July 17, 1941: Playing at Cleveland, Yankee third baseman Red Rolfe of Penacook doubles and singles to help the Yanks beat the Indians 4-3. But the big news is that Cleveland and its good-fielding third baseman, Ken Keltner, stop Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak at 56 games. During the streak, Rolfe, hitting second in the Yankee lineup, batted .306 and scored 49 runs.
July 17, 1945: A house on Pembroke Hill built in 1771 by David Abbott burns to the ground with all its outbuildings. It is the worst fire in Pembroke in many years. The bark of a dog at 3 a.m. saves the occupants, the Spofford family.
July 17, 1967: A four-member investigating committee of Concord's Board of Alderman charges Mayor J. Herbert Quinn with gross misconduct and recommends his removal from office. The committee finds that Quinn attempted to trap Monitor editor James M. Langley on a drunken driving charge.
July 19, 1976: A consultant recommends that the state build a new $20 million prison on Clinton Street and phase out the North State Street facility by 1980. City officials are outraged. City Councilor David Rogers suggests the site is Gov. Mel Thomson's choice because it is “the residential area inhabited by many of his most outspoken critics.” (The plan never comes to fruition.)
July 19, 1985: In a White House ceremony, Vice President Bush names Christa McAuliffe, a Concord High School social studies teacher, as the nation's “Teacher in Space.” Scheduled for a January launch on the space shuttle, McAuliffe says: “I think students will . . . say that an ordinary person is contributing to history, and if they can make that connection, they are going to get excited about history and about the future.”
July 19, 2002: A top state health official says he was paid to quit after he raised questions about widespread waste, fraud and abuse within New Hampshire's mental health system, the Monitor reports. The official, former Division of Behavioral Health director Tom Keane, left the state Department of Health and Human Services having accepted six month's pay, or nearly $44,000, for not returning to work. He served 10 months in office.
July 20, 1987: A traveling exhibit in a trailer stops at the State House, and hundreds of people queue up to see what's inside. Among many other items, the exhibit includes an original Magna Carta, a signed Emancipation Proclamation, a page of the 1638 Connecticut charter and a late draft of the U.S. Constitution with the notes of one of the delegates, Pierce Butler, in the margins.
July 21, 1878: A lightning bolt ignites the “Mother House,” the first building on the campus of 22-year-old St. Paul's School. Fire destroys the building, which houses classrooms, the dining hall and the offices of the rector and staff. The Rev. Henry Coit, the school's first rector, is determined that the fire not delay school. Two months later, school will open on time, with 204 boys enrolled.
July 21, 1927: State Education Commissioner Ernest W. Butterfield applauds the fact that most girls training to be teachers in the state's normal schools are of old New Hampshire stock. Girls of foreign parentage adapt poorly to rural living, he says, and are better off training as nurses or taking up commercial work.
Louis J. Rundlett, Concord's superintendent of schools, concurs with Butterfield and adds that girls should start young in training as teachers. Only Manchester has an ordinance prohibiting married women from taking teaching positions, but Rundlett frowns on the idea as well. Although married women may understand children better, he says, single women should be given strong preference for teaching jobs because married women have their husbands to support them.
July 21, 2003: Wayne and Ruth Ross, the owners of Rossview Farm in Concord, have struck a deal with the Trust for Public Land to conserve their 510 acres of forest, wetland and hill on District Five Road, the Monitor reports. Provided they can secure the funding, the Trust for Public Land can buy the land for $2.4 million.
July 22, 1976: New Hampshire Attorney General David Souter discloses that three pistols were uncovered at the state prison in Concord after officials were informed of plans for an armed escape.
July 22, 2003: Manuel Gehring, the Concord man accused of murdering his children, Sarah, 14, and Philip, 11, returns to Concord on a small jet after spending a week somewhere in the Midwest.
July 23, 1927: Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, who is scheduled to arrive in Concord two days later on his triumphant tour around the country, lands at Concord airport. The reason: the airport in Portland, Maine, his scheduled stop, is fogged in.
