Oct. 27, 1908: A throng fills Concord’s Phenix Hall with hundreds standing as the state’s two U.S. senators campaign for the November election. “What a whirlwind (Sen. Joseph) Gallinger is for incessant work, work, work,” Charles Corning, the city’s mayor and the emcee for the night, writes in his diary.
Oct. 27, 2003: In a coffee shop on Main Street in Concord, the New Hampshire Green Party throws its support behind presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. And if Kucinich fails in his attempt for the Democratic nomination, Green Party spokesman Guy Chichester says the party may try to recruit the Ohio congressman to run on its ticket in the general election.
Oct. 28, 1906: The New York World reports that Mary Baker Eddy of Concord is mentally and physically unfit to lead the 800,000-member Christian Science church, which she founded. Eddy is 85 years old. “Mrs. Eddy looked more dead than alive,” wrote two reporters who had never seen her. “She was a skeleton, her hollow cheeks thick with red paint.” Mayor Charles Corning visits Eddy after hearing this account and finds her “keen of intellect and strong in memory.”
Oct. 29, 2003: A legislative committee has concluded that severe management problems at the North State Street prison in Concord allowed the June 4 escape to happen. In a letter given to Gov. Craig Benson, the committee’s chairman, Rev. Karl Gilbert, names Warden Jane Coplan as the problem.
Oct. 31, 1944: Elizabeth Hager is born. In the 1980s, Hager will become the city’s first woman mayor. She will serve many years as a city councilor and state representative and run unsuccessfully for governor in 1992.
Oct. 31, 1975: The state Supreme Court unanimously upholds a ruling giving a gay student group the right to hold social activities at the University of New Hampshire.
Nov. 1, 1819: A new animal law takes effect in Concord: “whereas the inhabitants of Concord and travelers with teams and loaded sleighs are frequently annoyed by cows and sheep running at large, therefore hereafter no cow or sheep shall be permitted to run at-large in the Main street.”
Nov. 1, 1842: The New Hampshire Asylum for the Insane opens in Concord. One of the first patients: a man from Tuftonboro who prays and preaches on the subject of the Second Coming for four hours each morning and remains quiet the rest of the day.
Nov. 1, 1845: Thomas Potter of Concord falls 34 feet from a chestnut tree without fracturing a limb. Twenty-four years earlier, he fell the same distance from the same tree.
