May 9
1981: Greg Jones is born in Columbia. Jones was a star athlete at Battery Creek High School in the 1990s, earning All-State honors on offense (running back) and defense (linebacker) in football. Jones played college football at Florida State University. Drafted in the second round of the 2004 NFL draft by the Jacksonville Jaguars, Jones played nine seasons in the NFL, eight with the Jaguars and one with the Houston Texans.
May 10
2019: Mills Langehans scores five goals to lead the Holy Trinity Lions to an 8-0 win over Cambridge Academy to win the SCISA 1A girls soccer championship at Porter-Gaud in Charleston.
2019: Beaufort Academy’s boys are denied a sixth consecutive SCISA 1A soccer championship, falling 4-2 to The King’s Academy at Porter-Gaud in Charleston.
May 11
2019: Beaufort High School claims its second straight Class 4A boys track and field state championship in Columbia. The Eagles won by a whopping 36 points despite having just three event winners – Alex Macias (pole vault), Desmond Gailard (triple jump) and Dexter Ratliff (discus).
May 12-13
1862: Beaufort’s Robert Smalls steals the CSS Planter and delivers the ship to the Union Navy. The three white crew members – Capt. C.J. Relyea, pilot Samuel H. Smith and engineer Zerich Pitcher – went ashore in Charleston, leaving Smalls, the ship’s wheelman, and the enslaved crew members unattended. Around 3 a.m., Smalls and his crew fired up the ship’s boilers and sailed to a wharf to pick up their waiting family members, then sailed past Confederate forces at Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie. Smalls, impersonating the captain, wearing his wide-brimmed straw hat to hide his face, used the proper coded signals at two Confederate checkpoints, including at Fort Sumter itself, and other defense positions. When the Planter cleared the Confederate defenses, just before dawn, Smalls raised a white flag and delivered the ship – and its 17 Black passengers (nine men, five women and three children) – to the blockading Union fleet.
— Compiled by Mike McCombs
