Hello fellow Texans and friends of Texas. Today is Wedesday, Nov. 5, 2014. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= 13 killed, 30 wounded in Fort Hood shooting spree< On Nov. 5, 2009, 13 people were killed and 30 wounded a shooting spree at Fort Hood in Killeen. The Fort Hood killings were the worst shooting massacre on a U.S. military installation. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, wounded by civilian base police officers, was convicted in the deaths and wounding in a military court on Aug. 23, 2013. The jury deliberated for seven hours. Five days later, a U.S. military court sentenced Hasan to death. At the time, he became the sixth person on military death row. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who was about to be deployed to Iraq, is the only person charged in the siege. It was the second mass murder in Killeen history. On Oct. 16, 1991, what was called the Lubys massacre took place in Killeen when George Jo Hennard drove his pickup truck into a Lubys Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death while wounding another 20 before committing suicide by shooting himself. It was the deadliest shooting rampage in American history until the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. Physicians assistant Michael Cahill, 62, a retired warrant officer, was the only civilian killed and the oldest casualty. Witnesses said Cahill was shot trying to charge the gunman with a chair. Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer, initially confronted the gunman, taking his attention away from the mass shooting. She was shot three times. Her partner, Mark Todd, then felled the shooter. The base commander, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, credited Munley, 34, with stopping the shooting rampage. Cone added that Munley and Todd responded within three minutes of reported gunfire. Hasan opened fire in an area where soldiers from 20 units were waiting to enter a processing center where they would receive dental and medical treatment before going overseas. None of the soldiers were armed. He was believed to have used two guns and fired more than 100 rounds of ammunition from at least one handgun during the rampage. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= Singer Johnny Horton died in 1960 traffic accident< On Nov. 5, 1960, singer Johnny Horton died in a traffic accident in Milano while en route from Austin to Shreveport. His wife, Billie Jean (Jones) Horton, with whom he had two daughters, became a widow for the second time. She had been married previously to Hank Williams. Ironically, both Horton and Williams played their last shows at the Skyline Club in Austin. Both died in Cadillacs. Horton was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery in Haughton, La. His song, The Battle of New Orleans won the 1960 Grammy Award for Best Country and Western Recording, and in 2002 it won a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. He was an inductee in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Horton was born in Los Angeles in 1925 but grew up in East Texas and graduated from high school in Gallatin. He attended junior college in Jacksonville and Kilgore and eventually went to Seattle University. He worked in the fishing industry in California and Alaska but embarked on a country music singing career in 1950. In 1955, Horton joined the Louisiana Hayride under the stage name “The Singing Fisherman.” Recognized for his honky tonk sound, he scored his first hit “Honky Tonk Man” in 1956 and achieved his first No. 1 country recording with “When It’s Springtime in Alaska” several years later. Sink the Bismarck also reached positions on both country and pop charts. • • • • • • =+ -+ -+-+= Also on Nov. 5 in Texas: • In 1806, the United States and Spain signed an agreement establishing the Neutral Ground. The boundaries of the Neutral Ground were never officially described beyond a general statement that the Arroyo Hondo on the east and the Sabine River on the west were to serve as boundaries. Ownership of the strip was awarded the United States by the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1821. • In 1866, the Waco and Northwestern Railroad Company was chartered as the Waco Tap Railroad Company. The name was changed on Aug. 6, 1870. The railroad was organized by citizens of Waco to connect their city with the Houston and Texas Central Railway at a point in or below Falls County. • In 1900, Martin Dies, congressman, was born in Colorado City. His family moved to Southeast Texas and he graduated from Beaumont High School. In 1930, he was elected as the youngest member of Congress. Dies ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1941, finishing last in a four-way race won by Wilbert Lee (Pappy) ODaniel. In 1952, he was elected Congressman-at-large. He died in Lufkin on Nov. 14, 1972, and is buried there. • In 1918, Peter Bentsen and his family left South Dakota and headed for Sharyland, an irrigated citrus and vegetable utopia near Mission envisioned and developed by John H. Shary. Bentsens sons, Lloyd, Sr., and Elmer, joined him at the end of World War I. The brothers became the premier colonizers and developers of Hidalgo County. Lloyd Bentsen, Sr., and his wife had four children. Lloyd Bentsen Jr. was a Congressman, U.S. Senator, vice-presidential candidate and secretary of the treasury. • In 1985, an explosion killed two workers and threatened Mont Belvieu, near Houston. Eight hydrocarbon-industry companies that store liquid natural gas in a salt dome agreed to buy out Mont Belvieu residents who wanted to move. Several houses, as well as the 58-year-old First United Methodist Church, were moved to new sites. Company officials said transfer costs were $20 million. • • • • • • Texas History Day-by-Day is compiled by retired newspaper journalist Bob Sonderegger (anglebob61@yahoo). A primary source of information is Handbook of Texas Online. Your comments or additions are welcome.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 15:29:08 +0000
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