Dec. 3, 1847: For $1,000, Edward H. Rollins buys R.C. Osgood’s drugstore on Main Street opposite the State House. Rollins will become a leading Republican, and the back room of the store will be his political headquarters, where policies are crafted and candidates made.
Dec. 3, 1934: Orchestra leader Guy Lombardo plays to a sell-out audience at the Concord City Auditorium. The group arrived the night before and checked into the old Eagle Hotel. After an early afternoon press conference, Guy put together a touch football game on nearby Higgins Field.
Dec. 3, 1985: Louis Cartier walks into Concord High School with a loaded shotgun. After Cartier holds a student hostage and the police at bay, a police officer shoots and kills Cartier.
Dec. 3, 2002: The Chico Enterprise-Record, a California newspaper, reports that Andrew Mickel’s parents turned him in to the police after he called them and bragged about shooting a Red Bluff, Calif., police officer Nov. 19. Mickel was arrested a week later when he surrendered to the Concord police and FBI agents after a 2½-hour standoff at the Holiday Inn on North Main Street.
Dec. 4, 1900: In raids, 16 police officers from Manchester and Suncook bust 20 people under the state’s prohibition statute. Since bootleggers are still active, “there will be plenty to drink,” a Suncook villager says.
Dec. 5, 1866: The Monitor reports: “A man who had assisted to empty several bottles of wine afterward took a walk. The pavement was quite icy, and he exclaimed, ‘Very singular, whenever water freezes, it freezes with the slippery side up.’ ”
Dec. 5, 1908: Fire Chief William Green sets out for the movies at Phenix Hall, but even though the same show played at the nearby Opera House for more than a year, the Phenix is filled. There are plans to convert yet another building in the Durgin block into a theater. “Verily, the people are moving picture mad,” Mayor Charles Corning writes in his diary.
Dec. 5, 1999: A fire breaks out at South Congregational Church in Concord 45 minutes before a scheduled performance of Handel’s Messiah. After about 80 singers and musicians in formal attire gather on Pleasant Street, they head for nearby St. Paul’s Church, where about 200 people are treated to an impromptu rendition of the oratorio’s most famous section.
Dec. 5, 2001: The Concord High School wrestling team opens its season at Bishop Guertin, heading home with a 54-12 win.
Dec. 6, 1963: Dr. Thomas Ritzman, a Concord obstetrician and a backer of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign, tries to undo the damage he did the day before with a statement to an Associated Press reporter. Ritzman told the reporter that President Lyndon Johnson had a heart attack on the day of the Kennedy assassination. He based the claim on a photograph of LBJ gripping his left arm at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Now Ritzman tells a Monitor reporter he was misquoted. “I have no idea if President Johnson was suffering an attack of angina,” he says. “I certainly hope he was not.” The AP stands by its story.
Dec. 6, 1963: Concord Alderman Eugene C. Struckhoff urges that the city lead the battle against a Boston & Maine Railroad plan to end passenger service to New Hampshire.
Dec. 6, 1999: The Concord School Board agrees to increase the salaries of permanent substitute teachers and hire two more for the middle school and high school to share. School officials say that because of the strong economy they’ve had to scramble on occasion to find coverage.
Dec. 7, 1790: The Concord Herald reports: “No Boston post is arrived; all news we believe is frozen up by the cold weather; we have not even a report with which we can serve up a paragraph for our news-hungry customers.”
Dec. 7, 1941: While dining with U.S. ambassador John G. Winant of Concord, Winston Churchill learns of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The silver lining for Churchill: The United States will at last enter the war.
Dec. 7, 1965: Concord’s new Douglas N. Everett Ice Arena on Loudon Road is dedicated. The opening event: a hockey game between Dartmouth and UNH.
Dec. 7, 1999: On the anniversary of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, presidential candidate John McCain warns a Concord audience that the U.S. military is not sufficiently prepared. “The fault lies not with those who serve, nor with their uniformed leadership,” McCain says. “It rests with political leaders on both sides of the aisle.”
Dec. 7, 2002: The Monitor reports that the public will get access to thousands of pages of church personnel records if the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester agrees to settle the state’s criminal investigation. The attorney general’s office has been investigating whether the church failed to protect children from abusive priests.
Dec. 8, 1979: Concord City Manager Jim Smith rescinds the fire department’s ban on live Christmas trees in public buildings.
Dec. 8, 1998: The federal government holds a hearing in Concord to discuss removing the peregrine falcon from the nation’s endangered species list. The raptor has made a remarkable comeback in New Hampshire, which boasts 12 nesting pairs.
Dec. 9, 1979: Concord School Superintendent Calvin Cleveland says a group of Gideons will not be allowed to distribute Bibles in the schools, saying it would open the “floodgate” to all religions.
