Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Hardaway Site in North Carolina dates back 10,000 years to the earliest evidence of human occupation. Before 200 AD people built earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes across the region.
Hernando de Soto's expedition met Mississippian culture people at Joara near what later became Morganton in 1540. Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for Spain in 1567 and established Fort San Juan before natives killed most Spaniards in spring 1568.
On the 12th of April 1776 the colony became the first to instruct its delegates to vote for independence from Britain through the Halifax Resolves passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress. The date appears on the state flag and seal as a memorial to that event.
Around 125,000 troops from North Carolina served in the Confederate Army while about 15,000 including both black and white North Carolinians served in Union regiments. Over 30,000 North Carolina troops died from combat or disease during the war.
In the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 white Democrats led around 2,000 supporters attacking the black newspaper and neighborhood killing an estimated 60 to 300 people. They installed Alfred M. Waddell as mayor in the only successful coup d'état in United States history.
The state hosted the first successful controlled powered heavier-than-air flight by Wright brothers near Kitty Hawk on the 17th of December 1903. Research Triangle Park established in 1959 serves as the largest research park in the United States formed near Raleigh Durham and Chapel Hill.