dec 5, It was reported that
the world’s largest helium reserve near Amarillo, Texas, was expected
to run out by 2015. The Bush Dome, begun as a reserve by the government
in 1925, supplied 35% of the world’s current usage.
(WSJ, 12/5/07, p.B1)
2007 Dec 12, Three British oil
executives pleaded guilty in a Houston court to price-fixing. They were
accused of conspiring from 1999-2007 to fix the prices of millions of
dollars worth of marine hoses used to transfer oil between tankers and
storage facilities. They were permitted to return to Britain and to
plead guilty to charges there.
(www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=130424&d=415&h=417&f=416)
2007 Dec 23, High wind and ice
coated power lines blacked out tens of thousands of people in the
Midwest. The storm was blamed for at least 22 deaths. At least 8 people
in Minnesota, 5 in Wisconsin, 3 each in Indiana and Wyoming and one
each in Michigan, Texas and Kansas were killed in traffic accidents.
(AP, 12/23/07)(WSJ, 12/24/07, p.A1)(SFC, 12/25/07,
p.A11)
2008 Jan 1, By state law strip
clubs in Texas began imposing a $5 surcharge, dubbed the “pole tax,”
providing the state with an estimated $40 million in annual revenue.
Most of the proceeds were to go to programs supporting victims of
sexual assault.
(Econ, 1/5/08, p.28)
2008 Jan 4, In Texas Jana Shearer
(21), the girlfriend of Christopher Lee McCuin (25), was taken by
McCuin from her home and killed. McCuin was arrested Jan 5 after police
found that he had cooked parts of her body and may have tried to eat
them. On Dec 7 McCuin was found dead in his jail cell.
(AP, 1/7/08)(AP, 12/8/08)
2008 Jan 15, A US District judge
ordered the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, to surrender 233 acres to
the federal government for the construction of a border fence by the
Homeland Security Dept.
(SFC, 1/17/08, p.A5)
2008 Jan 16, Texas was ranked as
the biggest polluter in the US, making it the 7th worst in the world if
it were its own nation.
(WSJ, 1/17/08, p.A1)
2008 Jan 17, A US federal judge
struck down Texas laws barring out-of-state retailers from shipping
wine to consumers.
(WSJ, 1/18/08, p.A1)
2008 Feb 12, A US federal appeals
court has overturned a statute outlawing sex toy sales in Texas, one of
the last states, all in the South, to retain such a ban.
(AP, 2/13/08)
2008 Feb 22, In Texas 3 British
bankers were sentenced to just over three years in prison for their
roles in a fraudulent scheme with former Enron Chief Financial Officer
Andrew Fastow, and they're hoping to serve some of that time back home.
(AP, 2/22/08)
2008 Mar 1, In Emory, Texas, a
teenage girl joined her boyfriend and two others to help kill her
mother and 2 brothers (8,13). Her parents had demanded that she break
up with her boyfriend. Terry Caffey, the father, survived with 5 shots.
(SFC, 3/3/08, p.A4)
2008 Mar 4, John McCain clinched
the Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton won primaries in Texas, Ohio
and Rhode Island, halting Barack Obama's winning streak. Obama won in
Vermont. Obama came away with a large share of delegates, too, in
counting that continued.
(AP, 3/5/08)
2008 Mar 7, Texas oilman David
Chalmers was sentenced to two years in prison after admitting to paying
millions of dollars in kickbacks to Iraq in connection with the UN
oil-for-food program.
(AP, 3/8/08)
2008 Mar 28, The US Transportation
Security Administration said it will change they way its officers
search passengers with body piercings after a Texas woman complained
she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an
airplane.
(AP, 3/29/08)
2008 Apr 4, Child welfare
officials scrambled to find foster homes for dozens of girls removed
from a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist
leader Warren Jeffs after a 16-year-old living there complained of
physical abuse. By April 8 Texas had taken 416 children into protective
custody. Some 140 women came along voluntarily. It was later reported
that over half of the teenage girls from the compound had children or
were pregnant. The number of 14-17 year old girls with children was
later reduced as ages became confirmed. On May 22 a state appeals court
ruled that authorities had no right to take children from the
polygamist compound.
(AP, 4/5/08)(Econ, 4/12/08, p.36)(WSJ, 4/29/08,
p.A1)(SFC, 5/17/08, p.A2)(SFC, 5/23/08, p.A2)
2008 Apr 6, In Texas Erick Daniel
Davila (21) opened fire at a child’s birthday party killing Annette
Stevenson (48), her granddaughter (5) died the next day.
(SFC, 4/9/08, p.A4)
2008 Apr 10, Powerful storms
brought hail, heavy rain and possible tornadoes to Arkansas, Texas, and
Oklahoma, causing flooding and power outages for thousands of customers
and at least one death.
(AP, 4/10/08)
2008 Apr 11, Crystle Stewart (26),
of Missouri City, Texas, was named Miss USA, besting 50 other beauty
queens for the coveted crown in Las Vegas.
(AP, 4/12/08)
2008 Apr 29, James Woodward (55)
walked out of a Dallas court after DNA testing overturned his
conviction over 27 years ago for the murder and rape of his girlfriend.
(Reuters, 4/30/08)
2008 Apr, In Lufkin, Texas, nurse
Kimberly Saenz (34) injected 10 patients at a dialysis clinic with
bleach killing five of them. In 2009 she was charged with murder and
assault.
(SFC, 4/2/09, p.A7)
2008 Jun 8, In Texas a medical
helicopter crashed on an isolated ranch in Sam Houston National Forest,
killing a patient and three crew members.
(AP, 6/8/08)
2008 Jun 8, In the Gulf of Mexico
4 college students from Texas and a safety officer were rescued after
spending some 26 hours in choppy seas following the sinking of their
38-foot Cynthia Woods, which was competing in the Regatta de Amigos.
Safety officer Roger Stone died in the capsized vessel.
(SFC, 6/9/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 16, It was reported that
Texas businessman Bassam Nabulsi had a federal lawsuit against Sheik
Issa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a son of the late UAE president and brother
of Abu Dhabi's crown prince. Nabulsi said he safeguarded the sheik's
most important documents: financial records, investment documents, and
videotapes showing the sheik torturing people with a cattle prod and a
spiked plank.
(AP, 6/16/08)
2008 Jun 26, US Air Force Col.
Samuel Lofton III was sentenced to 9 years in prison and kicked out of
the military for assaulting a woman and other crimes at Sheppard Air
Force Base, Texas.
(SFC, 6/27/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 27, In Piedras Negras,
Mexico, Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, attended a tree
planting ceremony for the first of 400,000 trees which will form a
"green wall" in protest of the fence the US is building along the
border with Mexico.
(AP, 6/28/08)
2008 Jul 18, In Houston, Texas,
one of the nation's largest mobile cranes collapsed at LyondellBasell
refinery, killing four workers. An additional 7 workers were injured
when the crane collapsed during routine maintenance at the chemical
plant.
(AP, 7/19/08)
2008 Jul 21, The US FDA issued an
advisory for consumers to avoid eating uncooked jalapeno peppers after
it found a jalapeno grown in Mexico in a Texas border town warehouse
that tested positive with the same strain of salmonella that was
earlier associated with tomatoes.
(SFC, 7/22/08, p.A10)
2008 Jul 23, Hurricane Dolly
toppled trees and sent billboards flying in the Mexican city of
Matamoros, and authorities south of the US border warned of possible
flooding. Dolly also hit south Texas, but by evening it had weakened to
a tropical storm.
(AP, 7/24/08)(SFC, 7/24/08, p.A3)
2008 Jul 25, Texas nurse Chere Lyn
Tomayko, wanted by the FBI for international parental kidnapping, was
awarded refugee status in Costa Rica and cannot be extradited to the
US. In December 1996, a US judge gave joint custody of a daughter,
Alexandria Camille Cyprian, to Tomayko and her ex-boyfriend Robert
Cyprian, with the condition that Alexandria live in Tarrant County,
Texas. Tomayko said she moved to Costa Rica because she had been
physically abused by Cyprian.
(AP, 7/26/08)
2008 Aug 5, Texas executed Jose
Medellin (33) for the 1993 rape and killing of two teenage girls in
Houston. Mexico protested the execution, which took place despite a
world court ruling for a new hearing, and expressed concern for the
rights of other Mexicans detained in the US. On Jan 19, 2009, the
International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that the US defied
its order when authorities in Texas last year executed a Mexican
convicted of rape and murder.
(AP, 8/6/08)(AP, 1/19/09)
2008 Aug 8, In Texas a charter bus
carrying Vietnamese worshippers on a pilgrimage ran off a highway
overpass north of Dallas and plunged onto a roadway below. 15 people
were killed and 40 injured.
(AP, 8/8/08)
2008 Aug 9, Mahmoud Darwish (67),
a Palestinian poet, died, died in Houston. His poetry eloquently told
of his people's experiences of exile, occupation and infighting.
(AP, 8/10/08)
2008 Aug 15, In Texas store clerk
Mindy Daffern (46) was abducted in the north Texas town of Scotland.
Wallace Bowman Jr. (30) was identified by a security camera and led
investigators to her body the next day.
(SFC, 8/18/08,
p.A3)(www.wafb.com/global/story.asp?s=8854535)
2008 Sep 3, Albert J. Stanley
(65), former Halliburton executive, pleaded guilty in Houston to
orchestrating over $180 million in bribes to senior Nigerian government
officials from 1995-2004 for the construction of liquefied natural gas
facilities. The bribes began when Stanley worked for M.W. Kellogg, a
unit of Dresser Industries that was acquired by Halliburton in 1998,
when Dick Cheney served as CEO. Stanley also pleaded guilty to taking
$10.8 million in kickbacks from a consortium of construction firms
involved in the LNG contracts between 1992-2003. Stanley was sentenced
to 7 years in prison and ordered to repay Halliburton $10.8 million.
(WSJ, 9/4/08, p.A1)(WSJ, 9/5/08, p.B1)
2008 Sep 3, In Pasadena, Texas, a
suburb of Houston, Dannette Gillespie (38) orchestrated her daughter
(15) and Vanessa Anne Ocampo (19) in the robbery and killing of Eugene
Palma (75), which netted them $15. On Sep 7 all three were charged with
murder.
(www.truecrimereport.com/2008/09/mother_of_the_year_dannette_gi.php)
2008 Sep 9, San Antonio, Texas,
unveiled a deal that will make it the first US city to harvest methane
gas from human waste on a commercial scale and turn it into
clean-burning fuel.
(Reuters, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 13, Hurricane Ike ravaged
the Texas coast with 110 mph winds, flooding thousands of homes and
businesses, shattering windows in Houston's skyscrapers and knocking
out power to millions of people. Ike left at least 37 people dead in
Texas, including 5 on Galveston Island, and 35 more dead across 10
states. Galveston later requested $2.2 billion in disaster relief. This
amounted to about $36,000 per resident. Officials later estimated that
damages from Ike could exceed $50 billion.
(SFC, 9/15/08, p.A6)(SFC, 9/17/08, p.A8)(SFC,
9/23/08, p.A3)(SFC, 10/13/08, p.A2)(Econ, 10/4/08, p.34)
2008 Sep 16, In Texas the torn
apart body of Brandon McClelland (24), a black man, was found on
a rural road near Paris. He had crossed the border to Oklahoma the
previous evening with friends Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley (27) to
buy beer.
(SFC, 10/25/08, p.A5)
2008 Oct 3, United States
Protection and Investigations, a Houston security company, was indicted
on charges of defrauding the US government for work done during the
Afghanistan war and rebuilding efforts.
(AP, 10/3/08)
2008 Oct 14, Reymundo Guerra,
sheriff of rural Starr County, Texas, next to the Mexican border, was
arrested at his office after being indicted on charges alleging he was
involved in a large-scale cocaine and marijuana smuggling operation.
(AP, 10/15/08)
2008 Nov 17, Vice President Dick
Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were indicted on
state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that
has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the
outgoing prosecutor. Cheney was charged with engaging in an organized
criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the
Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison
companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a
conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees
because of his link to the prison companies. The indictment accused
Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation
in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons. On Dec 1 a
Texas judge dismissed the indictments against Cheney and Gonzales.
(AP, 11/19/08)(SFC, 12/2/08, p.A8)
2008 Nov 19, Germany chemical
company BASF SE said it is temporarily closing 80 plants worldwide due
to slumping demand and cutting production at 100 more, including
facilities in Texas and Louisiana. Some 20,000 workers are affected.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Nov 24, The US government won
a terrorism conviction against Texas-based Holy Land, what had been the
nation's largest Muslim charity, and five of its leaders for funneling
millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Holy Land
supporters accused the government of politicizing the case as part of
its war on terrorism, while attorneys for the foundation said Holy
Land's mission was philanthropy and providing aid to the Middle East.
(AP, 11/25/08)
2008 Nov 27, A sport utility
vehicle carrying 8 people from Texas plunged off an unfinished bridge
into a river in northern Mexico, causing the death of three adults and
four children.
(AP, 11/28/08)
2008 Dec 22, In Texas a gunman in
pickup truck killed two people and injuring another in a series of rush
hour shootings on Dallas-area roads. The next day police identified
Brian Smith (37), a former Utah state trooper, as the shooter. Smith
died Dec 24 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
(AP, 12/23/08)(SFC, 12/24/08, p.A3)(SFC, 12/25/08,
p.A6)
2009 Jan 14, Trammell Crow
(b.1914, Texas real estate developer, died. His projects included the
Dallas Decorative Center (1955) and the 10-million square foot Dallas
Market Center. In the 1970s and 1980s Crow was the nation’s biggest
real estate developer. In 1981 he founded Wyndham Co., which became one
of the nation’s largest hotel chains.
(WSJ, 1/17/09, p.A5)
2009 Jan 19, President George W.
Bush In his final acts of clemency granted early prison releases to
Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, two former Texas-based US Border
Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer in
2005 fueled the national debate over illegal immigration.
(AP, 1/20/09)(SFC, 1/20/09, p.A3)
2009 Jan 28, President Barack
Obama signed requests from Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and Arkansas
Gov. Mike Beebe for federal emergency declarations as crews worked
around the clock to resurrect power lines downed by thick ice in both
states. Since the storm began building on Jan 26, the weather has been
blamed for at least six deaths in Texas, four in Arkansas, three in
Virginia, six in Missouri, two in Oklahoma, and one each in Indiana and
Ohio.
(AP, 1/29/09)
2009 Feb 17, The US federal
government said Texas financier R. Allen Stanford's investment
businesses were too good to be true, and shut his companies down. The
SEC charged Stanford (58) with an $8 billion fraud. On Feb 19 Stanford
was tracked down in Virginia, where FBI agents served him with civil
complaint legal papers.
(AP, 2/17/09)(WSJ, 2/18/09, p.A1)(AP, 2/19/09)
2009 Feb 18, In Antigua panicky
depositors were turned away from Stanford International Bank and some
of its Latin American affiliates, unable to withdraw their money after
US regulators accused Texas financier R. Allen Stanford of perpetrating
an $8 billion fraud against his companies' investors.
(AP, 2/19/09)
2009 Feb, A Texas grand jury
returned a 106-count indictment against the former Montague Sheriff
Bill Keating and 16 others. It revealed that inmates had the run of
County Jail, having sex with their jailer girlfriends, bringing in
recliners, taking drugs and chatting on cell phones supplied by friends
or guards.
(AP, 3/17/09)
2009 Mar 4, In Texas Kenneth Wayne
Morris was executed for killing a Houston man in a botched burglary
nearly 18 years ago.
(SFC, 3/5/09, p.A6)
2009 Mar 12, Texas Gov. Rick Perry
announced that he turned down $555 million of federal stimulus funding
that would expand the state's unemployment benefits, saying the money
would have required the state to keep paying for the expanded benefits
after the stimulus money ran out.
(AP, 3/12/09)
2009 Mar 16, In northern Mexico a
tractor-trailer slammed into a bus carrying Canadian and US tourists,
killing 11. The bus was carrying a group of Texas retirees from
McAllen, Texas, to the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas when a
drunken driver lost control of his tractor-trailer outside the city of
Saltillo.
(AP, 3/17/09)(WSJ, 3/18/09, p.A10)
2009 Mar 27, The Texas Board of
Education approved a science curriculum opening the door for teachers
and texts to raise doubts about evolution.
(WSJ, 3/28/09, p.A1)
2009 Apr 4, In Texas Jorge Alberto
Mendez (42) was arrested while trying to cross into Mexico from El
Paso, where he lived. He was arrested for allegedly raping 19 women
across the border in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez.
(AP, 4/7/09)
2009 Apr 7, In Texas Jon Dale
Jones (46), a former Army hospital nurse, pleaded guilty to assault and
theft. He was accused of infecting 15 patients with hepatitis C. Jones
was arrested on federal charges in March of 2008 for using dirty
needles to administer anesthesia, and accused of stealing painkillers
for himself.
(SFC, 4/8/09, p.A5)(www.mahalo.com/Jon_Dale_Jones)
2009 Apr 12, In Texas 2
firefighters were killed while battling a house fire in Houston.
(SFC, 4/13/09, p.A4)
2009 Apr 17, A US federal judge
sentenced John Philip Hernandez of Houston to 8 years in prison for
buying military-style firearms and that ended up in the hands of
Mexico’s drug cartels. Prosecutors said Hernandez led a group that
purchased 339 weapons over 15 months.
(SFC, 4/18/09, p.A4)
2009 Apr 18, In Texas 5 Houston
children died after their sedan slid into a rain-swollen ditch when
driver Chanton Jenkins (32) lost control while trying to answer a cell
phone. Police the next day filed intoxication manslaughter charges
against Jenkins, the father of 3 of the victims.
(AP, 4/19/09)(AP, 4/20/09)(WSJ, 4/20/09, p.A7)
2009 Apr 29, The WHO raised its
alert for swine flu from level 4 to level 5, its 2nd highest alert
level. Austria and Germany confirmed cases of swine flu, becoming the
third and fourth European countries hit by the disease. US health
officials reported that a 23-month-old child in Texas has died from the
disease. The World Health Organization called an emergency meeting to
consider its pandemic alert level.
(AP, 4/29/09)(SFC, 4/30/09, p.A8)
2009 Apr 30, In Texas Derrick
Lamone Johnson was executed for the 1999 rape and murder of LaTausha
Curry (25) abducted while she trying to make a call at a pay phone. He
was the 14th Texas prisoner executed this year.
(SFC, 5/1/09, p.A8)
2009 May 1, On south Texas
Reymundo Guerra, former sheriff of Starr county, pleaded guilty to a
drug trafficking charge for sharing law enforcement information with a
Mexican drug ring.
(SFC, 5/2/09, p.A4)
2009 Bryan Burrough authored “The
Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes.” It
entered on H.L Hunt, Sid Richardson, Clint Murchinson and Hugh Roy
Cullen, known as the Big Four of Texas oil.
(WSJ, 2/4/09, p.A11)
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Subject = Texas
End of file.