ATLVault

Atlanta’s very first Super Bowl remains arguably the most exciting in NFL history.

The crime that happened only hours later remains the Super Bowl's most infamous.

Hours after the St. Louis Rams withstood a furious, late-game and last-second surge from the Tennessee Titans to win their first-ever NFL championship, two men were stabbed to death outside a Buckhead nightclub.

Ray Lewis - a Baltimore Ravens linebacker already well on...

he old offices where legendary Atlanta newspapermen like Ralph McGill toiled, and a long-forgotten African-American burial ground in the heart of Buckhead have been listed as places in peril by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation.

Each year, the trust releases a list of 10 places in peril throughout the state, a list the organization hopes will raise awareness about Georgia’s historic, archaeological and cultural resources t...

On April 6, 1972, a fire began at the Triangle Refinery in Doraville, starting with an overfilled storage tank. Vapors from the tank reached nearby homes on Doral Circle and ignited a pilot light at one of the homes causing an explosion. The explosion then set three storage tanks on fire. 

In all, 300 people were evacuated from their homes, staying at nearby elementary schools, hotels, or with friends and family. Two people died in ...

On Sept. 5, 1955, two Atlanta businessmen - Joe Rogers and Tom Forkner - opened the very first Waffle House, located in DeKalb County's Avondale Estates community. Rogers started in the restaurant business as a short-order cook in 1947 
at the Toddle House in Connecticut.
By 1949, he was a regional manager, then moved to Atlanta. He met Forkner 
while buying a house from him in Avondale Estates.
Today, Waffle H...

On Aug. 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the most famous speeches in human history. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in an address that culminated the march on Washington, King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Lasting less than 18 minutes, King's speech has inspired millions around the world. 

But where did King actually draft his speech? Conventional history records he wrote t...

 Mary Phagan had only two things on her mind on April 26, 1913. First, it was Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia, and she was excited to show off her new dress. Second, she had to pick up her paycheck of $1.20 from Leo Frank, her boss at the National Pencil Company in Atlanta, where she worked to help support her widowed mother who ran a local boarding house.

Phagan ate a late breakfast of cabbage and bread around 11:30 a.m., and t...

On June 3, 1962, many of Atlanta’s civic and cultural leaders were returning from a museum tour of Europe sponsored by the Atlanta Art Association when their chartered Boeing 707 crashed upon takeoff at Orly Field near Paris, France.

Of the 122 passengers that died, 106 were Atlantans (eight crew members also died; two stewardesses sitting in the tail section survived). In an instant the core of Atlanta’s arts community was gone. Th...

The product that has become the world's most iconic consumer brand was first served in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 8, 1886. Dr. John Stith Pemberton, a local pharmacist, produced the syrup for Coca-Cola, and carried a jug of the new product down the street to Jacobs’ Pharmacy, where it was sampled, pronounced “excellent” and placed on sale for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink. Carbonated water was teamed with the new s...

 Early city officials purchased six acres in 1850 to be a public burial ground for a young-but-fast-growing town of Atlanta. 

Originally called Atlanta Graveyard or City Burial Place, this was the beginning of Oakland Cemetery. 

It was officially renamed in 1872. By then it had expanded to 48 acres, mainly due to pressures of the Civil War. In the late 19th century, families tended the plots of loved ones, creating an assortment of l...

 The Heart of Atlanta Supreme Court decision stands among the court’s most significant civil rights rulings.

In Atlanta, two arch segregationists vowed to flout the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the sweeping slate of civil rights reforms just signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Pickrick restaurant was run by Lester Maddox, who would eventually become governor of Georgia. The other, the Heart of Atlanta motel, was operated...

Its streets were traveled by some of the nation’s principled and most courageous. Its buildings were brick-laid by people who endured and persevered to leave behind a better city than they discovered.

Atlanta and the nation have taken a lot from Auburn Avenue. Now, the time may have finally arrived to give something back.

ATLVault talks with David Yoakley Mitchell, executive director of the Atlanta Preservation Center, abou...

Located in downtown Atlanta, Ebenezer Baptist Church was founded in 1886 by Pastor John A. Parker and eight others. 

Affiliated with the Progressive National Baptist Convention and American Baptist Churches USA, it was the church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was co-pastor 
from 1960 until his assassination in 1968; the location of the funerals of both Dr. King and congressman John Lewis; and the church for which U....

The two political candidates couldn’t have been more different. One man, descending from a family line of Baptist ministers and championing the values of temperance and chastity, promised law and order. The other belonged to a political party thriving on social disorder and looser interpretations of the laws regarding recreational pursuits.

Such a scenario could be easily imagined in any modern election, but it was exactly the case ...