Oct. 8, 1869: Franklin Pierce, 14th president of the United States, dies in Concord.
Oct. 8, 2001: Concord area cancer patients and their families win a prolonged and sometimes agonizing battle, when a state board approves Concord Hospital’s plan to bring radiation treatments closer to home. The decision clears the way for the hospital to install a $7.8 million radiation device in its new cancer treatment center.
Oct. 9, 1992: In the first Gile concert of the season, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra play to a full house at the Concord City Auditorium.
Oct. 9, 2001: Red River Theatres, a nonprofit organization set on bringing movies back to Concord’s downtown, receives $15,000 from the city council to conduct a feasibility study on whether a downtown movie theater would succeed. The group plans to buy the former Concord Theater building on South Main Street and restore it.
Oct. 10, 1774: Reacting to the Intolerable Acts and Britain’s closing of Boston Harbor, a special town meeting in Portsmouth votes to send 200 pounds to Boston for poor relief. The amount is four times Portsmouth’s annual province tax. Other New Hampshire towns, including Concord, will soon follow Portsmouth’s example and send money to Boston.
Oct. 11, 1854: In a closed-door meeting at Concord’s Eagle Hotel, former New Hampshire congressman Edmund Burke leads a group of disenchanted Democrats who vote to repudiate President Franklin Pierce.
Oct, 11, 1894: James M. Langley is born in Hyde Park, Mass. He will be the editor and publisher of the Concord Monitor for four decades, beginning in 1923. He will be instrumental in the campaign to elect Dwight D. Eisenhower president in 1952 and will later serve as Eisenhower’s ambassador to Pakistan.
Oct. 11, 1983: The Concord Library’s collection of 500 stuffed birds and mammals is loaded into a U-Haul and trucked to the new Science Center of New Hampshire in Holderness for display. Just as well. The library used to lend the animals to Concord residents, whose household pets chewed their wings and took swipes at their feathers. Estimated cost to restore them: $5,000-$10,000.
Oct. 12, 2002: It used to be that Concord had an affordable housing shortage, the Monitor reports. Today, it simply has a housing shortage – one that’s hitting every income sector, from minimum wage workers to wealthy executives.
Oct. 13, 1964: The Monitor reports the state GOP is doing brisk sales with a small book called None Dare Call it Treason, accusing former President Eisenhower of being soft on communism. When Perkins Bass finds out, he calls for the sales to end.
Oct. 13, 1987: The temperature in Concord falls to 22 degrees, a record low.
Oct. 13, 2000: Concord developer Steve Duprey announces the new conference center at Horseshoe Pond will be named for the Grappone family, who “stood out among all our wonderful donors.” The Grappones donated more than $700,000 to the project.
Oct. 13, 2001: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry tells a Pembroke school cafeteria full of local Democrats that the terrorists have delayed, but not obliterated, the party’s agenda on Capitol Hill.
Oct. 14, 2000: It’s not often campaigns for Executive Council attract national attention, but Peter Spaulding’s re-election bid will get a boost from former presidential candidate John McCain, the Monitor reports. Spaulding, of Hopkinton, was McCain’s state chairman during the primary campaign; now McCain will be traveling to Bow to hold a fund-raiser for Spaulding.
