May 1, 1891: By custom, Concord’s May Horn ushers in a day of celebrating the final escape from winter. The horn is peculiar to Concord. “The ‘oldest inhabitant’ cannot recall a first day of May in his boyhood when the din of the horn did not reverberate in some wee hour,” the Monitor reports.
May 1, 1903: After 48 years of Prohibition, New Hampshire begins issuing licenses for liquor sales.
May 1, 1925: The Granite Monthly magazine reports approvingly that Concord, Hillsboro, Goffstown, Peterborough and Milford are all planning new high schools.
May 1, 1975: Gov. Mel Thomson engages in a shouting match with 100 welfare recipients protesting a 25 percent cut in benefits. “Does anyone here want a job?” he asks, pointing to a Department of Employment Security van across from the State House. “We want your job and your pay,” they shout back.
May 1, 2003: A Merrimack County judge sentences Mark Haskins, 33, and Edward MacDonald, 46, to prison for killing Rose Yeaton almost five years ago. The house-bound 91-year-old was brutally beaten to death in her Fisherville Road home. Judge Edward Fitzgerald gives Haskins 40-years-to-life and MacDonald 20-years-to-life.
May 2, 1939: The news in New York and around the world of baseball is that Lou Gehrig, after playing 2,130 consecutive games for the Yankees, has sat one out. Without Gehrig, the Yankees clobber Detroit 22-2. In a nine-run seventh inning, Yankees third baseman Red Rolfe, the Pride of Penacook, hits two doubles and drives in three runs.
May 2, 1977: Two hundred seventy-seven of the 1,414 anti-nuclear demonstrators arrested at Seabrook on April 30 are moved to the armory on Concord Heights.
May 2, 2003: The state Supreme Court upholds the conviction of Joseph Whittey, meaning that the 42-year-old who strangled Yvonne Fine of Concord 22 years ago will spend the rest of his life in prison. Whittey had asked the Supreme Court for a new trial, arguing that the DNA technology used to convict him of first-degree murder had not been sufficiently tested. In addition, he said that the trial judge should have removed herself from the case because she had been a prosecutor in the attorney general’s office during the 19-year investigation.
May 3, 1943: Because of rampant juvenile delinquency, Concord churches ask the city to impose a 9 p.m. curfew on teenagers. Police Chief Arthur McIsaac says he’ll consider the request.
May 3, 1967: Concord High School bars the press from covering Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s appearance at the school. Referring to a recent incident in which he was prohibited from speaking at Yale University, Wallace says: “I am glad they are barred – and not me – this time.”
May 4, 1848: Robert Hall is crushed to death in the water wheel gearing of the match shop of Jeremiah Fowler in Penacook.
May 4, 1943: The Concord police say they have solved hundreds of thefts with the arrest of 16 high school and junior high school boys. For the most part, the crimes involve objects taken from cars and houses. The boys range in age from 13 to 16.
May 4, 1944: Fire kills 2,000 chickens at Harold Ford’s farm on Loudon Road.
May 5, 1944: An epidemic of German measles in Concord has driven the absentee list at city schools above 100.
May 5, 1945: Maj. Gen. Edward H. Brooks, a Concord native, accepts the battlefield surrender of the German 19th Army. Brooks is commander of the Sixth Corps.
May 6, 1799: Blazing Star Lodge No. 11, Free and Accepted Masons, is “consecrated in ample form” at Union Hall in Ben Gale’s inn. It is the first of innumerable fraternal organizations in Concord.
May 6, 1848: Colonel Dudley “Dud” Palmer, a leader of Concord’s temperance movement, puts forth a resolution requiring the town’s selectmen to enforce the laws against the sale of intoxicating drinks. It passes unanimously.
May 6, 1933: Concord’s trolley system, begun in 1881, shuts down.
May 6, 1990: Renowned portrait photographer Lotte Jacobi dies in Concord. A native of Germany who lived in Deering for 30 years, Jacobi photographed Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Robert Frost, Marc Chagall, Eleanor Roosevelt and many other giants of the 20th century.
May 6, 2000: Concord Skatepark officially opens behind Everett Arena, and about 100 skaters immediately begin sliding, ramping and jumping to their hearts’ content.
May 6, 2002: The cities of Concord, Laconia and Somersworth are chosen to become New Hampshire Main Street Communities, and will have the support of the national program to help organize, promote, design and economically restructure their downtowns. Concords goals include bringing more housing downtown, redeveloping the Sears block and keeping stores open later.
May 6, 2003: An elderly man whom California authorities called the Love Bandit is arrested in Concord after being on the run for four years. Officials says the Richard Garcia, 71, preyed on widows over the age of 65, using his dancing skills to woo his way into their bank accounts. His preferred venues, officials said, were senior dances.
May 7, 1861: The First New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment, gathered in Concord, completes its organization under Col. Mason Tappan of Bradford. Company I is the Concord company, with 34 members from the capital, including its three officers, Capt. Edward E. Sturtevant, 1st Lt. Henry W. Fuller and 2nd Lt. Enoch W. Goss.
