The 75 moments that most shaped Dallas-Fort Worth over the last 75 years

75. The Leaning Tower of Dallas refuses to fall over

They were the best of times, and they preceded the worst of times.

On Feb. 16, 2020, mere weeks before the outbreak of a global pandemic (and the government regulations that followed) would force us all indoors for what felt like (and almost was) an eternity, a routine building demolition gone awry captured a nation's befuddlement and the heart of a region.

Construction projects like this one happen all the time in Dallas, a city where cranes frequently fill the negative spaces between our skyline's towering edifices. But this demo was no ordinary job. This was an all-out snafu.

A company called Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition had been hired to knock down the vacant buildings on a property at the intersection of the Central Expressway and Haskell Avenue to make way for the latest in a long line of billion-dollar mixed-used developments promising to crop up across the city in recent memory. But one building -- one beautifully stubborn building -- refused to tumble. Not all the way, anyway.

For two weeks, the building simply would not relent. No matter the cockamamie solution its mercenary adversaries threw against it, the so-called "Leaning Tower of Dallas" stood firm. And, in what turned out to be the last bastion of unity and good this region would share for some time, the community rallied around it. People traveled far and wide to see it. They posed for pictures, pretending to be holding it up -- an homage to the must-take picture tourists always take of the Pisa tower that inspired this one's name. Advertising agencies projected guerilla campaigns onto its walls. 

On its 15th day, the city's newfound, if only temporary, false idol finally rested.  The tower that had for so long resisted succumbed and crumbled -- and ever-so-slowly, like a lingering wave goodbye. 

At last, the crews of Lloyd D. Nabors Demolition had won. And Dallas' pre-pandemic innocence was lost forever. -- Pete Freedman

74. Mariano Martinez invents the frozen margarita machine

Dallas restaurateur Mariano Martinez made history on May 11, 1971.

He was trying to get his upstart Mariano’s Hacienda restaurant off the ground and was facing a problem. Sure, the joint was packed, but his bartenders couldn’t keep up with demand for frozen margaritas. It didn't help that the staff only had one blender behind the bar. Making matters worse was the fact that it kept crapping out on them.

His staff threatened to quit. His clients complained about the quality of the libations the bartenders were producing.

Martinez needed a fix -- and fast. And on his way home from the restaurant that night, he had a eureka moment. Stopping off a 7-Eleven store, he saw the convenience store's Slurpee machines serving smooth, frozen drinks.

In that moment, it all came together for Martinez. Determined to follow 7-Eleven's lead, he bought an old soft-serve ice cream machine and tweaked it to fit his needs. 

It worked like a charm.

Suddenly, his staff could pour perfect frozen margaritas, every single time, with the simple pull of a lever. Fifty-plus years later, Martinez's restaurant -- as well as countless others who took notice of his invention -- still serves frozen margs the same way.

"Everybody thought I was crazy when I did it, and they told me it wouldn't work," Martinez told WFAA in a Feb. 2024 interview. "And now it's all over the world."

Martinez’s original frozen margarita machine is now a piece of treasured history -- and not just here in North Texas, either. 

If you ever find yourself in Washington, D.C., you can see it for yourself. It's on permanent display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. -- Krista Summerville

73. Rare cobblestone ice causes chaos in 2013

As if normal ice wasn’t a struggle enough for North Texans to handle on the roadways each winter, drivers were introduced to a dangerous and damaging new foe in December of 2013. 

Ah, yes: Cobblestone ice.

The term was created after multiple inches of snow and sleet covered the roadways across Dallas-Fort Worth, and then stayed there until the following day when temps reached above freezing. Then, at that point, the sun came out to thaw some of the roadways, creating slush that cars, trucks and snow plows could roll through confidently enough. And then that all changed over night, as the slush turned frozen again in a cycle that repeated a couple of times over until there were cobblestone-like formations of ice on the roadways. 

It created a travel nightmare for anyone looking to brave the freezing temps and drive on the North Texas roadways. 

We all know that Yankees love to scoff at the way Texans deal with wintry conditions on our roads. But the numbers in this case are tough to argue with: By the time North Texas' cobblestone ice finally melted away, the phenomenon was said to have cost North Texans some $30 million in damages. -- Zachary Yanes

72. DART's light rail debuts in 1996

In 1996, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) opened the first two lines of its light rail system -- the very first train system of its kind in the American Southwest. 

The initial 11.2 miles of rail laid down as part of DART's Blue and Red lines were built to connect downtown Dallas to South Oak Cliff and to West Oak Cliff. 

Since then, DART has only grown, adding two additional lines to its web (the Green Line in 2009 and the Orange Line in 2010), with a fifth line (the Silver Line, or as it's sometimes referred, the Cotton Belt Rail Line) scheduled to open for riders in 2026.

Almost 30 years after its debut, DART's rail system now serves about 64,500 passengers every weekday. It's popular these days for local municipalities to complain about funding the agency and bemoan its low usage rate, but DART's rail service boasts the sixth-highest ridership of light rail systems in the U.S. -- Paul Wedding

71. A Rowlett mother snaps and kills her children

It happened in a quiet suburban neighborhood: Two little boys were brutally stabbed to death, and the killer was their own mother. It's among the most compelling criminal cases in Dallas-Fort Worth history, and it all started on June 6, 1996, when Darlie Routier made a 911 call to Rowlett police. 

Even to this day, it's hard to listen to the tape of that call.

"Oh my God, my babies are dying," she said. "Someone came in while we were asleep, and me and my little babies were sleeping downstairs, and someone came in and stabbed my babies. I woke up and my babies are dying. They are dead. Oh my God. Who would do this?"

She sounded distraught. And rightly so: Her 6-year-old son Devon and her 5-year-old son Damon were dead. To hear Routier put it on that call, their family was attacked by an intruder -- for no apparent reason.

"The children were attacked first according to her," said Toby Shook, one of the investigators assigned to the case. "[She said] he woke up with a man on top of her. [But] the stab wounds were so inconsistent. The children were impaled basically with a knife. It went all the way through, where hers was a superficial wound across her neck."

Police almost immediately questioned Routier's story.  

"She claimed that she was awakened by a man, and he had tried to stab her and had sliced her throat, and that she couldn’t remember his face," Shook said. "He was right over her face, but she had amnesia when it came to what he looked like."

But police said nothing was taken from the home, either. In fact, they came to believe the entire crime scene was staged.

"There were all types of watches and rings placed out in the kitchen on counter that this supposed killer missed," Shook said. "It was supposed to be a burglary, but nothing was taken."

Not only that, but police said the murder weapon was found at the scene -- with Routier's fingerprints on it. 

On that initial 911 call, Routier mentions the knife. She tells the operator it's lying on the floor. When the operator tells her not to touch it, Routier says it's too late; she already did.

"What was clear was the evidence, circumstantially," Shook said. "We had a very strong case. We called 38 witnesses and put out information that the crime scene had been tampered with."

Routier was charged with capital murder just days after the attacks. In a press conference, the Rowlett police chief said that investigators believed that the man Routier described as attacking her family never existed, and that Routier's wounds were self-inflicted.

Routier showed little emotion in the trial. Prosecutors said the most animated she seemed throughout the process was when she expressed concern about her hair not being done the night before her testimony. She was found guilty and sentenced to death. 

To this day, her family -- including her husband and her newborn baby, who were upstairs inside the house at the time of the boys' murders -- has maintained Routier's innocence and filed appeals for new trials, claiming that DNA that will eventually clear her name.

But prosecutors claimed to have tested 100 DNA samples from the scene. And they said it all belonged to Routier and her boys. 

So Routier continues to sit on death row, awaiting execution. 

All these years later, WFAA reached out to Routier for an interview about her case. She declined. -- Rebecca Lopez

70. Ethan Couch "affluenza" case causes frenzy

A fatal drunk driving accident involving a teenage North Texas driver became an international sensation in 2013 when defense lawyers came up with a unique defense for their client.

They called it "affluenza."

It was a tragic story, really. At 16 years old, Ethan Couch killed four people and injured at least nine others while driving under the influence on June 15, 2013. He crashed his father’s truck into a group of people who were helping a woman whose car had broken down on the side of the road in Burleson. People sitting in the bed of his truck were ejected onto the road in that same moment.

Investigators would later say they Couch had been caught on camera earlier in the night stealing beer from a local Walmart and drinking at a party he hosted at his home. When officials apprehended Couch hours after the crash, they said his blood alcohol level was .24 -- three times the legal limit in Texas. 

Couch's case never went to trial. Instead, he pleaded guilty to four counts of intoxication manslaughter and two counts of intoxication assault.

But, during sentencing, the media frenzy truly began.

Couch's attorneys said that the teen suffered from "affluenza" -- a psychological illness spurred by privileged or wealthy upbringing -- and argued that Judge Jean Boyd should consider a lenient sentence. They said Couch lacked a moral compass and didn't know right from wrong due to his family's wealth.

Rather than allow his fate to be decided by a jury, the lawyers left Boyd to determine his sentencing. Prosecutors had asked the juvenile court judge for 20 years of prison time for the defendant. The air was sucked out of the courtroom when Boyd gave Couch a much lighter sentence -- just 10 years probation.

The story went viral in the days and weeks that followed. The attention further crested when a probation officer tried to contact Couch to hammer out the specifics of his punishment, only to find that he and his mother Tonya had disappeared. 

A little over two weeks after they went missing, both were captured in Mexico. Authorities were able to track them down after they'd made a phone call to order pizza.

The mother and son were then brought back to the States, and Tonya was charged with money laundering and preventing the capture of a fugitive. An adult court -- and a different judge this time -- then ordered Ethan Couch to serve 720 days in jail, or 180 days for each person he killed, for violating his probation.

Couch served his time in jail and was released in April 2018. He went back to jail for a day in January 2020, however, when he broke his probation terms for failing a drug test. He finally finished his probation on Dec. 10, 2023.

His mother, meanwhile, has been in and out of jail for bond violations over the years. But she has still not gone to trial on the charges connected to her fleeing to Mexico with her son. -- Paul Livengood

69. 1310-AM The Ticket is founded in 1994

On the morning of Jan. 24, 1994, an outspoken local newspaper columnist settled in behind the microphone at Dallas' all-new, all-sports radio station. 

The background noise of North Texas sports would never be the same.

Yes, Skip Bayless -- the one and only -- spoke the first words ever uttered on 1310 AM "The Ticket." The irony, of course, is that Bayless' brash and hot-take-fueled style -- later made famous (or infamous) on ESPN and Fox Sports -- isn't really what would eventually make The Ticket The Ticket.

It was former rock radio DJ Mike Rhyner (most notably of KZEW beforehand) who had the idea to bring an all-sports talk format to Dallas. But Rhyner and his longtime colleagues at The Ticket quickly determined that they couldn't just stick to the hardcore Xs and Os of sports to succeed. They had to have some personality to go along with it, and listeners instantly connected with hosts of shows such as "The Musers" (Craig Miller, George Dunham and Gordon Keith) and "The Hardline" (featuring Rhyner and his on-air partner Gregg Williams).

The Ticket soon became a North Texas radio ratings giant, and it's stayed on that perch for three decades now -- even amid some turmoil and change in recent years, including the retirement of Rhyner, who later tried and failed to start a competing station. 

Even after more than 30 years on the air, The Ticket still manages to live up to its mantra: "We can do what they can do, but they can't do what we can do." -- Ryan Osborne

68. Tornado rips through downtown Fort Worth at the turn of the century

Those who lived through it can never forget it. 

Even more than 20 years after a tornado ripped through Fort Worth's downtown, memories of this springtime storm are a powerful reminder of just how destructive tornadoes can be in North Texas. 

Meteorologists forecasted a big storm on March 28, 2000, but no one expected the E-3 tornado to directly hit the heart of the city. In all, the storm killed two people and injured 80 more. High rises were ripped open, and glass was blown out of windows. Witnesses described huge buildings shaking while they sought cover in stairwells. One witness told WFAA that downtown buildings were swaying like a ship at sea as the wind barreled through the city. 

Downtown was hit hard, but the Linwood neighborhood west of downtown was truly devastated. The storm left the neighborhood mostly stagnant for over a decade until a recent housing boom reshaped it. Investments took the ruins of a massive storm and turned the area into a premier housing destination within a rapidly growing Fort Worth. 

While the buildings have been repaired, the memory of the tornado lingers as proof that severe weather can have a life-changing impact anytime, anywhere and on anyone. -- Rachel Behrndt

67. Deep Ellum navigates mythic (and unavoidable) ups and downs

There is no place like it. It may sit in the shadow of downtown Dallas. But Deep Ellum is the star of the show.

Where the train tracks crossed in the late 1800s, Deep Ellum was born. 

"We were literally a crossroads -- a nexus of commerce, but also culture, where people dared to race-mix," says Deep Ellum Foundation Executive Director Hudiburg. "Freedmen and foreigners who could not work downtown, they worked here."

As these cultures intermingled, Deep Ellum became a hub for entertainment, too. And music. Especially music. 

The blues came first in the 1910s and '20s. Iconic musicians like Lead Belly, Blind Lemon Jefferson and even the mythic Robert Johnson cultivated their legend while playing on street corners and in the many vaudeville theaters that popped up around the neighborhood. 

Then, in the '80s came... well, something else.

"It was like a secret," says Jeffrey Liles, who currently works as the artistic director at the Kessler Theater and the Longhorn Ballroom. "It was the best kept secret."

Liles knows it well. He'd go on to spend much of his adult life working as a booking agent, a filmmaker, a producer and a musician. But that creative spark was lit while growing up in the neighborhood he was born in.

He was raised on stories of Deep Ellum's reputation as a counter-culture hub -- one that had reinvented itself several times over. And he was among the change agents in the '80s who cultivated a new scene centered around rock and punk music at venues like the Theater Gallery, the Prophet Bar and Trees.

"They took these empty warehouses and turned them into night spots," Liles said of himself and his peers. "Down here, you played your own music. You didn't play someone else's music. [Bands] would come out here and play, and -- boom! -- it'd be full."

Mike Snider is the owner of the AllGood Cafe, a comfort food joint he's operated since 2000. It serves as something of a community meeting center around meal time -- people from all walks of Dallas, and all stripes of Deep Ellum, gather here and break bread, sometimes with a musician plucking away on a guitar on the stage in the corner. 

Snider booked shows here in the '80s and '90s, too. He remembers that era as off the books, off the radar and even a little off the handle.

"The cops drove right by our place every single night," Snider says with a nostalgic chuckle. "They had no idea what we were doing."

People make their own way in Deep Ellum. They always have.

By the '90s, Deep Ellum was once again getting internationally recognized for its music. Nirvana, Radiohead, Pearl Jam -- all the biggest names of the era played Deep Ellum at some point. Locals rocketed out of the local scene, too: Bands like The Reverend Horton Heat, Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians, Toadies, Tripping Daisy and the Old 97's not only played their hometown venues, but toured the country spreading the Deep Ellum music gospel.

"This is the place where people come to cut their teeth and make their dreams come true," Hudiburg says. 

It's well-known Dallas lore that Mark Cuban started Broadcast.com in Deep Ellum, launching a career that would one day make him a billionaire and the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Fewer know that Ford's Model T was first built here. 

Deep Ellum has a tendency to come at Dallas in waves.

"It has gone through these phases of being really popular, and everything closes all at once," Liles says.

Also painted into Deep Ellum's lore are some not-so-great moments. Stories of violence, crime, shootings, economic struggles, even a brief run-in with skinhead groups roaming the streets. Hudiburg has heard all the complaints. Her job with the nonprofit Deep Ellum Foundation is centered around preserving and growing Deep Ellum. That starts with keeping it safe, she says.

"There have been several points where something's happened or crime has caused the area to dip," Hudiburg says. "And like a phoenix, it rises from the ashes."

Deep Ellum's biggest advocates argue that bad things can -- and do -- happen everywhere. Their real fear is when change is influenced from outside the area. 

"Once the city realizes it's a potential cash cow, then they start looking for ways to make money off of it," Liles says. "The clock starts ticking. Ultimately what they do is squeeze out the creatives, the musicians, all the artists."

Gentrification has historically been a four-letter word in this part of town. Snider remembers the last time the city and developer types tried to exert its influence on the neighborhood back around the turn of the millennium. It's not a fond memory.

"It f***** it up," he says. "All these places closed."

These days, though, Deep Ellum is in a resurgence of a different kind. There's new development, and new high-rises. But Snider feels different about this iteration of change.

"They're customers for me," he says. "Bring 'em on."

As for young creatives and the music they make? It hasn't gone anywhere.

"There's young kids coming up now having their own underground experience in Deep Ellum," Liles says.

There's so much to this part of town. You just have to dig deeper than you know to find the really good stuff. And, then, just when you think you've figured it out, there it goes evolving again. Some things never change.

Says Hudibirg: "Deep Ellum is the soul of Dallas." -- Jobin Panicker

66. The Rudy Kos scandal rocks the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas found itself embroiled in a major scandal in 1997 when a jury awarded $120 million to victims in a sex abuse case against it.

The case predated a similar controversy within the Archdiocese of Boston that would go on to be featured in the 2015 film "Spotlight". These local horrors centered around Rudolph Kos, a priest in the diocese who was accused of sexually abusing nine altar boys under his watch across three separate Dallas parishes in the mid '80s through the early '90s, with the first suit against him being filed in 1993.

The diocese would later settle their appeal of the 1997 civil trial's verdict by agreeing to pay $23.4 million to eight former altar boys and the family a ninth who had committed suicide at 21 years old after years of alleged abuse.

In 1998, Kos was then convicted of three counts of aggravated sexual assault in a criminal trial that represented the first time evidence of abuse by a Catholic priest was presented in a U.S. criminal court. Kos received a life sentence for each of those counts, and is still serving his prison time today.

The case eroded trust in the church. Documentation revealed that officials within the diocese had grown concerned about Kos' behavior as early as 1988. It also shows that the church removed Kos from ministry in 1992 and sent him to California for treatment after a therapist told diocesan officials that an evaluation revealed him to be a "classic textbook pedophile." 

Still, the church never involved the authorities, and never admitted fault to the families of the victims, until forced to do so by the courts. 

As the work of the Boston Globe journalists whose work was featured in "Spotlight" would later show, the Rudy Kos case was just one example of a pattern of sexual abuse and subsequent coverups that existed at a number of large dioceses across the nation. -- Paul Wedding

65. Dallas Cowboys build The Star in Frisco, kicking off billions in new development in the northern Dallas suburb

The exponential growth of Frisco has long been commented on. 

Today, the Dallas "suburb" is home to high-rise office buildings and huge entertainment venues. But nothing spurred on the cultural cache of Frisco quite like the city becoming the home of the Dallas Cowboys organization. 

In 2016, the Cowboys organization officially moved its offices to the Star in Frisco from its former Valley Ranch home in Irving. Most organizations would have stopped at building a new headquarters and practice facility -- but, no, that wasn't enough for Jerry Jones and America's Team. 

In all, the Cowboys brought $1.5 billion in investment to The Star, delivering on their promise that the 91-acre development would be far more than cubicles housing front office employees. Today, The Stars is one of North Texas' preeminent destinations for shopping, restaurants and hotels. 

The Star's impact doesn't stop at its borders, though. Its construction kickstarted the so-called "$5 Billion Mile" along Dallas North Tollway, reshaping Frisco -- and arguably the whole of North Texas -- in the process. -- Rachel Behrndt

64. New Year's Eve ice storm hits North Texas in 1978 

On Dec. 31, 1978, a severe ice storm descended upon Texas, its havoc stretching across much of the state. North Texas was no exception.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth region, below-freezing temperatures immediately froze a heavy downpour of rain as soon as it hit the ground, solidifying a thick layer of ice on every surface it touched within the blink of an eye.

The storm left one to two inches of ice over most of the state, including in Dallas County, where around 300,000 residents were left without electricity as heavy sheets of ice weighed down power lines. 

Recovery efforts were slowed in the days following the storm as North Texas saw temperatures reach as low as 11 degrees, making it nearly impossible for crews to break up the ice that was still left on the power lines and roadways.

For some, the power outages lasted up to 10 days.

The storm cost Dallas County millions in damages, and saw thousands of North Texans treated for ice-related injuries too. -- Zach Yanes

63. Chili's is founded in 1975 on Greenville Avenue

Larry Lavine wasn't trying to reinvent an industry. But, in the end, he kind of did.

The young restauranteur surveyed the 1970s landscape of Dallas restaurants and saw two types of places: fine-dining establishments and cafes. OK, there were fast food joints, too, but very little in the way of in-between options.

He yearned for something nice, but not expensive. Somewhere you could grab a burger and a drink without breaking the bank.

And so Lavine and his business partners Malloy Buckner and John Foshee eyed an old converted post office at Greenville Avenue and Meadow Road. They needed a name for this new venture, and they turned to their menu for inspiration. Their eyes fixated on the chili.

Hey, maybe "Chili's" would work?

That's a name "people would talk about," Lavine remembered thinking at the time. "People don't talk about spaghetti and meatballs."

And thus Chili's was born. The chain that would later become famous for baby back ribs kept it simple in the beginning: It served the titular chili, plus burgers, fries and tacos to go with 75-cent beers and $1.50 margaritas. Later, they'd add fajitas and nachos, upping the spot's Mexican flair.

Chili's would eventually explode in growth as a national chain in the 1980s when it was purchased by Brinker International, which remains headquartered in North Texas to this day. Lavine left the company around the same time, but has stayed a fan. 

When we talked to him in 2022 for a story about the Chili's founding and subsequent growth, Lavine told us he had recently stopped by one of the chain's 1,600 still-operating locations just to check it out. 

As he had in 1975, he kept it simple.

"I had a burger," Lavine said, "which was still very good. They're doing a good job with their burgers." -- Ryan Osborne

62. Dallas County welcomes first same-sex marriages

When the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, George Harris got a phone call.

His longtime partner, Jack Evans, asked how fast he could get to the courthouse. 

“I don’t want to break the speed limit,” Harris recalled saying.

After 54 years together, the pair -- long known by their friends and community as simply “Jack and George” -- were finally able to make their partnership official in the eyes of the law. They were among the first same-sex couples to be married in Dallas County. 

The clerk let them skip the line -- because, Harris recalled, he said they'd waited the longest.

“It was pure bedlam down there -- just hundreds and hundreds of people,” Harris said, looking back on that day nearly a decade later. “I didn’t think the Supreme Court was going to rule in our favor. It was shocking.”

A few floors away, Judge Tonya Parker was having trouble managing her docket. The room just kept getting louder and louder.

"People were coming from everywhere," she said. "It was incredible."

Her fellow judges assembled in her jury box as a show of support. Parker, who is gay herself, had made headlines years prior for declining to perform marriages for anyone until she could do so for everyone.

"This wasn’t for personal reasons; it’s because of what I believe about the law," she said. "Fundamentally, it’s all about equal protection under the law."

Once the highest court in the land decided that everyone could indeed get married, her colleagues decided that she should be the first among them to perform a same-sex ceremony. 

Neither Parker nor any of her peers had ever done one before.

“I was so nervous,” she recalled. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Thankfully, her first ceremony went off without a hitch. That day -- June 26, 2015 – remains one of Parker's favorite on the bench.

“The people that I looked at in this room were people who felt that they had finally been validated as full Americans,” she said.

As for Harris, he still proudly displays his marriage certificate on his wall. He said he still thinks about that day often -- and of his husband, who would die just three days before the pair could celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

"He taught me how to love," Harris said. "And I think that that’s the greatest gift you can ever give to anybody." -- Cole Sullivan

61. Mary Kay Cosmetics turns North Texas pink

When you think of Mary Kay, you probably think makeup and pink Cadillacs. But the company Mary Kay Ash founded in Dallas is so much more than that. It provided women with an opportunity to achieve financial independence and pursue their dreams.

In 1963, at the age of 45, Mary Kay Ash founded her eventual namesake company. It was originally called Beauty by Mary Kay, with all of its products are created, developed and packaged in Dallas.

Ash herself pioneered the concept of direct selling, allowing women to build their own businesses by selling Mary Kay products straight to consumers.

Mary Kay went public in 1968, using the proceeds to expand and add manufacturing and distribution facilities, including the company’s first manufacturing facility on Regal Row in Dallas.

By then, the iconography of the brand was already well established: Ash ordered her first pink Cadillac Coupe Deville -- meant to match her lip and eye palette -- from a North Texas dealership in 1967.

The Mary Kay Building opened as the company’s global headquarters in Addison in 1995.

Ash passed away on Nov. 22, 2001, but her legacy lives on at the Mary Kay Museum located at her company's headquarters. Her grandson, Ryan Rogers, became CEO of the company in 2023.

Today, the company operates in more than 40 countries worldwide, with millions of independent beauty consultants still representing the Dallas-sprung brand more than 60 years on from its launch. -- Krista Summerville

60. In a career and life turning point, Tina Turner finds refuge at a Dallas hotel in 1976

Tina Turner earned her nickname of "The Queen of Rock 'n" Roll." After all, she taught Mick Jagger how to dance and inspired artists from David Bowie to Beyoncé.

Her career began as she was just a teenager when she linked up with her future husband Ike Turner and started singing in his band. For years, she suffered his abusive, controlling behavior for years, believing she needed him to keep her music industry dreams alive.

Then, one night in Dallas, she finally broke free. 

On July 3, 1976, Turner left a sleeping Ike at the Statler Hilton Hotel and dashed across I-30 to find refuge at a Ramada Inn.

Many say that separation from Ike was the pivotal moment that further launched an already promising career. Her celebrity and star certainly only grew from there. Turner would go on to record timeless and Grammy-winning songs in the years that would follow, among them "Better Be Good to Me", "Simply the Best" and "What’s Love Got to Do with It."

These days, the building that once housed that Ramada Inn operates as the Lorenzo Hotel. Turner's portrait is prominently displayed at the front of the main lobby, and the 11th floor room where she stayed for three days in 1976 has been branded as "Escape" and is decorated in honor of the musical icon. Inside the room, you'll find a wall lined with photos of Turner, pillowcases with her face on them and even quotes from the music legend written on the ceiling.

Turner eventually did find healthy love. She was married to her longtime partner Erwin Bach for 10 years before her death on May 24, 2023. She was 83 years old when she lost her life to a long battle with illness at her home in Switzerland. 

In Dallas and at the Lorenzo Hotel, however, her legacy continues to live on. -- Krista Summerville

59. NASCAR comes to DFW as Texas Motor Speedway opens in 1996

In November of 1994, Speedway Motorsports' Bruton Smith (the father of current CEO Marcus Smith) and racing promoter Eddie Gossage announced that they'd chosen a plot of land at the intersection of I-35W and Texas State Highway 114 in Tarrant County as the home of a new, 1.5-mile speedway that they hoped would soon become a major auto racing destination.

Their effort broke ground in April 1995, and opened just over a year later in August 1996. By April 1997, their Texas Motor Speedway was hosting NASCAR races.

The first such event ever held at the track -- the 1997 Interstate Batteries 500 -- started out with a bang: Thirteen cars crashed in the very first turn of the race's very first lap. Jeff Burton eventually took the checkered flag in that inaugural race for the first win in his career after 95 starts. 

The first IndyCar series race at TMS -- also held in 1997 -- was won by Arie "The Flying Dutchman"  Luijendijk. But that win came with some controversy: Luyendyk protested an apparent win for Billy Boat, and officials investigated the protest and made their decision the next day, stripping Boat of the win and declaring Luyendyk the winner due to malfunctioning timing and scoring equipment.

Smith died in 2022 and Gossage passed away earlier this year, but the pair established Texas Motor Speedway as a staple of the racing world that will stand for years to come. -- Paul Livengood

58. Soccer explodes in North Texas

Thanks in large part to Lamar Hunt and his offspring, Dallas-Fort Worth holds a crucial role in the annals of U.S. soccer lore.

The National Soccer Hall of Fame is in Frisco. Dallas was among the host cities for the 1994 World Cup, the highest-attended in FIFA history. And Arlington will be one of the host cities when the World Cup returns to North America in 2026. Oh, and there's also the Dallas Cup -- the most prestigious youth soccer tournament in the United States, and widely regarded as one of the most competitive in the world.

All of this was sparked by Hunt, one of the founding fathers of soccer in America. As he simultaneously owned the Kansas City Chiefs and coined the term "Super Bowl," Hunt also helped bring the 1994 World Cup to the States, which spawned the formation of Major League Soccer (MLS), in which Hunt owned three teams -- the Columbus Crew, the Kansas City Wizards (now Sporting Kansas City) and the Dallas Burn (now FC Dallas).

Continuing Lamar's legacy, his son and current FC Dallas owner Dan Hunt headed up the 2026 World Cup committee that will once again put North Texas in the international soccer spotlight.

The 2026 World Cup will be the biggest soccer tournament in FIFA history, with its field expanding from the traditional 32 to 48 qualifying teams. Back in March, regional leaders estimated that four 2026 World Cup matches could bring in approximately $415 million in economic impact to the area. In the end, FIFA awarded AT&T Stadium a total of nine tournament matches – including one of two semifinals. That's more than any other 2026 World Cup venue will host.

And thanks to the decades of work the Hunt family spent turning North Texas into a hub for soccer, it's safe to say that's no accident. -- Paul Livengood

57. Candy Montgomery murders Betty Gore in Wylie

It was a brutal ax killing that shocked the small North Texas town of Wylie in 1980.

Candy Montgomery killed Betty Gore by slicing her 41 times with an ax following a confrontation about Montgomery's months-long affair with Gore's husband. Montgomery never served any jail time, either. In her trial, she claimed self-defense, saying Gore came at her with the ax first. The jury, consisting of nine women and three men, took just three hours to return a not guilty verdict in the case.

Still, the story's notoriety never faded. More than 40 years after that gruesome killing, it became the focus of dueling, limited-run true crime TV series: Hulu’s "Candy" starring Jessica Biel and HBO Max’s "Love and Death" starring Elizabeth Olsen. Each looks back at the harrowing tale of two churchgoing couples enjoying small-town family life until that fateful Friday the 13th of June 1980. 

In 2009, WFAA spoke with several Wylie residents about their recollections of the murder that rocked their community. People there still talk about the house where it all went down. 

Turns out, it's not easy turning a house where an ax murder took place into a home. For years, kids avoided the property on Halloween. Conversely, whenever a Friday the 13th rolls around, curious thrill-seekers drive down the block to steal a glance at where the horror they'd seen on screen actually happened.

Some have made an effort at turning around the property's reputation -- to varying degrees of success. Rumor has it that most of the married couples who've owned the house since the murder have gone on to get a divorce.

Try as folks might to cover up the past, it always remains buried beneath.

Said Lester Gayler, the next-door neighbor who found Gore's body, when we interviewed him in 2009: "If you went over there today, and you pulled up the linoleum in the utility room, you would see ax marks on the concrete. And not just one." -- Paul Livengood 

56.  The worst fire in Dallas history leads to reforms

The worst fire in Dallas history is known not only for its steep human cost but also for the changes it brought about for firefighters and their families. 

The fire began on a cold February night in 1964, right in the heart of downtown Dallas. It was just a few months after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and the city was still a pariah in the country's eyes. 

In the darkness, the Golden Pheasant -- a once well-known steakhouse -- went up in flames. About 750 firefighters responded to the scene in all. 

Four of them would die by the end of the night. 

While firefighters were inside the building battling the flames, the floor of the restaurant collapsed. James Bigham, Jerry Henderson, James Gresham and Ronald Manley became trapped in the basement. Fellow firefighters frantically dug, but by the time the men were found, it was too late. 

These days, all that remains of the Golden Pheasant is a parking lot that sits where the restaurant once stood near the flagship Nieman Marcus store. 

The incident left an indelible mark not just on Dallas, but on the lives of firefighters across the country. To this day, the Golden Pheasant fire serves as a lesson used to educate firefighters about safety precautions. It also works as a tangible example in establishing better compensation for the families of dead firefighters. It prompted a movement to install fire alarms and sprinklers in older buildings, too. -- Rachel Behrndt

55. Dallas elects its first Black mayor in 1995

In 1995, Dallas made history by electing its first Black mayor, Ron Kirk.

Kirk is the nephew of civil rights leader William Kirk, who worked to end segregation in the United Methodist Church. Born and raised in Austin, where he graduated from the University of Texas Law School, Kirk was politically active early in life, working for former Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen in 1981. 

In 1994, he made history by becoming the first Black person to be appointed Secretary of State of Texas. Just one year later, he’d make more history, becoming the first Black mayor of Dallas.

As mayor, Kirk pushed a forward-thinking agenda. He proposed the “Dallas Plan,” a 25-year vision for the city's future that included the controversial Trinity River Project. Kirk also pushed for the creation of Victory Park and the American Airlines Center.

In 1999, he won re-election by a landslide, earning 74% vote. But his second term would be cut short: Kirk resigned in 2002 to pursue a Senate seat that was vacated by Phil Gramm. 

While he lost the Senate election to former Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, it wasn't the end of his political career. Under President Barack Obama, Kirk was appointed as a U.S. Trade Representative in 2009. He stepped down from that position in 2013. -- Ben Sawyers

54. The Dallas Police Department is busted for fake drug scandal

In 2001, more than two dozen people -- mostly Hispanic immigrants -- were arrested under false pretenses after paid Dallas police informants planted fake drugs on them.

It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The city paid millions in settlements and made personnel changes across the police department in the wake of its coming to light.

Charges against the individuals who were set up -- many of whom were facing lengthy prison sentences before the scheme was uncovered -- were ultimately dropped. 

The informants were eventually criminally charged for their involvement in the ploy, as were four Dallas police officers who contributed to the victimization of innocent people.

In the end, though, only one of the officers was given a prison sentence. The three others were given probation.

The WFAA Investigates team's series of stories on the scandal -- called “Fake Drugs, Real Lives” -- earned a Peabody Award in 2002. -- Paul Livengood

53. Southwest Airlines melts down over 2022 holidays

It was a holiday season that many people traveling to or from the North Texas area would prefer to forget. 

In December 2022, thousands of Southwest Airlines passengers across the country were left stranded when the company canceled thousands of flights amid a winter storm that battered much of the U.S. Even worse: In many cases, these travelers were separated from their luggage, too, with little sense -- and less guidance -- as to where to find their belongings.

Other airlines faced delays as a result of the wintry conditions, but none on the level of the Dallas-based Southwest, which only had itself to blame for its issues. 

Whereas most airlines operate on a hub-and-spoke flight plan model, Southwest's flights are scheduled on a point-to-point model that, when broken by one cancellation or delay, interrupts the plans of all subsequent flights down the line. So when below-zero temperatures in Denver prevented workers from being able to properly de-ice its planes to allow for safe takeoffs, delays began compounding across the airline's network. Further adding to the bottleneck was an antiquated scheduling system -- one Southwest would later concede it was way behind on modernizing -- that made it difficult for the company to staff the flights it hoped to reschedule.

It was a total mess. 

In the end, almost 17,000 flights were canceled, almost two million passengers were impacted and almost 100,000 pieces of luggage went missing -- just in time for Christmas.

Southwest said the meltdown cost it some $1.2 billion in refunds, reimbursements and lost revenue between the last quarter of 2022 and the first two months of 2023. The airline was also forced to pay a $35 million fine as part of a $140 million agreement to settle a federal investigation into what went wrong.

In the wake of the incident, Southwest has said it's made improvements to its equipment, training procedures and overall staffing to prevent such a calamity from happening again. 

Whether that's comforting to either customers or investors is another matter. Almost two years later, shares of the once-plucky Dallas upstart have dropped 30%, and CEO Bob Jordan finds himself in a proxy battle to keep his job. -- Jay Wallis

52. 'Texas 7' escape prison, kill Irving police officer

In December 2000, a group of Texas prisoners made national news on the TV show “America’s Most Wanted” after they escaped from a maximum-security prison outside of San Antonio.

The group, known as the “Texas 7,” were on the lam for more than a month before being apprehended. While they were out, they managed to shoot and kill an Irving police officer named Aubrey Wright Hawkins as they were committing a robbery at an Oshman’s Sporting Goods. 

They stole at least 40 guns, ammo and $70,000 from the store’s safe in the process.

While one member of the group committed suicide before they could be acquitted, the other six were taken into custody, convicted and sentenced to death in the shooting death of the officer. 

Two of the seven, Randy Ethan Halprin of McKinney and Patrick Henry Murphy Jr. of Dallas, are still on Death Row awaiting execution. -- Paul Wedding

51. Gorilla is shot and killed at Dallas Zoo after rampage injures four

An evening visit to the Dallas Zoo took a wild turn for hundreds of visitors in March 18, 2004, when a gorilla escaped from its enclosure and injured four people in a rampage that ended with Dallas police officers shooting and killing the primate.

Zoo officials and Dallas police officers chased the gorilla -- a 13-year-old, 300-pound male western lowland gorilla named Jabari -- through the zoo’s award-winning Wilds of Africa exhibit for about 40 minutes before it eventually charged at the officers, who responded by firing their service weapons in self-defense.

About 300 people were evacuated from the zoo during the fracas. The injured included a mother and her toddler son. At one point during the attack, Jabari held the toddler in his mouth. The mother was injured as she tried to intervene.          

In 2009, Dallas City Council agreed to a nearly $500,000 settlement with the four people Jabari injured. -- Rachel Snyder

50. Dez catches it -- no, we promise, he really did

He did. He caught it.

Or at least we all thought he did.

It was Jan. 11, 2015, and the Dallas Cowboys were facing the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. 

Down 21-26, with 4:47 to go on the game clock and two yards needed for a fourth-down conversion, Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo launched the ball about 30 yards down the left side of the field to star receiver Dez Bryant. The hope? That his top playmaker would be able to secure the ball in one-on-one coverage.

Bryant did just that. He leapt in the air, grabbed the ball, came down with two feet in bounds and extended his arms to try to get the ball in the end zone. While he failed to break the plane of the goal line, the side judge ruled Bryant down at the one-yard line and the Cowboys' hopes of topping the Packers lived on. 

The miraculous play elicited total elation from Cowboys fans. 

Then came the booth reviews, centered around the ball popping out of Bryant's grasp after he landed near the goal line.

"It has been determined that the receiver did not maintain possession of the football," the refs said, breaking the news of the no-catch ruling. 

Those words still make Cowboys fans cringe to this day.

Making matters worse, the NFL later admitted -- a whole three years after the fact! -- that its refs made the wrong call. And, ahead of the 2018 season, the league codified a rule change aimed at guaranteeing that such an obvious missed call wouldn't happen again. 

Yay? 

Ugh. What would've happened if the refs had just made the right call in the first place? 

Maybe it's best not to fantasize. -- Zachary Yanes

49. Victory Park development expands downtown Dallas footprint, becomes home to Mavs and Stars

The Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars have called American Airlines Center home since it was built in 2001. But long before Victory Park existed, Reunion Arena was home to the teams.

Reunion Arena opened on 777 Sports Street in 1980. The first event held at the venue was a Parliament-Funkadelic concert on July 2 of that year. Over the almost three decades in operation, the venue would go on to host major acts like Michael Jackson, Prince, Van Halen and Frank Sinatra. Fun fact: The band Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” music video was even shot in Reunion Arena. 

Over the years, the arena also hosted politicians like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. And in 2008, Barack Obama filled Reunion Arena up for a campaign rally. 

That was the last event held in the venue before it was fully demolished in 2009.

Reunion Arena’s demolition was spurred by the creation of Victory Park -- a $3 billion development from Ross Perot Jr., the son of billionaire Ross Perot. Anchored by the $420 million American Airlines Center, the hope was that the new district -- once the site of a rail yard, a power plant and little else -- would be converted into a vibrant and walkable entertainment area connecting the Dallas neighborhoods of The West End and Uptown.

Whether Victory Park has ever really accomplished that aim -- or ever will -- has been a topic of hot debate in Dallas for more than 20 years now. But the development undeniably did expand the city's skyline. And since the American Airlines Center's 2001 opening, countless North Texas sports fans have visited the destination to see the Mavericks and Stars play in their no-longer-quite-new home.

Oh, and then there's this: For 14 years, WFAA also called Victory Park home. Yup, our studio was right there on Victory Plaza from 2007 until 2021. Surely, that counts for something. -- Ben Sawyers

48. Softball-sized hail pummels Fort Worth's 1995 Mayfest

North Texas is no stranger to drastic fluctuations in weather, but that variability took a historically costly toll during the annual outdoor Mayfest event in Fort Worth in 1995. 

Mayfest is a long-held tradition, having started in 1973 to raise money for the beautification of the Trinity River. The 1995 event started out like any other in the event's history -- a lovely afternoon of performances, vendors and games. But it quickly became a nightmare as softball-sized hail rained down on Fort Worth. 

The storm didn't stop there, either. It would go on to cause deadly flooding elsewhere in North Texas. 

When the storm finally cleared, it had caused 16 deaths and $2 billion in damage (equal to about $3.3 billion today). 

Over 10,000 people attended Mayfest that day, and the storm injured 400 -- 60 of those being serious injuries. 

All these years later, May 5 still marks a traumatic day in the minds of many North Texans. 

Changes prompted by the incident are still felt nationwide, too. Now, the National Weather Service and local emergency management agencies work together to prevent dangerous situations by alerting residents and outdoor event organizers alike to potentially hazardous conditions. 

As for Mayfest itself? It marches on. It's still held every May, and it continues raising thousands of dollars to improve the natural beauty of the Trinity River with each annual affair. -- Rachel Behrndt

47. The richest man in America to ever be tried for murder avoids conviction in Fort Worth mansion murder mystery

Fort Worth oil tycoon Thomas Cullen Davis was accused of killing 12-year-old Andrea Wilborn, the daughter of his ex-wife Priscilla Childers from a previous marriage, and Childers' then-boyfriend Stan Farr, who both died in an August 1976 shooting at Davis' own Stonegate Mansion residence. 

The killer was alleged to have also shot Childers herself, as well as her friend Gus Gavrel Jr., who was paralyzed for life after he happened to drive upon the scene, alongside his future wife Beverly Bass, just as Childers was staggering out of the $6 million house. (That's the equivalent of a $45 million property in 2024, for what it's worth.)

While Wilborn and Farr were killed in the shooting, Gavrel and Childers both survived and were able to give firsthand accounts of the incident to police. Childers outright told officers that her ex-husband Davis had shot her and Farr while wearing a shoulder-length black wig. Gavrel told police that he believed he was shot only after Bass noted aloud that she recognized Davis as the gunman.

Davis was arrested the night of the shooting, but he only ever faced charges for Wilborn's murder. 

In what was at the time dubbed as the "trial of the century," the prosecution relied almost entirely on eyewitness testimony to try convicting Davis, at the time the richest man in American to ever stand trial for murder. They had few other options; the killer had reportedly held the revolver with a hand inside of a plastic bag, and there was no other physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. 

The jury found Davis not guilty.

In 2016, 40 years after the murders, Davis sat down with WFAA's John McCaa for a one-on-one interview in which he reflected on the shooting -- and continued to maintain his innocence. -- Paul Wedding

46. North Texas hosts Super Bowl XLV, only for "Icemageddon" to cause chaos

It was an exciting time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area when AT&T Stadium was set to host Super Bowl XLV. With the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers set to face off on Feb. 6, 2011, the event promised to bring millions in revenue to the city of Arlington and its surrounding areas.

But what was supposed to be a momentous occasion for DFW quickly turned into a frigid disaster as sleet, snow and ice pummeled the Metroplex. A strong arctic front and heavy rains blew into North Texas, leading to six to seven inches of frozen precipitation piling up in some parts of DFW. It was among the snowiest and iciest stretches ever seen around these parts. Dallas-Love Field itself accumulated over five inches of snow from February 3 to 4, forcing a temporary shutdown of the airport and delaying travel plans for revelers who were inbound for the big game.

Events scheduled to take place surrounding the big game were either cancelled because of weather or just severely underattended due to dreary road conditions. Others saw their plug pulled as the storms knocked power out across the region. 

It got worse: Oncor Energy decided to introduce rolling blackouts in response to the outages, affecting thousands of residents. Of course, AT&T Stadium and some nearby hotels were exempt from these blackouts -- leading to outrage from customers who begrudged the special treatment.

Even with the power on, AT&T Stadium endured plenty of issues of its own that week. Seven stadium workers were injured by or because of ice at the stadium that week, and would later file suit following the disastrous event. The game itself, meanwhile, endured a ticketing fiasco that led to a second Super Bowl-related lawsuit for the NFL.

In the years since that disastrous week, area event planners have said they have "no doubt" that North Texas could successfully host a future Super Bowl if given another chance. But the fact of the matter is, more than a decade later, that opportunity still hasn't come. -- Zachary Yanes

45. State Fair of Texas icon Big Tex goes up in flames

"We've got a rather tall cowboy with all his clothes burned off" was the message one Dallas firefighter shared on his radio at 10:31 a.m. on October 19, 2012.

It was a Friday morning. The State Fair of Texas was heading into the final weekend of that year's 24-day run in Fair Park. The gates had just opened for the day. The fairgrounds weren't quite crowded yet. Only a handful of people were on hand to see the fair's iconic 52-foot-tall mascot go up in flames in person.

But, within minutes, a whole region would watch on with horror as footage of the blaze began spreading on social media. It was quite the sight: Big Tex, the state fair's giant, jovial greeter since 1951, saw his metal skeleton exposed for all to see, his Dickies outfit having been disintegrated by the flames. State fair officials would later say the fire was sparked by an electrical shortage that occurred in his right cowboy boot. 

Fully roasted, the cowboy was given a proper sendoff into his sunset that year: Big Tex's legions of fans treated the incident like the loss of a loved one; they showed up to the fairgrounds to leave flowers and wreaths as tributes to their fallen hero, and even donated their hard-earned cash to help make sure he'd be resurrected at the 2013 fair.

All worked out OK for Tex in the end. He got a $500,000 makeover and returned anew the following year, better than ever -- even three feet taller, too. 

It's true what they say: Legends never really die. -- Pete Freedman

44. Stars bring hockey to Dallas, and then win a Stanley Cup

In 1993, the NHL's Minnesota North Stars packed up their pucks and did the seemingly illogical: Just two years removed from a Stanley Cup Final appearance, they moved to Texas and rebranded themselves the Dallas Stars. 

It was an admitted bizarre decision. A hockey team in Texas? Did these puckheads have any idea what kind of climate they were entering into? 

Well, turns out, it was a fairly welcoming one.

It helped that the Stars were anchored by a legitimate, well, star. When the team moved to Dallas, it brought Mike Modano -- arguably the greatest American-born hockey player of all time -- along with them. And, just six years after having to explain terms like "icing" and "forecheck" to none-the-wiser Texans, a likeable Stars roster found the city rallying behind its back as the team made a thrilling playoff run. Even the city's music scene was fully on board: Legendary Arlington metal band Pantera caught the hockey bug bad and even went so far as to write the team a goal horn song called "Puck Off" that the team still uses to this day.

With positive vibes in spades -- and OK, some controversial refereeing that worked out in their favor -- the Stars would defeat the Buffalo Sabres in six games to win the 1999 Stanley Cup, and be forever immortalized in Dallas sports history. 

Sure, they'd return to the Final the following year and lose, but so what? If the lore is to be believed, it's entirely possible they were still hungover from the celebration they had at Pantera's house after winning it all the year prior.

Turns out, Dallas had the potential to become a hockey town all along, eh? -- Pete Freedman

43. Six Flags plants its flag in Arlington

After visiting Disneyland, Texas oilman and real estate developer Angus Wynne Jr., a graduate of UT Arlington (then North Texas Agricultural College), began planning his own amusement park -- one that would boast a uniquely Texas flair.

When Six Flags Over Texas opened on August 5, 1961, on a 105-acre plot of land between Arlington and Grand Prairie, it was the Lone Star State's very first amusement park. Its opening day drew a reported 8,374 visitors, who each entered the park gates at a cost of $2.75 per person.

The name Six Flags Over Texas -- as every good, red-blooded Texan knows -- represents the six flags to which Texas has held allegiance over the years: Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas itself, the Confederate States of America and the United States of America.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Six Flags expanded its local offerings, adding new rides and attractions. By 2011, it was reported to be the No. 1 paid tourist attraction in the southwestern U.S. 

Over time, the brand would grow beyond North Texas, too. As of 2024, the company boasted 27 amusement parks, 15 water parks and nine resort properties to its name. 

The brand further ingrained itself into the zeitgeist in 2004 with the launch of its iconic commercials featuring an "old man" busting a move to a Vengaboys' "We Like to Party" while enticin would-be parkgoers to enjoy all that Six Flags had to offer. The character of "Mr. Six", as Six Flags' ad agency dubbed him, was something of a polarizing figure throughout the 2000s. But, love him or hate him, give some credit where it's due: Riling up audiences under an abundance of makeup and prosthetics was a then-29-year-old dancer named Danny Teeson.

Who says theme park magic isn't real?

Alas, despite its deep Texas roots, Six Flags' headquarters is expected to soon leave the state where it literally earned its name. As part of a merger with fellow theme park company Cedar Fair, the combined company will eventually be headquartered in Charlotte N.C., with all of its finance and administrative operations being handled from a facility in Sandusky, Ohio.

No matter what, though, Arlington will forever be where this theme park's ride got its start. -- Krista Summerville

42. Nolan Ryan makes the Rangers relevant with no-hitters -- and a memorable beatdown

Major League Baseball arrived in North Texas in 1972, but the argument could be made it didn't truly get here until 16 years later.

That was the year when the Texas Rangers signed a 42-year-old Texas legend. 

Even 22 years into pro ball, Nolan Ryan showed no signs of aging. In his four-plus seasons in Arlington, the workhorse Ryan Express threw 840 innings and struck out 939 batters, becoming the first (and still only) pitcher to hit the 5,000-strikeout mark for his career. 

More than that, Ryan gave the Rangers an air of relevancy they hadn't previously enjoyed. And he did it on pure power – literally and figuratively. 

Ryan tossed his sixth and seventh career no-hitters as a member of the Texas Rangers, in 1990 and 1991. Perhaps even more memorably, he beat up White Sox third basemen Robin Ventura for all the world to see. 

Ventura charged the mound at a 46-year-old Ryan on Aug. 4, 1993 -- and Ryan responded by putting him in a headlock and delivering punch after punch to the 26-year-old's noggin. 

The scuffle still lives near the mountaintop of Rangers lore, behind only a World Series title. -- Ryan Osborne

41. Klyde Warren Park opens, changing the tenor of downtown Dallas

Paving paradise and turning it into a parking lot? Dallas somehow managed to do the exact opposite in 2012. 

That's when the city completed construction on Klyde Warren Park and officially welcomed residents to enjoy the new, decked greenspace it had built over a stretch of Woodall Rodgers Freeway that had previously dissected the city's core into two.

It took a reported $110 to happen, but it was worth it. Beyond the engineering feat it took to come to fruition, Klyde Warren Park immediately gave Dallas the signature outdoor community gathering space that it had for so long lacked. More than a decade later, it's still making good on that promise, serving as Dallas' go-to venue for holiday celebrations, major sporting event watch parties and even just lunchtime breaks from the nine-to-five downtown grind.

And that's to say nothing of the real estate value it added to the market by marrying Downtown Dallas with its bustling Uptown neighbor to the north.

In other words: It was worth the investment.

Oh, and speaking of that investment: It included a cool $10 million from Transfer Energy Partners CEO Kelcy Warren, who donated that cash in order to name the park for his then-10-year-old son, Klyde. The idea there? To give the younger Warren a sense of civic pride and duty; in exchange for the honor of the park bearing his name, and the guarantee of his future inheritance, Klyde was to spend one day each month helping to clean the grounds.

It's not clear whether Klyde ever made good on that deal. What is clear, however, is that Klyde Warren Park deserves every bit of the national acclaim it still receives to this day. After all, there's a reason the city is planning for two more parks modeled after it to open in the years to come. -- Pete Freedman

40. Billy Bob’s Texas, the largest honkytonk in the world, opens in Fort Worth

Word to the wise: If you're not sure the grand opening of your new music venue will happen on time, just set the opening date for April 1. Then you can claim any setbacks were all just part of an elaborate April Fool's Joke.

That's what the founders of Billy Bob's Texas did back in 1981. Fortunately for them, however, everything ran on time and their opening week went off (mostly) without a hitch while featuring the kind of headlining acts that Billy Bob's later became known for: Larry Gatlin & The Gatlin Brothers, Waylon Jennings, Janie Fricke and the one and only Willie Nelson.

Located in the heart of the Fort Worth Stockyards, Billy Bob's quickly became a staple of the Texas music scene, known as much for its grand size -- it's the largest honkytonk in the world, after all -- as for its loaded schedule.

Basically everyone who's anyone in country music has walked through Billy Bob's' swinging doors and onto its stage at some point, including George Strait, Garth Brooks and even a Beatle (Ringo Starr).

The honkytonk's run hasn't been without a hurdle or two, though. Back in 2017, a fight over the control of the business put Billy Bob's at risk of getting put up for sale. Then there was the COVID-19 pandemic, which threw a challenge at every music venue in the country.

Throughout it all, though, Billy Bob's has persevered -- and maybe even managed to get better in the process. In the last two years, the iconic venue has unveiled a series of renovations, including the removal of those pesky poles in the main showroom and a relocation of the main soundboard, improving sightlines and sound clarity.

The Billy Bob's of 2024 faces stiffer competition for the biggest names in country music, sure. Larger acts are perhaps more likely these days to play Fort Worth's Dickies Arena, American Airlines Center in Dallas or even AT&T Stadium in Arlington. 

But the Billy Bob's schedule still manages to stay packed on weekends. And, yes, they still ride bulls there every Friday night, too. -- Ryan Osborne

39. 2020 Black Lives Matter protests unfold in Dallas

George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, may have happened almost 900 miles north of Dallas-Fort Worth, but -- as was the case not just across the country, but around the globe -- it didn't take long for its shockwaves to reach North Texas. 

In both Dallas and Fort Worth, protests broke out as more and more details on the incident came to light, leading to increased frustrations about the status of policing in America. 

In Dallas, the demonstrations began in earnest on Friday, May 29, as protesters gathered shortly before dusk for a rally at Dallas Police Department headquarters. What initially began as impassioned speeches and energized chanting soon morphed into a march as the hundreds in attendance began walking north from DPD HQ toward the heart of downtown. Police lined the intersections along the route, and everything seemed orderly enough -- until it wasn't. By the time the marchers reached the intersection of Griffin and Main Street, they were met with a line of riot gear-donning officers blocking their path. Chanting gave way to shouting. Frustrations boiled over. Both sides got physical. The police deployed teargas in an effort to disperse the crowd. It only incensed them -- and those who were watching it all unfold on social media.

The following days were chaotic, to say the least. Protesters gathered at Dallas City Hall daily, only emboldened in their belief that police across the country were out of control. But their criticisms were undermined by bad actors who saw the protests as an excuse to wreak havoc and express their anger by damaging property across the city. It was a vicious cycle of finger-pointing and assigning blame.

These clashes climaxed on Monday, June 1. By that point, DPD had put into place a citywide curfew -- but protesters were planning to gather at the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts Building at around the time that police wanted them off the streets just the same. Following another round of impassioned speeches, a march once again broke out. This time, protesters found their way onto the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge -- where they were kettled in on either side by multiple law enforcement agencies. As the police started closing in on the crowds, weapons were fired. Police would initially claim deployed "less-lethal" projectiles and smoke cannisters into the masses, who stood in place, their hands in the air. Protesters were adamant that the sting in their eyes and noses was clearly the result of tear gas. 

In all police detained 674 protesters on the bridge that night on charges of obstructing a freeway. But those charges were later dropped. In the days and weeks that followed, protests continued, albeit with less vigor and more dismay, as DPD Chief Renee Hall dismissed and denied the accusations that her officers had used tear gas on protestors who had nowhere to go.

A month and a half later, a copy of DPD's previously unreleased after action report on the first four days of protests was leaked. Among other things, it revealed that Hall knowingly instructed her officers to use teargas that night on the bridge. City Council members who'd voice earlier support for the chief started openly questioning her word. Less than a month following that leak, Hall submitted her resignation from the force. 

Protests would stretch on with activists continuing to march through the Dallas streets until they'd surpassed 100 straight days of activism and eventually fizzled out. 

Other than Hall's resignation, it's tough to say what it all amounted to, beyond an increased erosion of trust between Dallas law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect and serve. -- Pete Freedman

38. Dallas flubs its chance to score the Cowboys as the team leaves Irving for Arlington

The Dallas Cowboys -- quite famously -- do not play in the City of Dallas. 

Not since 1971, anyway. That's when they bid adieu to the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, which they called home for team's first 12 years of existence. For the 38 years that followed, the Cowboys would then play their home games at Irving's Texas Stadium, which was known for its distinctive hole in the roof. (So God could watch his favorite team play on Sundays, duh.)

In the '00s, though, the Cowboys decided to move on from that venue and find a new home. Maybe this time they'd come back to Dallas?

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was reportedly open to the idea as he started conversations with various North Texas cities about financing a new stadium for his team.  

Then-Dallas Mayor Laura Miller too envisioned bringing the team back to their 1960 birthplace of Fair Park. But she was also concerned about what such a venture might cost Dallas taxpayers. When Miller and county officials balked at the finances of it all, Jones reportedly went so far as to offer to split the cost of a new stadium's construction.  

But Miller and Dallas City Council still weren't comfortable pulling the trigger.

Arlington officials, on the other hand, jumped at the opportunity: They agreed to the deal Dallas wouldn't, offering up half the cost to build the $1.15 billion AT&T Stadium and its own famous (if underused) retractable roof in their city.

The venue -- these days known colloquially in certain circles as Jerry World and/or the Death Star -- officially opened its doors on June 6, 2009, with a sold-out concert featuring George Strait and Reba McEntire. 

Texas Stadium was demolished by implosion on April 11, 2010.

In the years since the Cowboys decided to move to Arlington, Dallas City Council has signed off on nearly $200 million in upgrades to the Cotton Bowl. Just this year, the city also agreed to subsidize the cost of an upstart professional women's soccer league team playing its home games there. The latest round of Cotton Bowl renovations council approved also helped the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma agree to keep playing their annual rivalry game at the stadium through 2036.

But the annual college football game known as the Cotton Bowl Classic? The one named for the Cotton Bowl? Much like the Cowboys, it no longer calls Dallas home. 

Instead, it too has gone the way of the Cowboys. It takes place each year at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. -- Rachel Snyder

37. North Texas swelters during summer heatwaves of 1980 and 2011 

Texans are used to the heat. Most of us don’t bat an eye when we see a triple-digit day in the forecast. 

It’s just the norm around here. Especially in the summer.

But there was nothing normal about the heatwaves Dallas-Fort Worth endured in 1980 and then again in 2011.

In the summer of 1980, DFW recorded 42 consecutive triple-digit days, and 69 in total. At its peak that year, thermometers hit a whopping 113 degrees. 

2011 was its own monster. There were 72 triple-digit days that year -- 40 of them coming in a row. That summer, the high temperature topped out at a savage 110.

That kind of heat will get you mad just looking out the window. And that's to say nothing of the actual dangers -- even deaths -- that come with those kind of unrelenting temperatures.

The 1980 heatwave was novel enough to see shirts made to commemorate the blistering, unforgiving season. Their designs included the words “I survived the 1980 Texas Heat Wave” and an outline of the state of Texas on fire. 

We're not entirely sure that kind of experience really merits a souvenir, but to each their own, we guess.

Still, there's value in not forgetting these summers. Next time you find yourself complaining about the heat, just remember: It could be a lot worse. -- Zachary Yanes

36. Tornadoes hit Dallas during Sunday Night Football in 2019

Oct. 20, 2019. A billion-dollar storm. And it happened right in the middle of a Sunday night Cowboys-Eagles game at AT&T Stadium.

Nine tornadoes were later confirmed by the National Weather Service to have touched down that night: Two EF-0s in Ferris and Wills Point; three EF-1s in Midlothian, Rockwall and Rowlett, respectively; an EF-2 in Garland; and an EF-3 in northern Dallas. 

The EF-3 initially touched down just north of Love Field at around 9 p.m. that night. It crossed multiple DFW highways, headed in an east-northeast direction and ended in Sachse at 9:30 p.m., spanning 15.75 miles. The tornado’s maximum wind speed was 140 mph, and its maximum width was 1,300 yards. 

Aerial footage showed a clear scar on the ground where the tornado had traveled. Years later, affected areas were still recovering from its impact. In all, the storm caused over $1 billion in damage and was the costliest tornado in Texas history.

And FEMA refused to help pick up Dallas' bill. -- Paul Livengood

35. Atatiana Jefferson's death at the hands of Fort Worth police officer sparks backlash and protests 

Atatiana Jefferson was babysitting her nephew early in the morning of Oct. 12, 2019, when she saw someone outside her window, in the backyard of her Fort Worth home. 

She grabbed her gun and prepared to take a better look at what she'd seen, but the person on the other side -- later identified as Fort Worth police officer Aaron Dean -- fired his gun first, killing the 28-year-old.

Jefferson's death sparked backlash and protests in Fort Worth. Tensions in the community only heightened a few months later when George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in the summer of 2020. 

Dean, the police officer who killed Jefferson, had responded to Jefferson's home after a neighbor called a non-emergency line for a welfare check on the house. Dean arrived to find the front door of the home open. He then proceeded into the backyard -- but didn't announce himself, according to body camera footage.

At his 2022 trial, Dean said he thought there might have been a burglary in progress at the home. He said he saw a silhouette in the window of Jefferson's home and testified that he shouted commands to "put up your hands."

Dean went to trial on a murder charge, but the jury found him guilty of manslaughter, a lesser offense. He was sentenced to 11 years, 10 months and 12 days in prison. The timing of the sentence was intentional and symbolic: Jefferson's nephew Zion Carr was 11 years old at the time of the trial, at which he gave an emotional testimony; the 10 months and 12 days, meanwhile, referenced the October 12 date on which Jefferson's life was lost. -- Ryan Osborne

34. Republican National Convention in Dallas in 1984 sparks protest, Supreme Court case

The first Republican National Convention held in Texas was a fiery affair -- literally -- and not just because of the speeches.

The four-day gathering took place from Aug. 20-23, 1984, with events hosted in both the Dallas Convention Center and Reunion Arena.

Over the course of the week, incumbent President Ronald Reagan was unanimously chosen as the party's nominee, with Vice President George H.W. Bush also easily winning the vice presidential tally. 

Everything went just as anticipated. On the inside of the convention, anyway.

Outside, anti-Reagan protests ran rampant in the streets. During one gathering, a Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade member named Gregory “Joey” Johnson even went so far as to burn an American flag. 

Controversy ensued in the wake of that action, with hysterics eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court after years of legal maneuvering. In the end, the court found Johnson’s flag-burning was protected by the First Amendment, invalidating flag-desecration laws in 48 states.

As for the election later that year? Reagan and Bush went on to win it in a landslide. 

Even so, neither of the two major parties has held a convention in Dallas since. -- Rachel Snyder

33. A heroin crisis devastates Plano in the '90s

"It didn't get national attention until rich white kids in Plano started dying," Matt Osborne told WFAA five years ago. 

The All-American, mostly affluent city of Plano was thrust into the national spotlight after a number of kids died from black tar heroin overdoses in the mid-'90s. 

In all, 19 children of varied age, race and socio-economic backgrounds had overdosed on the drug known as chiva. The Collin County city was facing a drug crisis, and it was all-hands on deck to get the issue resolved. 

But that was a difficult task: Parents were in denial, students were mostly hush-hush, and city and and local law enforcement were scrambling to understand how the drug had infiltrated their idyllic community.

Investigators would later learn the drug was being "walked" over the border and into the country. A network of Mexican nationals would eventually be brought to justice and get life prison sentences for their part in the drugs finding their way to North Texas. 

The crisis put Plano under a microscope. But the city's response would also provide a model for other cities to follow when facing the same problem in their own backyards. -- Jobin Panicker

32. 500,000 people march in downtown Dallas for immigrants rights in 2006

In 2006 and 2007, millions across the country mobilized to protest a change to U.S. immigration policy.

H.R. 4437 -- also known as the Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 -- proposed increased measures to counteract illegal immigration. Detractors of the bill claimed it infringes on the human rights of asylum seekers. Notably, the bill contained language that would turn illegal immigrants, and anyone who aided them, into felons.

The first major protest against the bill happened in in Chicago, where 100,000 people marched in opposition. From there, the movement spread.

On April 10, 2006, a nationwide protest was held. Dallas and 101 other U.S. cities each brought out crowds of thousands to march against the bill. The Dallas protest was among the largest protests, with an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 people marching through downtown. 

Protestors waved American flags as they walked through the streets and shouted the phrase “Si, se puede” ("Yes, we can") as they went.

In the end, H.R. 4437 died in committee. 

In the years that followed, similar marches would be held in downtown Dallas to protest other pieces of legislation criticized as infringing upon the rights of immigrants. None have even come close to matching the 2006 march's turnout. -- Ben Sawyers

31. After years of protests, the State Fair of Texas fully desegregates in 1967 

The State Fair of Texas, as its name implies, is supposed to be a celebration of all things Texan. But that wasn't always the case. Hardly.

Rather, in its early years, the annual affair went out of its way to exclude a significant portion of the population from enjoying its offerings the same way it allowed everyone else to do so. 

Initially, Black Texans weren't allowed on the fairgrounds at all. Then, in 1889, the fair made a concession: One day each year, it would host exactly one "Colored People's Day" each year -- a tradition that remained in place, albeit under different names, until 1953, when the fair changed its policies to allow Black people to attend the fair for its entire run. 

Still, it did so under the continued regulation of segregation; Black people were not allowed to eat at the fair's restaurants, and certain rides were kept off-limits -- except, again, on one day each year, which at this point was branded as "Negro Appreciation Day."

In 1955, an NAACP Youth Council adviser for Dallas named Juanita Craft decided enough was enough. She planned a protest against the event, encouraging other young Black Dallasites to boycott what they had taken to calling "Negro Appeasement Day." On October 17, Craft -- also the first Black woman to vote in Dallas County -- led her fellow activists in blocking the entrance to the fair and picketing its grounds for 16 hours. 

“Don’t sell your pride for a segregated ride,” the protesters chanted that day. 

Dallas mayor Robert L. Thornton responded by denying that the fair was segregated at all, and proclaiming that the fair's regulations would continue on as they were.

But Craft continued the good fight. In 1957, her efforts led the fair to remove the word “Negro” from its annual Achievement Day. In 1961, the fair would drop that annual day from its calendar altogether. Finally, in 1967, the fair agreed to “unconditionally” desegregate — a full three years after the Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in public settings across the country in 1964.

To its credit, the State Fair of Texas these days honors Craft's legacy by naming its annual Humanitarian Awards Ceremony after her. The organization's official literature further recognizes Craft, who died in 1985, for having “played a crucial role integrating the State Fair of Texas.” 

Better late than never, we suppose. -- Pete Freedman

30. Savings & Loan Crisis of the '80s hits Dallas hard

The savings and loan crisis that caused the financial sector to suffer across the nation hit Dallas, a banking powerhouse, particularly hard. 

This came about after a dramatic rise in inflation and interest rates in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s caused long-term fixed-rate mortgages to lose much of their value, hurting the savings and loan industry’s net worth and giving rise to other side effects, like causing oil prices to plummet. 

The crisis led to federal regulation that resulted in the shutting down 225 of the 279 savings and loan institutions in Texas in 1988 alone. 

Hundreds of banks were also forced to closed. Many larger banks were forced to merge. 

WFAA's Byron Harris won a duPont Award for his investigation into the crisis' effect on the city. There were plenty: The crisis, and the regulations that followed, left Dallas with fewer banks, which had become major employers in the city thanks to the excesses of the previous decades. Jobs were lost, and many offices within Dallas' downtown skyscrapers went vacant in the blink of an eye.

You tell us: Almost 40 years on, has downtown Dallas ever really recovered? -- Paul Wedding

29. Eddie Bernice Johnson becomes first Black woman elected to public office in Dallas

If you've ever used public transportation in Dallas, then you've felt the impact of longtime Dallas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. 

Johnson, a former nurse, became the first Black woman ever to win to public office in Dallas’ history when she was elected to represent House District 33 in the Texas House of Representatives in 1972. She served in that role from 1973 to 1977. Next, she moved to the Texas Senate, where she'd serve from 1987 until she was elected to represent Texas’ 30th District in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. She then held that post for 30 years before she retired in 2023. As the leader of that chamber's Labor Committee, she also became the first woman ever to lead a major Texas House committee.

A trailblazer all her life, Johnson was also the first Black chief pediatric nurse at the Dallas Veterans Hospital.

Another major element of her legacy -- the millions of dollars of government investment she secured North Texas' infrastructure, with a particular focus on Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). 

She died on New Year’s Eve 2023. She was 88 years old. -- Rachel Snyder

28. Dallas’ Ross Perot runs for president in 1992 and gets 20% of vote

The Texas-born-and-raised billionaire who’d made his fortune in computer services became an unlikely candidate for president in 1992, running as an independent.

Despite his never having held public office prior to running for president, citizen drives got him on the ballot in all 50 states.

In the end, Perot finished with about 20% of the vote to incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush’s 38% and 43% for Democrat and former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. 

It was the strongest third-party showing since Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose run in 1912. Some Republicans have claimed Perot’s candidacy cost Bush a second term.

After the 1992 election, Perot created United We Stand, a nonprofit research group that spawned the Reform party, which nominated him for president again in 1996. He finished third in that election, too, earning 8% of the vote. 

He largely stayed out of the national political scene after that, although he remained heavily involved in charities in his home of Dallas until his death in 2019 at age 89. -- Rachel Snyder

27. Day-after-Christmas tornadoes strike North Texas, leaving 13 dead, including 9 under I-30 overpass

In 2015, tragedy struck North Texas just one day after Christmas.

On Dec. 26, 2015, severe weather in the area brought an outbreak of tornadoes. One of those tornadoes would end up the deadliest in Dallas County history.

An EF-4 wedge tornado ripped through Garland and Rowlett, devastating everything in its path.

It originally touched down in Sunnyvale as an EF0, but quickly strengthened to an EF2 and turned into an EF4 by the time it entered Garland. As it struck I-30 and the President George Bush Turnpike near Lake Ray Hubbard, the tornado became deadly. Nine people were killed under an overpass as winds tossed several vehicles and trailers off of elevated ramps and onto traffic below.

That tornado continued its path of destruction, tossing mobile homes and RVs, killing one more elderly man. In all, the storm killed 13. 

The dead ranged in age from one to 77 years old. Another 468 others were reported injured. More than 600 homes were destroyed, too. 

The estimated cost of the damage was $20 to $26 million dollars. -- Ben Sawyers

26. Dallas resident and Texas Gov. George Bush is elected President in 2000

George W. Bush was born in Connecticut, then raised in Midland and Houston. But he’s long had a presence in North Texas -- going all the way back to the 1980s, when he led a group of investors that purchased the Texas Rangers.

Bush would go onto spent some time in Austin, of course, where he served as governor from 1995-2000. From there, he made it all the way to the White House -- narrowly, and famously controversially, winning his first election over Al Gore before winning a second term over John Kerry. Bush was a lightning rod during his eight years in office, with much of his presidency colored by his administration's reaction to the terrorist attacks the nation suffered on September 11, 2001. 

It's been in his post-presidency, however, that Bush has become known as a Dallasite, as he and his wife, former First Lady Laura Bush, settled down in Preston Hollow.

Though he gave up his stake in the team after winning the governorship, the former president became a regular sighting at big Rangers since leaving the Oval Office, becoming an Opening Day regular and a foul-line fixture during the team's 2010 and 2011 World Series runs. 

North Texas is also where Bush decided to bring his presidential library, building it at his wife's alma mater of SMU.

But perhaps his most visible moment as a Dallas resident came in 2016, when he spoke at the memorial service for the five police officers killed in a downtown shooting. Joining him at the ceremony was President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden. -- Ryan Osborne

25. Texas Rangers win franchise’s first World Series, avenging 2011 collapse

The Texas Rangers won the World Series on Nov. 1, 2023 -- the long-suffering franchise’s first title. 

But, really, the moment that changed the club forever came a few days earlier, in Game 1 against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Texas was trailing 5-3 in the ninth, their playoff momentum deflated by an aggressive Arizona lineup, when Corey Seager stepped to the plate. The Rangers had one out and a runner on first base.

"Seager can tie it with one swing," FOX announcer Joe Davis said, coming back from commercial.

Davis barely got the words out of his mouth before Seager swung and launched a massive home run to the right field seats. Seager immediately turned to the Rangers dugout and roared, providing a lasting image of Texas' magical postseason run. The game went to extra innings, where Adolis Garcia – who else? – won it with a walk-off homer.

With two swings of the bat, Seager and Garcia vanquished a lifetime of Rangers fan misery – especially the one-strike-away loss in the 2011 World Series, a dozen years earlier. 

If all of that sounds a bit overwrought, then, well, you might be an Astros fan.

The Rangers' World Series win also came during a drought of sorts for DFW sports fans. The last major championship for a North Texas team came in 2011, when the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Finals. The Rangers hadn't reached baseball's biggest stage in just as long. The Stars won the city's last title before that, hoisting the Stanley Cup in 1999.

And the Cowboys? Well, they remain title-less since the 1995 season. -- Ryan Osborne

24. Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 crashes at DFW Airport in 1988

On Aug. 21, 1988, a Boeing 727 from Jackson, Mississippi, stopped at DFW International Airport and was bound for Salt Lake City. 

But it never made its destination.

As the plane’s main wheels were leaving the ground, the aircraft began violently rolling and its right wing dropped. That dip forced the plane's tail to briefly make contact with the runway and, in turn, which caused the right wing to dip again -- this time with its wingtip striking the ground. The passage of airflow through the engines leading to compression surges that prevented the plane from being able to maintain stabilized flight or gain anything beyond marginal altitude. Some 900 feet beyond the runway, the right wing of the plane struck an antenna, causing the wing to catch fire and disintegrate while the plane was still briefly in the air.

The plane was airborne for another 400 feet before it slammed into the ground and and began sliding sideways, leaving an 800-foot-long trail of wreckage. At the same time, the fire from the right wing has spread quickly to engulf the rear of the plane, which had only been in the air for 22 seconds.

By the time it came to a stop, the plane had split in two.

Of the 101 passengers on board, 12 died. Two of the four flight attendants died as well. Another 22 passengers, two crew members, and Captain Larry Lon Davis and First Officer Carey Wilson Kirkland were seriously injured. The flight engineer and 29 other passengers suffered minor injuries. 

In an accident report from the National Transportation Safety Board, it was determined the accident was likely caused either by inadequate cockpit discipline or a failure of the plane’s take-off warning system to alert the crew that the plane wasn’t ready for take-off. 

In 2013, a quarter-century after the tragedy, a marker memorializing the victims of the crash was installed at the Founder's Plaza Observation Park on the northwest edge of the airport property.

But as DFW Airport's then-executive vice president of operations Jim Crites said at the time, Flight 1141's survivors and the first-responders who helped them exit the plane's remnants are worth remembering as well.

"Flight 1141 also turned on the head the old notion that an aircraft accident was not survivable," he said. -- Paul Wedding

23. Reunion Tower leads transformation of Dallas skyline

In October 1973, plans were unveiled for a sleek new tower and hotel complex on the southwest side of downtown Dallas. 

Ray L. Hunt was developing the project, having already purchased the first 20 acres in what was a vacant corner behind Union Station. Initially, his proposed tower was a cylindrical, almost futuristic-like design -- a skinny glass tube rising from the Dallas skyline and capped at the top. 

It was missing one notable feature that would become perhaps the identifying feature of the Dallas skyline in the years to come: a glowing round ball.

Yes, the original plans for Reunion Tower were without its signature 500-ton globe sitting on top. But "The Ball" eventually made the renderings, and the tower's construction was finished in late 1977. It officially opened to the public a few months later, in April 1978. 

At 560 feet tall, Reunion Tower is only the 15th tallest building in the city, but no structure has had a more lasting, transformative impact on the Dallas skyline.

It's synonymous with downtown Dallas. But it was hardly the only major development that helped shape the cityscape over the decades:

• Bank of America Plaza: Finished in 1985, Bank of America Plaza, located at 901 Main Street, was and remains the tallest building in Dallas, topping out at 921 feet.
• The Margaret Hunt Hill and Margaret McDermott bridges: Both designed by Santiago Calatrava, these massive bridges are the most recent additions to the city skyline, and both serve as sort of gateways to downtown from the west. Margaret Hunt Hill towers over Spur 366, which turns into Woodall Rodgers Freeway, while the arches of the Margaret McDermott Bridge go along Interstate 30.
• Fountain Place: Designed by I.M. Pei and Harry Cobb and built in 1986, Fountain Place is among the tallest buildings in Dallas -- and perhaps the most distinctive design, with light reflecting off its geometric prism. Dallas Mornings News architecture critic Mark Lamster calls it a "magical, shape-shifting masterpiece," and the city's best skyscraper.
• Omni Hotel: Far from the most towering piece of the Dallas skyline, the wavy Omni Hotel building, located a few blocks east of Reunion Tower, stands out bright with its colorful light shows and messaging.

Woven together, these buildings and their neighbors make up a remarkable tapestry. One that, for North Texans, conjures up one thought each time they see it. Home. -- Ryan Osborne

22. Dallas Mavericks win the NBA Finals

The Dallas Mavericks’ 2011 championship run was a story of dominance, cohesion and redemption. 

Oh, and plenty of beautiful fadeaway jumpers from Mavs legend Dirk Nowitzki. 

Heading into the playoffs that season, every single player on the Dallas roster was looking for his first championship ring. They were hungry and willing to fight for a greater purpose than individual glory. Each player on the team -- from J.J. Barea to Tyson Chandler to DeShawn Stevenson -- had a defined role and a clear purpose on both ends of the court. 

In the first round, the Mavs took down the Portland Trail Blazers in six games before sweeping Kobe Bryant's two-time defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers in four games. That latter series was capped off with a 122-86 beatdown as the Mavs shot 20-for-32 (62.5%) as a team on three-pointers. 

Dallas then defeated an Oklahoma City Thunder team featuring Kevin Durant, James Harden and Russell Westbrook in five games, with Nowitzki’s Game 1 masterpiece being the highlight of the series. In that contest, the Big German scored a game-high 48 points while shooting a perfect 24-for-24 on free throws. That effort still stands as the most free throws ever made by a single player in an NBA playoff game without a miss. 

Lastly, the Mavs faced the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals -- the same franchise Dallas played in its first championship appearance in 2006. In that first meeting, the Mavs fell to the Heat in heartbreaking fashion in six games, losing four straight after winning the first two games of the series. 

Dallas’ best two players from 2006 were still on the team in 2011: Nowitzki and Jason Terry. For the Heat, Dwayne Wade and Udonis Haslem were the only remaining players. 

Shaquille O'Neal had by this point left Miami -- only to be replaced this time around by LeBron James and Chris Bosh. 

That season was supposed to be the first of many titles Miami would go on to win with its revamped roster.

Not so much.

With Nowitzki hitting multiple game-winning layups and Terry scoring a game-high 27 points in the series-clinching Game 6 win, the Mavericks won the 2011 NBA Finals, giving the team its first -- and to date only -- championship in franchise history. -- Jay Wallis

21. "Who shot J.R.?" on "Dallas" leaves enduring impact on the city's identity

Beyond the Dallas Cowboys, no single entity deserves more credit for putting Dallas on the international map than the primetime CBS soap opera that bore the city's from 1978 to 1991.

Centered around the drama of the fictional Ewing family and their oil business, "Dallas" portrayed the city as a sort of swashbuckling capitalistic, modern version of the Wild West. Aside from the fact that Houston has always been more of an oil city than Dallas has, it wasn't an inaccurate portrayal of North Texas' trademark charms and wiles. To this day, its legacy looms large.

Perhaps more than anything, though, "Dallas" was known for its cliffhangers. None were bigger than the one it used to end the show's third season in 1980. That episode ended with the show's breakout star, Larry Hagman's J.R. Ewing, being shot by an unknown culprit.

The mystery of who may have killed the most popular character in America's most popular TV show put the nation's attention in a vice grip. Everyone wanted to know who did it. Everyone had their theories. 

The phrase "Who shot J.R.?" became inescapable. To this day, it remains one of the most prominent catchphrases in American pop culture history.

And, boy, did the show milk it for all its worth. The big reveal on who pulled the trigger wasn't revealed until the fourth episode of the following season -- a full eight months later. An estimated 83 million viewers tuned in for to see whodunnit. 

In the end, the answer didn't really matter. The ploy had fully ingrained the show into the all-time American zeitgeist.

For what it's worth, the shooter ended up being Kristin Shepard, J.R.'s conniving sister-in-law. And J.R.? Well, he survived. In fact, he would go on to become the only actor to appear in all 357 episodes of the original series' run. -- Pete Freedman

20. American Airlines moves its headquarters from NYC to DFW in 1979

American Airlines has had a long and lasting presence in North Texas -- but it wasn’t always that way.

The company started as a union consisting of over 80 airlines. Then, in 1930, those airlines merged into a company known as American Airways. Just four years later, new laws forced the airlines to reorganize, and so they did, becoming American Airlines. Back then, the company was headquartered in Chicago. 

In 1939, American left the Windy City and took up shop in the Big Apple. Its Manhattan office employed as many as 1,300 New Yorkers. Outside of the headquarters, the company employed over 8,000. 

But, in 1978, the airline announced another departure. This time, they were coming to Dallas.

On Nov. 15, 1978, American Airlines' then-president Albert V. Casey announced that the airline would be leaving Manhattan and moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Ed Koch, New York City's mayor at the time, called the move “a betrayal” because Casey served on the city’s Emergency Financial Control Board and Business Marketing Corporation -- the latter a city-run entity established to retain businesses in NYC.

For many New Yorkers, the move was personal. The announcement sparked calls for boycotts.

For American Airlines, though, it was all business. According to Casey, the move saved the airline more than $6 million annually in operational and leasing costs. The New York Times quoted Casey as saying New York “didn’t begin to match what I got down there.”

At the time, American was the second-largest airline in the U.S. And it already had a presence in Dallas, employing 5,000 people in the area.

Meanwhile, in New York, workers only worked a 37-hour week due to commuting. So the move to Dallas, where people worked a 40-hour week, also increased company productivity by 6.6%, Casey said.

The company didn’t officially move until 1979, at which point it established its permanent presence in DFW. 

In the wake of the move, American Airlines jumped to the No. 1 spot on the list of largest U.S. airlines. The move keeps paying dividends for North Texas, too: One of the largest employees in the region, American Airlines opened a new, lavish, multi-billion dollar campus in Fort Worth in 2019.

Sorry not sorry, New York. -- Ben Sawyers

19. Highways fuel North Texas growth - and change - from Central Expressway to I-30, I-35, and DNT

If you’ve ever driven in North Texas, you're familiar with the region's vast network of highways. 

Congested though they may be, these roads are as much to credit for the development of Dallas-Fort Worth as anything else, having fueled the sprawl of what would become "The Metroplex" -- and divided historic neighborhoods at the same time.

Central Expressway came first. It was built in 1949 and ran north-south, replacing the H&TC Railroad tracks and connecting Dallas’ central business district to the North Dallas area. It also divided the city into East and West, which is attributed to disrupting pre-existing Freedmen’s Towns and cutting off the Bonton and Lincoln Manor area from downtown.

I-30, which connects Dallas and Fort Worth from west to east, opened in 1957 as the only direct connection between North Texas' two major hubs. In Dallas in particular, the highway divided Dallas in a north-south split: To build I-30, Dallas repossessed a number of mostly minority-owned homes, an effort that is believed to have helped fuel a housing shortage in southern Dallas that had lasting repercussions.

Then there's I-35. Love it or hate it, if you’re traveling in Texas -- whether south toward Austin or north toward Oklahoma -- it's hard to avoid. Construction on I-35, which splits around North Texas into its sibling I-35E and I-35W counterparts so as to hit both Dallas and Fort Worth, began in '60s. The road work continues along the corridor through some of the state’s largest cities to this day.

The 33-mile Dallas North Tollway, which opened in 1968 between downtown Dallas and connected it to I-635, was vital in fueling the growth of the northern Dallas suburbs. It was extended to Legacy Drive in Plano in 1994, and an extension opened in 2004 to Gaylord Parkway in fast-growing Frisco. Bridges extending the tollway over U.S. 380 into rapidly growing Prosper opened last year, and the tollway is expected to continue to extend as suburbs continue to grow to the north.

In North Texas, it's clear: Where we're going, we do needs roads. -- Rachel Snyder

18. Eight victims are killed in an Allen outlet mall shooting

Just after 3:36 p.m. on May 6, 2023, shots rang out at the Allen Premium Outlets -- a sprawling outdoor shopping mall off U.S. 75 in Allen, about 30 miles north of Dallas. 

Eight victims were killed before a police officer took out the shooter.

Unfolding on a busy shopping Saturday, the tragedy rocked Allen and the surrounding communities and went down as one of the deadliest mass shootings in North Texas history. 

The victims included a pair of siblings, a young family and a security guard who was on duty when the shooting happened: Christian LaCour; Aishwarya Thatikonda; Daniela and Sofia Mendoza; Kyu, Cindy, and James Cho; and Elio Cumana-Rivas.

Witnesses told WFAA they saw the shooter, Mauricio Garcia, reportedly dressed in all black, near the location of the Fatburger restaurant in the mall complex. They described seeing the shooting begin in front of the H&M store at the outlet mall.

The Allen Police Department confirmed that an officer who was responding to an unrelated incident in the area heard the gunshots and ran toward them. The department said that the officer then “neutralized” the shooter and called for emergency personnel.

"He heard gunshots, located the gunshots, located the shooter, neutralized the shooter, neutralized the threat," Allen police Chief Brian Harvey said.

An Army official later told WFAA that Garcia had been in the U.S. Army in 2008 but was removed due to mental health concerns. Sources added that he espoused an extremist right-wing ideology and express dislike for people of color and Jews.

A bulletin sent by the FBI to law enforcement agencies about Garcia said that "an initial review and triage of the subject's social media accounts revealed hundreds of postings and images to include writings with racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, including neo-Nazi material and material espousing the supremacy of the white race." -- Ryan Osborne

17. The Dallas Cowboys of the '70s transform into "America's Team"

The Dallas Cowboys are the pillar of all things football in Texas. Historically, that's just a fact. 

But it didn't start out that way. The team's beginnings were fairly humble. The Cowboys were founded in 1960 with Clint Murchison Jr. as the team’s majority owner. Tex Schramm was hired as the general manager, and Tom Landry as head coach.

The team's earliest days were not great. It wasn't until the team's seventh season that the Cowboys ended a year with a winning record. From 1960 through 1965, the team went 25-53-4.

But things started to turn around for Dallas in the late '60s, and by the time Texas Stadium opened in Irving in October 1971, the team's "glory years" were well underway. The team went made five Super Bowl appearances throughout the '70s, and twice won the NFL title -- in 1972 with a 24-3 win over the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VI, and in 1978 with a 27-10 win over the Broncos in Super Bowl XII.

The Cowboys of this era were defined by icons such as quarterback Roger Staubach, tackle Rayfield Wright, defensive tackles Bob Lilly and Randy White, defensive back Mel Renfro and running back Tony Dorsett. And it was on the backs of these stars that the Cowboys of the '70ss and early '80s came to be known as "America's Team.”

In 1978, NFL Films editor Bob Ryan coined the term while preparing their season highlight reel. The story goes like this: While editing that year's footage, he noticed that, even during away games, there always fans with Cowboys jerseys and hats on in the stands. So, he put the term "America’s Team" in the title of the highlight video. In the broadcast of the first game of the following season, the iconic football play-by-play man Pat Summerall used the “America’s Team” nickname himself.

But is there more to the story? Many would argue that the explosion in popularity of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders had something to do with raising the team's national profile, too.

In the 1960s, Cowboys GM Tex Schramm asked Tyler native Dee Brock to form a dance or cheer squad to perform at the games and make the in-stadium action more exciting. The first team she gathered was known as the "CowBelles & Beaux," and they wore white button-down shirts as they cheered on the Cowboys. After winning the 1971 Super Bowl, however, a new squad --  the more straightforwardly named Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) -- was born. 

Immediately, DCC became media darlings, with their blue tops (tied together with that perfect bow), white fringe vest, white polyester shorts, a white belt bearing exactly 15 crystal-outlined blue stars and, of course, those classic white cowboy boots to match. It's an outfit so iconic, it's on display at The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. -- Krista Summerville

16. The COVID-19 pandemic spreads to Dallas

The COVID-19 pandemic was by no means a North Texas-specific phenomenon. The "novel coronavirus" affected ways of life all around the globe; four years on, it's estimated that the pandemic led to some 700 million infections resulting in around 7 million global deaths. 

Families were torn apart. Businesses were forced to close. The whole "work from home" notion became popularized. We all learned how to use Zoom. The debates over how to handle it were politicized to every possible end, to put it mildly. 

Those elements were universal. 

Still, as all too frequently tends to be the case, Dallas-Fort Worth still managed to wiggle its way into the narrative. One of the very first lasting images of the impending hysterics that the pandemic would cause happened at a Dallas Mavericks game. In the middle of a home game against the Utah Jazz, ESPN television cameras caught team owner Mark Cuban reacting in real time to a startling message he'd received on his phone -- that the NBA season would be suspended as the country figured out which steps it would take next to quell the virus' spread.

Dallas sports teams would continue to play a big role in the COVID-19 narrative when the NBA and NHL resumed their seasons months later in bubbles the leagues respectively set up in Orlando and in Edmonton and Toronto. An insane buzzer-beater Mavs star Luka Doncic would hit against the Los Angeles Lakers inside of an empty arena became perhaps the highlight of that summer's unique competition. 

And then there was the Dallas Star's improbable run to the Stanley Cup Final -- a performance perhaps best epitomized by impossibly hot goaltender Anton Khudobin's declaration that the Stars were "not going home!" before they were ready. Sure, the Stars would lose in the Final to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but their valiant effort provided a nice distraction from the atrocities of real life that summer.

Back home, another Dallasite found her way into the national conversation, too. Shelley Luther, a North Texas hair salon owner, became a right-wing media darling when she opened defied Gov. Greg Abbott's orders that non-essential businesses like hers shut down to prevent the virus from spreading. For her efforts, Luther received seven days in jail -- and Abbott, despite the fact that it was his order she violated, went on cable news to applaud her standing up for her beliefs.

These days, COVID variants still infect the population, albeit on a less frightening and smaller scale. But the absurdity that its initial 2020 outbreak brought is still very much going strong. -- Pete Freedman

15. The NCAA hands SMU the Death Penalty

In the early 1980's, SMU was an absolute college football powerhouse. Every year from 1980 to 1984, the Ponies finished in the Top 20 of the AP Poll. 

During that time, however, the program began to crack. Recruiting violations led to setbacks and probation. Then, in the fall of 1986, the program completely shattered. 

WFAA's then-sports director Dale Hansen received a tip that SMU had committed a recruiting violation during its probation period. Hansen, along with WFAA journalist John Sparks, launched an investigation into the matter. They found former SMU linebacker David Stanley, who told WFAA that he was paid $25,000 to attend SMU, and that he and his mother received additional payments from the university for playing football there. 

Stanley even took -- and passed -- a lie detector test to back his story up. But, more important, he provided WFAA with a piece of evidence that would change the fate of SMU football forever: an envelope from SMU with the initials "HLP" written on the back. 

The Stanleys said the envelope contained a payment directly from SMU assistant athletic director Henry Lee Parker himself. A handwriting expert confirmed the initials were a match to Parker's writing. Then, in a famous on-camera interview, Hansen and Sparks asked Parker if he had sent a letter to the Stanleys. He claimed he did not, at which point Hansen showed him the letter. 

Parker's lie was the dagger. 

WFAA presented its findings in a 40-minute special report on Nov. 12, 1986. The investigation later received multiple prestigious journalism awards, including the duPont and Peabody. 

SMU football, meanwhile, received the NCAA's so-called "Death Penalty": Their 1987 season was canceled, and its players were only allowed to participate in conditioning workouts; the team could not conduct any off-campus recruiting visits until the start of the 1988 season; it could only play away games in 1988, and all of its home games were canceled; it would lose 55 scholarship spots on its roster over four years; it was banned from bowl games and live TV broadcasts until 1989; and its probationary period was extended through 1990. 

The punishment set the program back decades. The school's relevancy as a football power completely dissipated. Almost 40 years later, SMU is only now barely starting on along a legitimate road to recovery. -- Jonah Javad

14. Love Field becomes the home of Southwest Airlines, kicking off a decades-long legislative battle

Dallas Love Field initially served as a training base for the Army during WWI. But the only battle actually waged there was in the war for Dallas airfield supremacy. 

If Dallas, Fort Worth and DFW Airport had their way, Love Field -- which also served as the unlikely venue for the 1963 inauguration of Lyndon B Johnson -- wouldn't exist today. In the 1960s, Dallas and Fort Worth built a joint airport, investing millions in tax dollars to secure its success. When the new airport opened, every airline agreed to start operating out of DFW International. 

Well, all but one: The scrappy, three-plane Southwest Airlines valued Love Field's proximity to the heart of Dallas and refused to comply. 

Naturally, the powers that be in Fort Worth, Dallas and the DFW Airport Board did not take kindly to Southwest Airlines' refusal. They filed numerous lawsuits against Southwest -- all of them unsuccessful. Still worried that Love Field would hurt business at DFW Airport, they began working with lawmakers to pass the Wright Amendment, a law that restricted Love Field air traffic. 

Southwest lived with those guardrails in place, finding ways to extend their service across the U.S. despite the restrictions. Then, in 2004, the company announced it would fight to end the decades-old law that restricted their business. Congress coalesced, easing some restrictions and agreeing to allow the law to expire in 2014. 

In the end, unrestricted air traffic out of Love Field didn't significantly damage business at DFW, which stands today as the third busiest airport in the world. On the other hand, the Wright Amendment ending nearly doubled Love Field's traffic in just one year -- a boon for Southwest's bottom line and for travelers seeking options when flying in and out of Dallas. -- Rachel Behrndt

13. Botham Jean is murdered in his own apartment at the hands of a Dallas Police officer

In Allisa Charles-Findley’s phone, she still lists her brother as her emergency contact. He’s on her Netflix and Hulu accounts. She’s kept the voice mail from the hospital informing her of his death. 

“These are things I just cannot delete,” she said. 

Her late brother, Botham Jean, died Sept. 6, 2018, in a case that ignited a national controversy. 

The 26-year-old accountant and St. Lucia native was shot and killed in his own apartment by Dallas police officer Amber Guyger as he ate a bowl of ice cream.  

At her 2019 trial, Guyger testified that she believed – wrongly -- that he was an intruder in her own apartment.  

She’d mistakenly parked on the wrong floor of the parking garage. She’d missed the signs she was at the wrong apartment, including his red floor mat.  

But it was a malfunctioning door lock that ultimately allowed her to get in. 

“It was an honest mistake made by her, and the fact that that door opened just added to the horrible confluence of events,” said Toby Shook, one of Guyger’s defense attorneys.   

“I just thought, ‘How could somebody get killed in their own home by a police officer?”’ said prosecutor Jason Fine

Jean’s death and Guyger’s trial would become a flashpoint in the frayed relations between police and the community.  

Activists felt Guyger received special treatment. They were upset that she wasn’t immediately arrested, and that the then-head of the Dallas Police Association asked that a dash camera in a patrol car be turned off as he spoke to Guyger at the scene. 

The association president “knew that she was about to consult with counsel,” Robert Rogers, another of Guyger’s attorneys, said. “No one was trying to cover anything up.” 

Rumors ran rife -- particularly the one claiming there had been a romantic relationship between Jean and Guyger. It wasn't remotely true. The two didn’t know each other and Guyger had only recently moved into the complex.   

“There was so much misinformation,” said prosecutor Mischeka Nicholson. “A lot of times it felt like we were fighting an uphill battle.” 

The case strained the relationship between police -- many of whom didn’t think Guyger committed a crime -- and the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office.  

“When you try a case, normally, law enforcement is our community partners, right? ...Unfortunately, they were not our community partners,” said LaQuita Long, another member of the prosecutorial team. “We were encountering obstacle after obstacle.” 

Even lead investigator, Texas Ranger David Armstrong, testified outside the presence of the jury that he didn't think she'd committed a crime. He said he didn't think her actions were "reckless or criminally negligent based on the totality of the investigation."

The judge ruled that the jury couldn't hear Armstrong's opinions on the reasonableness of Guyger's actions.

When Guyger took the stand, she testified that she thought Jean was an intruder. “I thought he was going to kill me,” she said. “There was a loud yell. He was yelling, ‘Hey, hey, hey.’” 

“She intended when she pushed the door open that she was going to go in and kill whatever that threat was,” prosecutor Mischeka Nicholson said. “And so, by her own words, it is murder.” 

Guyger sobbed on the stand, saying, “I ask God for forgiveness, and I hate myself every single day.”  

When it was their turn, prosecutors questioned her about why she didn’t use her emergency medical supplies. They pointed out that she had no blood on her uniform as evidence that she didn’t really try to help Jean.  

They pressed her about the frantic text messages she sent to her former patrol partner within moments of shooting Jean, saying, “I need you. Hurry” and “I f...ed up.”’  They asked her about the sexually explicit messages she exchanged with her patrol partner in the hours prior to the shooting. 

“You have to be able to show some sort of relationship in order to explain why she would be doing those things instead of helping Bo,” prosecutor Bryan Mitchell said.  

But her team saw it as unfair and effort to “inflame emotions against her and bias the jury,” Rogers said.  

Prosecutors argued that Jean was still seated on the couch when Guyger shot him. The defense attorneys contended he was coming toward her, lending credence to her belief that she was about to be attacked by an intruder.  

“We believe that that she had a viable defense,” Rogers said. “We believe she had a valid defense for mistake of fact.” 

Outside the courtroom, activists cheered when jurors found her guilty of murder. But they seethed when jurors returned with a 10-year sentence. 

“The people were preparing to protest and riot,” Long said.  

Brandt Jean, the victim’s younger brother, stayed silent before and during the trial. 

Long, one of the prosecutors, said she asked Brandt Jean if he wanted to give a victim impact statement.  

He turned her down.  

But then he tapped Long on the shoulder and said he did want to speak directly to Guyger.  

“I had no idea what was about to happen,” Long said.  

Charles-Findley says she tried to make eye contact with him as if to tell him, “’Do you really want to do this? You don’t have to do this.’ I was trying to convey all that with my eyes.” 

He spoke words no one expected.   

“I wasn’t ever going to say this in front of my family or anyone but I don’t even want you to go to jail,” Brandt said. “I want the best for you. That’s exactly what Botham would want you to do and the best would be to give your life to Christ.” 

He asked the judge, “I don’t know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug, please. Please.” 

“The judge is looking at the bailiff, and the bailiff is looking at the judge, and I'm looking at Toby, and none of us knows,” Rogers recalled.  “There's not a playbook for that in the code of procedures.” 

Kemp responded with one word, “Yes.” 

Guyger and Brandt Jean hugged each other several times as Guyger sobbed. 

“You expect the blow ups, the attacking and that sort of thing,” Mitchell said.  “What you don't expect is … I want to hug this person, and tell her that it's okay and I forgive her.” 

That moment seemed to quell the angry crowd in the hallway.  

“It’s not how I felt, but I’m proud of him,” Charles-Findley said. 

She says she shielded him from the many emails, phone calls and social media posts from people angry that he had offered forgiveness to his brother’s killer.  

“He was not doing this for anybody else, or even for Amber Guyger,” she said.  “He was doing it for himself.” 

It wasn't the only unprecedented moment. Kemp, after embracing and speaking with Jean’s family, spoke to Guyger.  Then she left the courtroom and returned with a Bible.  She opened the book to John 3:16, and told her, “You start with this.” 

Guyger embraced Kemp. The judge returned the hug.  

 “You haven’t done so much that you can’t be forgiven,” the judge told Gugyer. “You did something bad in one moment in time. What you do now matters.” 

In reflecting on the jury’s decision to give Guyger’s a ten-year sentence, Mitchell said, he couldn’t help but think there was some “discussion about what would Botham do if he was sitting back here.” 

The penalty range was five to 99 years.  

“The jury's responsible for considering that full range,” Fine said. “It's not really fair to be like, ‘Oh, they got it right in terms of convicting him of murder … and then be like well the same jury, they’re just totally wrong in the 10 years.” 

Since Guyger began her sentence, her attorneys told WFAA that she’s been in protective custody and spends much of her time reading and studying the Bible, and availing herself of educational opportunities.   

“She's very remorseful about what happened, and she's proven that she could be productive citizen,” Shook said. "She just wants to be able to rebuild her life whenever she's released.” 

Members of the prosecution team have stayed in contact with the family. Long and her family visited the Jeans in St. Lucia while on a cruise.

The family filed lawsuits and settled for an undisclosed amount with the apartment complex and the maker of the malfunctioning lock earlier this year.  

The Botham Jean Act became law in 2021. It requires officers to wear body cameras to keep them turned on when an investigation involves them.  

The family will be in town this month for the annual gala for the foundation named in his memory. The nonprofit funds are earmarked for programs for at-risk youth. 

The federal civil rights lawsuit the family filed against Guyger is set for trial later this year. Guyger’s eligible for parole Sept. 29 --  her late brother’s birthday.  

“I don't know if it is some higher power at work…,” Jean’s sister said. “It has to be. If not, it would just be a cruel joke.” 

Charles-Findley says she wrote Guyger a letter in 2021 asking if she would come to see her. She did not hear back.

“I wanted her to look me in my eyes and tell me exactly what happened,” she said.  “What were his last words? Was he scared? I just have so many questions for her.” 

Jean’s sister said the family wonders what Botham’s life would be like today.   

“I see all his friends, especially his college friends, celebrate their milestones, their weddings and their birth announcements," she said, "and I always wonder how it would be for Botham." -- Tanya Eiserer

12. Opal Lee successfully pushes for Juneteenth to become a national holiday

When Opal Lee was a young girl, a racist mob forced her family out of their Fort Worth home and set fire to their belongings. When she was 94, she stood beside President Joe Biden as he designated Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Those are just two moments in Lee's remarkable journey -- a journey that's still going, by the way -- but they explain why she became a civil rights icon in Fort Worth and across the U.S.

Known as the "Grandmother of Juneteenth," Lee, now 97, pushed for decades to make Juneteenth a national holiday. The celebration commemorates the end of slavery after the Civil War, and recognizes the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas a full two years after it was issued.

Celebrated annually each June 19, the day didn't become an official national holiday until 2021, when Biden signed it into law. But it existed as an important, in unrecognized, celebration for years before that. 

It was a lifetime dream for Lee and her legion of supporters in Fort Worth to see come to pass, as the longtime schoolteacher had tirelessly raised awareness and recognition of Juneteenth. The day also had an even deeper meaning for Lee: June 19, 1939, was the day she witnessed the viciousness of racial hate firsthand as a child.

Just four days after her family had moved into their home at 940 East Annie Street in Fort Worth, a racist mob of up to 500 people showed up on their doorstep. The crowd forced Lee's family out of their home and destroyed the property.

“It was going to be the nicest place we had in Fort Worth; we were so proud of it,” Lee told us in 2023. “We were frightened to death when our parents sent us away from the house. To come back later to see it in shambles, that was traumatic.”

But so much of Lee's story is one of resilience.

In her younger years, she organized the Fort Worth's annual local Juneteenth celebrations, and used the festivities as a fundraiser for local nonprofits. She long emphasized the importance of Juneteenth getting national recognition, calling it "a unifier."

“I'm wanting us to unite so that we can address the disparities that are happening to us now," Lee told us in 2021.

Lee felt this so deeply that, in 2016, she began walking across the U.S., all the way to Washington D.C. She set out on a mission to gain 100,000 signatures for a petition to make Juneteenth a national holiday. 

She gained more than 1.5 million in the process.

Her annual "Freedom Walk" events have become a staple of Juneteenth celebrations in North Texas.

And that house on Annie Street where she was forced out of as a girl? Last year, the Trinity Habitat for Humanity acquired the property – which had become a vacant lot in the years since – and donated the land to Lee with an offer to build a new home.

Said Lee of that moment: "I could have done a holy dance, I tell you." -- Ryan Osborne

11. DFW Airport opens in 1974, connecting North Texas to the world 

Of all the undeveloped pastures that turned Dallas-Fort Worth into a sprawling metropolis, few (if any) were bigger, or turned out to be more influential, than one 17,000-acre lot that sat smack dab between the two cities.

That expanse of land off Texas Highways 183 and 360 would be turned into Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 1974.

Actually, it was merely Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport at the time, although it was still the biggest aviation endeavor in North Texas history. As Dallas, Fort Worth and the surrounding cities and suburbs continued to grow through the 1950s and 1960s -- and as air travel only increased in popularity -- North Texas residents had several options for flying, but none too efficient.

There was Meacham Field in North Fort Worth, and Amon G. Carter Field near the current site of DFW Airport. In Dallas, there was Love Field, which by the 1960s was growing crowded and congested.

The ever-increasing number of airline passengers had each of those airports constantly facing the need for expansion and construction, according to the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). 

Also, the airports were causing an increasing amount of drama between Dallas and Fort Worth city leaders. At one point, a feud spawned over the construction of Amon G. Carter Field. The spat was supposedly so heated that it was one of the reasons why Amon G. Carter himself -- an audacious Fort Worth businessman and the airport's namesake -- reportedly refused to eat lunch at Dallas restaurants when he was there on business, according to the TSHA.

These controversies came to a head in 1962 when the Federal Aviation Administration declared, once and for all, that it wouldn't spend anymore money on Love Field until Dallas and Fort Worth came up with a plan for a new regional airport.

The cities finally came together and settled on an 11-member board -- seven from Dallas and four from Fort Worth -- to lead a new airport's efforts. Settling on the sprawling land that intersected Grapevine, Euless and Irving, the board started the process of building the massive -- and singularly significant -- piece of infrastructure.

When it opened in 1974, DFW Airport gave North Texas a connection to the rest of the world -- and the world to North Texas. 

Today, the airport is the second-busiest in the U.S., behind only Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Bigger than the island of Manhattan, DFW is also the second-largest U.S. airport by area, trailing only Denver International Airport.

What's that cliché about Texas and size again? -- Ryan Osborne

10. Jerry Jones buys the Dallas Cowboys, fires Tom Landry and ushers in a new era of winning football

On Feb. 25, 1989, the Dallas Cowboys faced an inflection point.

The overwhelming majority of Dallas’ then-29-year history was a model for consistency and excellence filled with thrilling victories and larger-than-life personalities. The Cowboys’ rise to the top of the NFL ranks was meteoric. Five years after their formation in 1960, Dallas began a historic streak of 20 straight winning seasons, a stretch that included two Super Bowl titles in five appearances, seven conference titles and 12 division titles. 

Legendary head coach Tom Landry emblazoned his iconic, fedora-outlined silhouette into the hearts and minds of Cowboys fans everywhere, spearheading a triumvirate of football savants alongside president and general manager Tex Schramm and vice president of player personnel Gil Brandt. Together, those three constructed a dynamic roster featuring Hall-of-Famers like Roger Staubach, Bob Lilly, Drew Pearson and Randy White. At the height of their collective powers, the Cowboys were branded by the NFL Media as "America’s Team."

The late 1980s were a different story altogether.

Those glory years all but vanished after a 20-0 loss to the Rams in the 1985 Division round. Dallas spiraled from 7-9 to 3-13 over the course of the next three years, and by the time 1989 rolled around, uncertainty clouded the future of the team.

Then an Arkansas maverick oilman brought clarity.

Jerry Jones had long desired owning an NFL franchise and sought to purchase the Cowboys. His financial advisors begged him not to make the deal, but he could not be dissuaded, and Jones agreed to buy the team from H. R. “Bum” Bright for $140 million on Feb. 25, 1989. North Texas history and NFL history would never be the same.

“This is a new era for the Cowboys,” Jones said at his introductory press conference. “I intend to have an understanding of the player situation. I intend to have an understanding of jocks and socks.”

Jones infused a bold, brash new energy into the franchise, but that approach quickly angered the fanbase. On the very same day, Jones unceremoniously fired Landry.

“It’s very, very sad,” Schramm said in the aftermath. “It’s tough when you break a relationship we’ve had for 29 years.”

“Like I told the players, this is the first day of the rest of my life,” Landry said. “I don’t worry about the past.”

Soon, Schramm was shown the door as well, and Jones assumed complete control of the Cowboys as the team’s new president and general manager. Jones has since apologized for the way the firings were handled, but at the time, his eyes remained fixed firmly on the future, and Landry’s replacement more than made up for the transgressions. Future Hall-of-Famer Jimmy Johnson was promptly hired as the second head coach in Cowboys history.

“I just want to say, please give us a chance,” Johnson said at his introductory press conference. “We’re going to give it everything we’ve got.”

Together, Jones and Johnson needed only four years to return the Cowboys to Super Bowl glory. Hall of Fame players littered the roster in the early 1990s, headlined by the famed "triplets" Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin. Dallas became an NFL dynasty, winning three championships in four years, and appearing in four straight NFC Championship games.

While the team was excelling on the field, Jones was excelling in the business realm. Jones’ creative media rights and sponsorship deals generated billions of dollars for himself and his fellow NFL owners. For his impact on the Cowboys and the league, Jones was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 2017.

Jones struck gold with that initial $140 million investment. The Cowboys have grown exponentially in prestige and influence, blossoming into the most valuable sports franchise on the planet currently valued at $10 billion.

On Feb. 25, 1989, "America’s Team" was truly reborn. -- Andrew Cely

9. Santos Rodriguez is killed by a Dallas Police officer in 1973, galvanizing the city

In Dallas' Pike Park stands 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez, immortalized in clay. 

He's looking over the park where he used to play, 50 years after he was shot in the head by a Dallas police officer. When Santos was murdered on July 24, 1973, he left behind his brother David, his mom Bessie and a lifetime of potential lost with the squeeze of a trigger.

The officer, Darrell Cain, had pulled Santos and David out of their home to question them about a petty theft at a gas station in Dallas' Little Mexico neighborhood. In the back of a patrol car, Cain held his gun to Santos' head in a game of Russian Roulette. He pulled the trigger once, trying to scare the 12-year-old into confessing. When he pulled the trigger again, the gun went off, killing Santos. 

Cain said the shooting was unintentional. A jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to five years in prison. In the end, he served half that time.

The murder led to a reckoning that changed Dallas forever. 

Protestors took to the streets, demanding justice in a peaceful march down Commerce Street. But the gathering eventually turned violent as another group of protesters confronted police, vandalizing cop cars and storefronts downtown. The protest marks the beginning of the Chicano movement in Dallas, kicking off efforts to advocate for better policing in minority communities. 

Today, half of the officers in the Dallas police force are minorities.

The shooting and subsequent protests brought national attention to Dallas and police brutality. Yet the Santos family wouldn't receive an apology from the city or the Dallas Police Department for another nearly 50 years.

In 2021, Bessie Rodriguez got her belated apology from the Dallas Police Department, delivered by Dallas' first Latino police Chief Eddie Garcia. 

"On behalf of the Dallas Police Department, as a father, I am sorry," Garcia told Rodriguez. 

In 2022, the city dedicated that clay statue to Santos and placed it in Pike Park alongside a plaque telling Santos' story. The finishing touch on the statue was Bessie Rodriguez's fingerprint, placed in the palm of her deceased son's hand. 

She was able to see her son honored by city leaders just one year before she died in 2023. 

"He meant everything to me," she told WFAA in 2020. "He was my son. What they did to him was an injustice. My boys didn't have a chance." -- Rachel Behrndt

8. Ebola arrives in Dallas in 2014, putting global attention on North Texas

In 2014, an Ebola outbreak put Dallas-Fort Worth at the center of global attention. 

The virus that ravaged West Africa was suddenly on our doorstep. In late September, the world watched as the first U.S. case of Ebola was confirmed in Dallas. Thomas Eric Duncan, a man from Liberia, had entered the States in hopes of connecting with his fiancé Louise Troh, and building a new life.

Janet St. James, then WFAA’s senior health reporter, was on the front lines of the media response. "I knew when I was breaking it that it was going to be a big deal,” she recalls. “It was all Ebola, all the time."

At the time, there was widespread panic. Some schools had emptied as parents feared sending their kids. People with even mild symptoms were rushed to hospitals, terrified they had the virus. At the end of the day, only three people had contracted the virus but the attention and news coverage seemed like there were so many more.

"There were only 3 Ebola patients in Dallas," St. James reminds us, "but for many, it felt like hundreds, even thousands."

"It was the longest deployment on a public health emergency we had until then," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. He worked closely with the state and CDC to lead the local response.

The crisis intensified when Duncan died just days after his diagnosis, and two nurses who treated him -- Nina Pham and Amber Vinson -- also tested positive.

"It was shocking," Jenkins said. "A gut-check moment for all of us."

Pham and Vinson’s diagnoses triggered even more public fear. Families connected to the nurses were quarantined. Their belongings were disinfected or destroyed, while crews in hazmat suits worked inside and outside their homes.

"People blamed us for bringing Ebola to the country," said Stanley Gaye, a Liberian community leader in Dallas, who remembers the rush to judgment against the Liberian community.

Despite the chaos, St. James knew it was essential to report facts calmly and clearly. One of the first pieces of crucial information was to inform the public over and over about how Ebola was spread: through contact with bodily fluids such as blood. Initial symptoms include fever, headache, muscle pain, and chills. 

"I felt a responsibility to provide rational, calm thought in the midst of what felt like chaos," she said.

Even years after the outbreak, lawsuits would be filed, and the trauma still lingers for some. The crisis would put a spotlight on the local response, hospital protocols, and the CDC. There was even talk of travel bans. Jenkins remembers the outcry from a fringe community asking to penalize Duncan and the family.

"I have no interest in criminalizing people for being sick," Jenkins said in response to calls to prosecute Duncan’s family.

But there were also small moments of hope, like Pham’s emotional reunion with her dog Bentley after they were both cleared of Ebola. Looking back, the outbreak in Dallas served as a learning experience for future public health emergencies, like COVID-19. -- Jobin Panicker

7. The Columbia space shuttle disintegrates over DFW

On Jan. 16, 2003, NASA launched the space shuttle Columbia with seven astronauts on board. Sixteen days later, at 8 a.m. on Feb. 1, 2003, former WFAA photojournalist John Pronk captured live footage of the shuttle’s re-entry into the atmosphere over Texas from a vantage point at Fair Park.

“There it goes," former WFAA anchor Brad Watson said while reporting live over Pronk's footage. "The bright light you see -- obviously some of the heat-resistant material lighting up on the shuttle." 

The shuttle was 16 minutes away from landing in Florida. But it and the seven-member crew on board never made it.

“It looks like a normal re-entry because the shuttle would normally light up because of the heat of re-entry," Watson said live on the air. "But then, if you notice here, it looks like pieces of the shuttle coming off."

Almost immediately, Pronk said he and his coworker out in the field felt something was amiss.

"He looked at me, and I looked at him and said, 'Somethings not right, something is not right,'" Pronk said.

That morning's news broadcast quickly pivoted to figuring out what happened in the skies above North Texas. 

Across the state, inside NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston, they were doing the same thing. They too realized something had gone wrong after one NASA employee lost the signal for four temperature transducers on the left side of the shuttle. That wasn't normal. 

Mission Control repeatedly tried to reach the astronauts. All they heard back was silence.

“It’s believed that there were 60 to 90 seconds that existed where the astronauts would have been aware that there was something going wrong,” said Joe Gutheinz, a former NASA investigator with knowledge of the Columbia investigation.

WFAA was the only station in the country broadcasting the re-entry live at that time. NASA used Pronk's 47-second live shot from Fair Park to confirm that the shuttle had indeed come apart, killing the seven astronauts on board: Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon.

Thousands across Texas had witnessed the bright trails of what was once Columbia streaking across the Texas sky. What started as an awe-inspiring moment quickly turned into a gut-wrenching moment. As NASA later revealed, the shuttle, traveling at an altitude of 200,000 feet and at 18 times the speed of sound, had exploded.

The debris fell over 2,000 square miles of East Texas moments later. Search-and-recover missions that would last 90 days.

When WFAA’s Rebecca Lopez was among the first reporters on the scene, pieces were still falling from the sky -- including one that landed in the middle of Nacogdoches’ town square.

Eventually, the remains of all seven astronauts on board were found.

“Every time human remains were recovered, they would pause everything and have a moment of silence, have a quick service -- and then everybody would get back to work,” said Matt Orwig, the U.S. Attorney over the Eastern District of Texas, who helped lead the recovery efforts.

Pieces as small as a quarter and as large as a minivan were found.

WFAA was there when the most significant piece was found -- the left wing. NASA eventually determined that a piece of insulative foam broke off the space shuttle’s external tank on take-off, and then struck the heat protection tiles on the left wing. On re-entry, the wing caught fire, leading to the explosion.

Today, the Columbia disaster is often cited as the final straw for NASA’s space shuttle program.

In 2004, President George W. Bush delivered a speech outlining an impending end for the program.

Seven years later, NASA would launch STS-135 on July 8, 2011. It was the 135th and final mission of the American Space Shuttle program. -- Ben Sawyers

6. Amber Hagerman is kidnapped and killed, and the AMBER Alert is introduced

It's a case that led to the development of the nation's first AMBER Alert System, and it's credited with saving countless children's lives.

In 1996, 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped while riding her bike in Arlington, Texas.

Four days later, her body was found four miles away from where she'd gone missing, in a creek near the Forest Hill Apartments in North Arlington on Jan. 13, 1996. An autopsy later determined she died of stab wounds to the neck.

Police said a man in a black pickup abducted her from the parking lot of an abandoned grocery store located at 1600 E. Abram Street. The suspect was described as a white or Hispanic male, under six feet tall, with a medium build and brown or black hair, police said. Investigators believed the suspect was in his 20s or 30s at the time of the crime.

That's where the trail stopped. Police have maintained that they believe there are witnesses who saw what happened, but remain fearful about coming forward.

Amber's murder remains unsolved, but it led to the creation of a procedure aimed at preventing future cases like hers. It's called America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. Most recognize it by its more common name: AMBER Alert.

As Amber’s family mourned their loss, a Texas mother named Diane Simone had an idea. She called a local radio station and asked if broadcasters in the Dallas-Fort Worth area could team up with law enforcement to alert people about abducted children in hopes of preventing similar incidents in the future. The idea, which Simone had called "Amber’s plan," gained traction. 

In 2002, Governor Rick Perry created the state's AMBER Alert network by signing Executive Order RP-16, --an order later codified through legislation in 2003. In the years since the alert system was eventually expanded to all 50 states.

According to the Department of Justice, AMBER Alerts have contributed to the recovery of more than 1,100 missing children nationwide.

Since January 1, 2013, AMBER Alerts have been automatically sent through the Wireless Emergency Alerts program. A distinct noise buzzes people's cell phones, indicating that a child has been reported missing in the area. The alert includes details about the child’s appearance, and a description of the suspect’s vehicle if available.

Another memorial to Amber -- a mural dedicated to her memory -- is on display in Arlington near where she was kidnapped. Her legacy lives on, as do questions about her case.

On the 25th anniversary of her death, police released new photos and information on Amber's abduction in a continued effort to find her killer. All these years later, the tip line set up for Amber Hagerman’s case remains the same. -- Krista Summerville

5. Texas power grid fails during 2021 winter freeze

At 5 p.m. on Feb. 9, 2021, the temperature in North Texas dipped below freezing. It would not rise above that level again until 93 hours later, and even then, it was only a brief respite – the temperature stayed at 33 degrees for about three hours, before dipping back below freezing.

The second stretch of freezing weather lasted even longer: Another 139 hours, from 5 p.m. on Feb. 13 to noon on Feb.19.

And it wasn't just below freezing – it was bone-chillingly cold, with lows dipping below zero. The conditions were felt across the state, too. All 254 counties in Texas were placed under a winter storm warning.

The resulting scenario became one of the worst energy crises in Texas history, placing tremendous stress on the Texas power grid and leaving millions of Texans without power for days.

Texas’ power grid operator, ERCOT, which manages most of the state’s power supply, cut millions of Texans' power to prevent the grid’s collapse but left it largely up to power companies like Oncor to determine where the outages would happen. The outages were initially described as rolling blackouts, but many areas were without power for days.

In all, state officials estimated that the devastating storm killed 246 people in Texas. More than half died of hypothermia, meaning they froze to death. 

Here in North Texas, 22 people died in Dallas County, 11 in Tarrant County, two in Collin County, and several others in surrounding areas.

“This was a devastating event," ERCOT CEO Bill Magness told the agency's board of directors shortly after the storm. "Power is essential to civilization."

Magness said Texas was 4 minutes and 37 seconds from a black-out event. If it had happened, it would have taken weeks, if not months, to get back fully online. 

Some power plants went offline because they weren’t adequately winterized. But others went offline because they could not get natural gas to their plants. That was largely the result of natural gas pipelines and wells that went offline because of the freezing conditions.

The crisis led to widespread scrutiny of ERCOT and the Texas power grid as a whole. And it also cost Magness his job. Weeks after the storm, ERCOT's board fired Magness, as state leaders, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton, called for accountability.

The state legislature passed reforms as a result of the 2021 storm. Those reforms required power generators to winterize their power plants. It also required that natural gas pipelines feeding into power plants be identified and mapped so that power would not be cut to them.

Texas hasn't had any major problems with the power grid since that fateful week in 2021. But anytime extreme heat or cold temps settle into the state, many Texans, perhaps reeling from PTSD, still ask the question: Will the power stay on? -- Ryan Osborne

4. July 7, 2016 shooting kills 5 police officers in downtown Dallas

On the evening of July 7, 2016, a peaceful protest was interrupted by deadly gunfire on the streets of downtown Dallas.

In the end, five police officers died, and the suspect was ultimately killed by a police bomb robot. And a city was shaken to its core.

The night began with protesters gathering at a downtown Dallas park and then marching through the streets. The protest came in the wake of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling, 37, in Louisiana, and Philando Castile, 32, in Minnesota. The crowd chanted "enough is enough" but there was no hostility – in fact, the Dallas Police Department, which had numerous officers working the protest, posted a video of the demonstration as officers and protesters walked side by side.

Then, just before 9 p.m., shots rang out.

Officers at the scene reported an active shooter in the area of San Jacinto and Griffin streets, as police scrambled to find the shooter and protesters took cover. 

“We didn’t really know if we had multiple snipers, or where they were located,” said Assistant Chief Reuben Ramirez, who was a lieutenant in 2016. 

He was at southeast patrol when the shooting started and raced downtown, as did hundreds of other officers from across the city.  

Within an hour, two officers were reported down. Shortly after that, DART police, which also had officers working the protest alongside DPD, reported that four of their officers had been shot and one, later identified as Brent Thompson, had died.

The number of officers shot ultimately climbed to 12, and five of those officers died. In addition to Thompson, the DART officer, Dallas Police Department officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Smith, Patrick Zamarripa and Michael Krol also died.

Police tracked the shooter, Micah Johnson, to El Centro College, following a trail of blood. 

Body cam video showed the moment that patrol officers and the tactical team found Johnson.  

“Black supremacy! Black liberation!” Johnson shouted, opening up with a barrage of gunfire on officers. 

Officers returned fire. 

“Come out with your hands up! Drop your weapon and come out!” an officer yelled.

“No surrender!” the gunman shouted, opening fire again. 

With Johnson barricaded, police sent tactical team hostage negotiator Larry Gordon to the scene, and Gordon talked to Johnson for hours. 

Eventually, Senior Cpl. Jeremy Borchardt and others came up with a plan to use a robot strapped with explosives to end the standoff.  

David Brown, who was Dallas police chief at the time, approved the tactic. It was the first time that explosives strapped to a police robot had ever been used in American policing.  

And it ended the threat, killing Johnson.

In the aftermath, pictures showed the body of Micah Johnson amid the rubble. His rifle, two handguns and more ammunition lay close by. Officers found a bag filled with supplies.  

“I had to see who this person was that I've been talking to for four hours, that had me so afraid,” Gordon said. “Once I looked at him, I was thinking, ‘This is just a guy. This is not a monster. This is just a guy.’” -- Ryan Osborne

3. Roe v. Wade is filed in Dallas, sparking national abortion debate that continues to this day

The building at 400 N. Ervay Street in downtown Dallas houses apartments now. But in 1970, it was federal court.

On the third floor of the residential building sits a well-preserved courtroom that acts as a shared community space. It’s the courtroom where a challenge to Texas abortion law was first heard -- long before it changed the course of American history multiple times.

It was a case the nation came to know as Roe v. Wade.

In the late 1960s, a young Dallas attorney named Linda Coffee was interested in challenging Texas’s ban on abortions. She had graduated from law school at The University of Texas. Sarah Weddington was one of her few female classmates, and Coffee recruited her to help represent a pregnant Dallas woman who wanted an abortion but had been turned away by doctors.

The woman used the pseudonym Jane Roe. They sued Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade.

Roe v. Wade went before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.

Weddington was only 26 years old when she argued the case at the highest court in the land. But she won her argument.

In 1973, justices issued their landmark decision that legalized abortion access across America.

In the 1980s, Jane Roe revealed her identity. Her name was Norma McCorvey. In a weird twist of fate, McCorvey became a born-again Christian in the '90s and started fighting against what she once fought for. She was baptized in a backyard swimming pool in Garland, rallied with anti-abortion advocates across the city and launched her own ministry called “Roe No More.”

In turn, Dallas attracted abortion protesters and arrests outside clinics became common.  

Between 2000 and 2022, Texas led the way in incrementally limiting abortion access.

In 2022, the Supreme Court overruled their earlier ruling on the matter. The old ban became law again.

Coffee is still alive. 

McCorvey died in 2017.

Weddington died in 2021 after representing Austin in the Texas House and working for Jimmy Carter in the White House. She donated her entire collection of archives to Texas Woman’s University.

"The collection is so much more than Roe v. Wade," said Kimberly Johnson, senior assistant dean of special collections in university archives at Texas Woman’s University. "It tells the story from beginning to end. From childhood to the end of her life."

Coffee sold her archives at auction in 2023. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck paid $600,000 with his winning bid.

Johnson understands these documents' appeal to both ends of the political spectrum: "It’s not just part of women’s history," she said. "It really is part of our nation’s history. Regardless of where you fall, it’s a piece of history." -- Teresa Woodard

2. The devastating Delta Flight 191 crash at DFW Airport in 1985

The crash of Delta Airlines Flight 191 at DFW Airport wasn't just a tragic event -- it was a catalyst for change in aviation and meteorology. It sparked congressional hearings, studies and sweeping changes in aviation safety.

"That was a once-in-a-career story," said former WFAA photographer Mike Coscia.

Over his nearly half-century career, Coscia captured some of the nation’s most significant moments. Among the most haunting was August 2, 1985 — the crash of Delta Flight 191. On that fateful day, 137 people lost their lives.

At the newsroom's direction, Coscia and his reporter rushed to the airport, arriving right behind an ambulance, which granted them unprecedented access to the scene.

"I didn't have to say anything," Coscia said. "He just waved us in."

Once on the tarmac, they witnessed the aftermath of one of the deadliest aviation accidents in history, including the iconic image of the charred tail of the plane.

"It was almost spiritual in a way," Coscia remembered. "It was so quiet. Over a hundred souls had ascended into heaven from that spot."

Delta 191 crashed due to strong microbursts from an otherwise unremarkable storm cell. Tom Bradshaw, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, explained: "The very strong momentum from the microbursts basically brought the plane right down into the ground."

The plane first struck Highway 114 at 200 miles an hour, colliding with a car and two large water tanks before leaving a trail of devastation. 

Only a small portion of those on board lived through the crash. Among them was Richard Laver, who was just 12 years old at the time. Laver spoke with WFAA on the 32nd anniversary of the crash, recalling: "The only thing I remember is the violence, the impact and my father covering my body." 

His father did not survive.

The disaster of Delta 191 led to significant advancements in aviation safety. 

Weather radar technology has greatly improved since 1985. Airports are now equipped with wind sensors and specialized weather service units for air traffic control. New Terminal Doppler Weather Radars have been placed at airports around the world.

"We know so much more now than we knew in the '80s," Bradshaw said.

Additionally, the FAA now mandates that airplanes be equipped with instruments to detect wind shear -- a direct result of the lessons learned from Delta 191. But perhaps the most significant development since 1985 is pilot training to spot inclement weather -- education meant to help with on-the-spot decision-making.

"We've learned to have a healthy respect for storms and basically stay out of them," Bradshaw said. 

In 2010, DFW installed a memorial to the victims of Delta 191. After years of avoiding Dallas despite living just a few hours away in Austin, Laver visited the memorial in 2017.

"When you survive something as violent as I did with people all around me, you wonder what your purpose is your whole life," he said. 

During that visit, Laver said something changed in him. He thought he was going to be overcome by emotion. Instead, he felt the opposite.

"I turned and walked away, and my wife couldn't believe it, it had no hold on me anymore -- it was anti-climatic," Laver said. 

Then he added something about that day that few others could ever say: "I beat it." -- Jobin Panicker

1. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the humiliation of Dallas that followed

At WFAA, it's known as Studio B. It's the smallest of three production studios on the bottom floor of our broadcast center on Young Street in downtown Dallas. 

But it has played the biggest role in WFAA's history -- serving as a window to the world on perhaps the darkest day in Dallas history.

Jay Watson was the WFAA program director at the time when, on November 22, 1963, station technicians hurriedly cut away from a program called "The Julie Bennell Show" to reveal Watson in Studio B, out of breath, standing in front of a curtain with a microphone in one hand and a bulletin from United Press International in the other.

"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen," Watson said. "You'll excuse the fact that I am out of breath. But about 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing, from all indications at this point, has happened in the city of Dallas. President Kennedy and Governor John Connally have been cut down by assassin’s bullets in downtown Dallas."

Ward Huey, the former Vice Chairman of Belo Corp. and President of Broadcasting for the former owners of WFAA, was working at the station offices that day.

"It was chaos," he recalled. "Frightening."

Huey's career began at WFAA in 1960. The trauma, pain, and Dallas's shame from that day in 1963 are still vivid in his mind.

"The story was so tragic," he said. "It was so upsetting to so many people that it was hard to get through it. Very hard to get through it."

Studio B at WFAA was where the world first heard from eyewitnesses like Bill and Gail Newman, who were ushered into the studio along with their young children.

"It just scared me," Gail Newman said in her interview with Watson. "It was terrible."

Assignment editor and chief photographer Bert Shipp raced back to the studio from Parkland Hospital to get his 16mm black and white film developed so it could be broadcast on WFAA. And he did it with some unintended help: He commandeered the first car he could find.

Former WFAA executive news producer John Sparks remembers Shipp's encounter with a driver stopped near the hospital.

"Bert opens his door, jumps in and says, 'We're going to Channel 8,'" Sparks recalled. "And [the driver] said, 'I'm not going to Channel 8.' And he said, Yeah, you are!' Bert steps on that gas pedal and brings that film back."

Studio B is also where another witness was first interviewed on live television. He walked into the WFAA lobby holding a home movie camera with what would become the most important 26.6 seconds of 8mm color film in the JFK investigation.

"May I have your name please sir," Jay Watson asked him. 

Replied the man: "My name is Abraham Zapruder."

"And they put him on TV," said former WFAA Operations Manager Craig Harper. "That's how the world knew there was the Zapruder film. The FBI and CBS, the Secret Service showed up wanting to get that film processed."

"The international press corps came to town," Huey recalled. "Dallas was humiliated in so many ways. It was a long time before I felt we had overcome the shock."

The shock kept coming. WFAA was also broadcasting to the world when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed two days later.

"Bob Walker, WFAA-TV, Dallas, Texas," the former anchor said in yet another breaking news broadcast from Studio B. "There's been a shooting at Dallas Police Station as Oswald was being transferred."

"That was all part of the mystique of this TV station," Harper said of WFAA's effort to be wherever it needed to be to cover the big story. "To have Abraham Zapruder sort of walk in the door, to be at the right place at the right time, I don't think that's luck. I think that's smart people doing smart things."

From that moment on, WFAA was a different place. It had been a station that only worked with 16-millimeter black-and-white film and transferred it to a 2-inch reel-to-reel video tape to get it on television, and a station with a large bus it utilized to carry massive cameras and equipment to do live remotes. As history unfolded around the station, it realized it would need to modernize and remain on the cutting edge to continue being a window not just to north Texas, but to the entire world.

"At that day and time, there was no color, there was no cable, there was no satellite, there was no internet, there was no high-definition television, nobody had ever heard of digital," Huey said. "And all of a sudden what had been local live was live worldwide. It was breathtaking."

Today at WFAA, we still tell stories from Dealey Plaza, our neighbor just four Dallas city blocks away from our studios. We cover the tributes, the commemorations, and the conspiracies it continues to bring.

But on that dark day in 1963, the events of Dealey Plaza put WFAA to the test.

"This is the best television station in the country," an admittedly biased Sparks said. "Was the best, is the best -- and there's a reason for it."

Reasons that include the echoes in WFAA Studio B of November 22, 1963. -- Kevin Reece