1627 – Founding
Barbados was settled by Englishman Henry Powell, who arrived with 80 settlers and 10 slaves who were kidnapped, lower class English or Irish youth. The island was established as a proprietary colony, funded by Sir William Courten, a London merchant who owned the title to Barbados. The first colonists were technically tenants and much of the profits were returned to Courten.
1748 – Weather
The temperature fell to ten degrees Fahrenheit, the coldest day in Charlestown in the 18th century. The cold killed the orange trees in the area.
1865 – Civil War
Sherman’s troops burned Columbia, South Carolina. The bells of St. Michael’s Church, hidden beneath the floorboards of a shed next to the construction site of the new State House, were “melted and calcinated from a state of former beauty to little more than lumps.”
