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Each day this month, The News & Observer is looking back at some of our headlines on August dates in previous years. Here is a collection of what happened — the newsworthy, the interesting or the just plain strange.
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A daily look at some of The News & Observer headlines on this date in past years.
On this day in 2008, a Triangle T-shirt designer learned that he would not be able to sell his latest creation at the festival celebrating the new downtown Convention Center — not because it was obscene, not because it wasn’t true, but simply because it wasn’t very nice.
Kris Hixson was the only vendor out of 250 to see his merchandise rejected, and only because of the simple slogan across its chest: Raleigh > Charlotte.
City dignitaries had invited their rivals from the Queen City to attend the Raleigh Wide Open festival, and they wanted no cheap shots taken.
“We might think that Raleigh is greater than Charlotte,” said Michelle Boyette, special events sales manager. “But that’s not cool.”
UNC basketball player Lou Brown got sentenced to 18 to 24 months of probation for his role in a points-shaving scandal that rocked college basketball.
Brown had pleaded guilty and testified that he had met with gamblers and helped fix several games not involving the Tar Heels.
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The scandal also caught up four NC State players and multiple stars outside the ACC. This tainted era led to the end of the Dixie Classic, but also the beginning of UNC Coach Dean Smith.
Two convicted murderers escaped Central Prison in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, walking past the guard at the gate and hopping a passing train.
The pair, one of them serving a life sentence, were working on a construction crew inside the prison and asked to pass through the gate to fetch paint brushes. Once outside, they changed into “A” grade uniforms, which were not striped.
The 66-year-old guard, meanwhile, lost his job.
In 1926, the citizens of Moore County marveled at an infant child named Virginia Dare who weighed 65 pounds despite being only 15 months old. The baby was “apparently normal in every other way,” according to The N&O, but it attracted multiple offers from “showmen who wanted to add the child to their collection.”
One of these circus operators offered the child’s father, who worked in the sandpit nearby, $400 a month to travel along with his child on the circuit, while another promised $10 a day plus expenses. The father, though, hesitated because he feared the baby “might not live if he used it for monetary gains.”
The N&O noted both parents “are people of average build and size, the mother, in fact, being of rather small stature.”
Read more Raleigh > Charlotte? Regardless, this T-shirt is banned — Today in Triangle history
This story was originally published August 28, 2026 at 5:30 AM.