Days of Thunder is a 1990 American sports action drama film produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and directed by Tony Scott. The film stars Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Cary Elwes, Caroline Williams, and Michael Rooker. It also features appearances by real life NASCAR racers, such as Richard Petty, Rusty Wallace, Neil Bonnett, and Harry Gant. Commentator Dr. Jerry Punch, of ESPN, has a cameo appearance, as does co-producer Don Simpson.
Margie Velma Barfield was an American serial killer who was convicted of one murder, but who eventually confessed to six murders in total. Barfield was the first woman in the United States to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment and the first since 1962. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.
The Communist Workers' Party (CWP) was a far-left Maoist group in the United States. It had its origin in 1973 as the Asian Study Group established by Jerry Tung, a former member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) who had grown disenchanted with the group and disagreed with changes taking place in the party line. The party is mainly remembered as being associated with victims of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979.
3: The Dale Earnhardt Story is a 2004 American biographical drama television film directed by Russell Mulcahy, written by Robert Eisele, and starring Barry Pepper as NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt. It chronicles Earnhardt's life from his humble upbringing in Kannapolis, North Carolina, throughout his career racing automobiles to include his rise to dominance in NASCAR, culminating with his death in the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. Its central theme focuses on the relationship between him and his father, Ralph Earnhardt, as well as the relationship between him and his youngest son, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Wendell Oliver Scott was an American stock car racing driver. He was the first African-American driver and team owner to compete and win in all divisions of NASCAR at its highest level.
Susie Marshall Sharp was an American jurist who served as the first female chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. She was not the first woman to head the highest court in a U.S. state, but is believed to be the first woman elected to such a post in a state, like North Carolina, in which the position is elected by the people separately from that of Associate Justice. In 1965, Lorna E. Lockwood became the first female chief justice of a state supreme court, but in Arizona, the Supreme Court justices elect their chief justice.
Larry Grayson Smith, born in Lenoir, North Carolina, United States, was a NASCAR driver. He made his debut in the 1971 World 600 in the #92 Ford, finishing 22nd. He would go on to run three more races that year, acquiring one top-ten finish. In 1972, he was named the first NASCAR Winston Cup Rookie of the Year, running 23 races and posting seven top-ten finishes. The next year, he finally acquired major sponsorship, from Carling Black Label.
Davis Miller is an American author, notable for a series of works that combine reportage and autobiography. Miller's books include The Tao of Muhammad Ali and The Tao of Bruce Lee: a martial arts memoir, both of which have been number-one bestsellers in the United Kingdom and Japan, as well as The Zen of Muhammad Ali: and other obsessions, a collection of personal essays, memoir and short fiction that was published exclusively in the U.K., where it was a number-eight bestseller. His most recent book is Approaching Ali: A Reclamation in Three Acts, which was published on 1 March 2016 in the United States and the United Kingdom, and on 3 September 2016 as En Busca de Muhammad Ali in Spain. His story 'My Dinner with Ali' was judged one of the twenty best magazine stories of the 20th Century.
Raymond Lee "Friday" Hassler was a NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series driver.
Lieth Peter Von Stein was an American businessman whose murder launched a high-profile trial in North Carolina. The case became the subject of two books and two television films.
Robert Lindsey is a journalist and author of several true crime books, including The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage (1979) and A Gathering of Saints: A True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit (1988).
The non-fiction novel is a literary genre that, broadly speaking, depicts non-fictional elements, such as real historical figures and actual events, woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.
Jimmie Lewallen was an American stock car racing driver from High Point, North Carolina, USA. He competed in NASCAR's Strictly Stock/Grand National division from its first race at Charlotte Speedway in 1949 until 1960.
Sylvia Jean Wilkinson is an American author.
The World's Number One, Flat-Out, All-Time Great Stock Car Racing Book is a non-fiction book on early stock car racing published in 1975 by Doubleday.
Barbara Stager is an American woman who was convicted in 1989 of murdering her husband, Russell Stager, in 1988. Russell was shot while in bed; Barbara reported the shooting as accidental. Her first husband also died under similar circumstances.
Henry Neil Castles was an American NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series driver. He raced from 1957 to 1976, and won the NASCAR Grand National East Series in 1972.
Roy Hall, known as "Rapid Roy" and "Reckless Roy", was a pioneering American stock car racing driver, who achieved success in the early days of the sport driving cars owned by Raymond Parks and prepared by Red Vogt. Hall was also involved in the moonshine trade in north Georgia in the 1930s and 1940s and would compete in three events in the NASCAR Strictly Stock Series shortly following its formation.
Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder (1988) is a non-fiction crime tragedy written by American author Jerry Bledsoe that reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Bitter Blood is composed of various newspaper articles and personal eyewitness accounts of several homicides in 1984 and 1985. The setting for the majority of the book is Rockingham County and Guilford County in rural North Carolina.
In the Best of Families: Marriage, Pride & Madness is a two-part American television miniseries directed by Jeff Bleckner and written by Robert L. Freedman, based on the 1988 non-fiction book Bitter Blood by Jerry Bledsoe. The true crime story stars Kelly McGillis and Harry Hamlin as Susie and Fritz, a couple who, as a result of a custody battle between Susie and her ex-husband Tom, carry out a series of murders across North Carolina and Kentucky in the 1980s.
