Jan. 27, 1942: Speaking at the swearing-in ceremony for Concord Mayor John Storrs and the city’s aldermen, Gov. Robert O. Blood has this to say about the world war: “We will put an end to this conflict in two years.”
Jan. 27, 1943: An anonymous Webster man applies to the Concord War and Price Rationing Board for 600 pounds of sugar. “I make alky mash and need sugar to make it ferment and taste right,” he writes. The board rejects his request.
Jan. 27, 1983: Concord native John Bluto makes a brief TV appearance on an episode of “Cheers.” He plays an insurance salesman, a role he played in real life in Concord for more than 10 years.
Jan. 27, 1965: Concord Electric Company asks permission of the Federal Power Commission to close down its only generating plant, located at Sewalls Falls on the Merrimack River.
Jan. 27, 1848: Franklin Pierce returns home to Concord after leading a brigade in the Mexican War. A crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 people meet him at the city’s new railroad station. Pierce has been gone eight months. In that time, the Concord town meeting has banned “bowling, saloons and circuses.” Among those present for Pierce’s welcome home is his old friend and Bowdoin College classmate Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Jan. 28, 2003: Twenty victims of a sexually abusive Massachusetts priest and more than 60 of their supporters confront New Hampshire Bishop John McCormack at a meeting in Salem, Mass., and demand repentance.
Jan. 28, 2002: Convicted killer and Monitor columnist Ray Barham, 72, dies from cancer in the state prison infirmary. He was convicted in 1983 of first-degree murder after shooting his estranged wife’s boyfriend, and started writing for the paper’s editorial page in 1987. Editor Mike Pride will remember him by writing, “Ray joked about wanting to win the Pulitzer Prize. He said it was the only way to change the headline on his obituary. In fact, for many years it was his writing, not the killing, that defined him. He could not outlast the sentence he had brought upon himself, but his pen bore him through it.”
Jan. 28, 2000: Mel Bolden, the charismatic portraitist and political activist who became a friend to people of all ages around the Concord area, dies on his 81st birthday. Bolden, whose artistic career spanned six decades, gained particular notoriety for his portraits of Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe, who died on the same day in 1986 in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. One of the portraits hangs in the National Air and Space Museum.
Jan. 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after liftoff, killing all aboard, including Concord High teacher Christa McAuliffe.
Jan. 28, 1947: Jeanne Shaheen is born. She will direct Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign in New Hampshire, represent the Seacoast in the state Senate and, in 1996, be elected the state’s first woman governor.
Jan. 30, 2002: Here’s a good reason to watch more television and eat more candy, the Monitor reports. Concord native Jeremy Ellison-Gladstone is now appearing in a Snickers ad demonstrating the dangers of going too long without chocolate.
Jan. 31, 1986: On a frigid night, thousands gather in the State House plaza for a memorial service for Christa McAuliffe. “Her teaching has not ceased,” says Rev. Chester Mrowka.
Jan. 31, 1952: The Concord City Council debates plans for the construction of Storrs Street to relieve traffic downtown. There is no name yet for the new street, so it is referred to as Concord’s “Baby Bypass.”
Feb. 1, 2003: News spreads through Concord that the space shuttle Columbia has exploded, reminding many of the space shuttle Challenger. “It’s amazing how it brings those feelings right back,” says state Rep. Jim MacKay, who was the city’s mayor when the Challenger exploded 17 years ago with Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe on board.
Feb. 1, 1859: The Concord Railroad passenger station, including the offices of the Concord, Montreal and Northern railroads, the telegraph office and Depot hall, is destroyed by fire.
Feb. 1, 1827: Smallpox breaks out in Gilmanton. Many are vaccinated, and a “pest house” is set up to quarantine the victims.
Feb. 1, 1965: A state report estimates New Hampshire’s population at 657,000. Merrimack County is the fastest growing area of the state, followed by Belknap.
Feb. 1, 1968: As news of the Tet Offensive exposes the cracks in the U.S. war effort and in Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, “Mr. Benjamin Chapman” arrives in Nashua and checks into the Howard Johnson Inn. A day or two earlier, workers for “Chapman” have mailed 150,000 personal letters to New Hampshire households telling of his plans to run for the presidency. On the letter “Chapman” has signed his real name: Richard M. Nixon.
Feb. 1, 1921: The Granite Monthly endorses several proposed constitutional amendments: allowing the Legislature to tax income, reducing the size of the House and giving women full rights to hold state office. “All of these amendments must be adopted; the first must be or an intolerable situation will be created in New Hampshire. If during the next few years, the state is forced to depend upon its present sources of revenue, either we shall have a taxation of real property that will be almost confiscation or the work of almost every state department and institution will be crippled seriously.”
Feb. 1, 1859: A fire burns Concord’s railroad station to the ground.
Feb. 2, 2002: In Alton, support for a proposed high school with Barnstead is strong at a deliberative session. And an attempt to change the proposal into an Alton-owner school to which Barnstead students would pay tuition is resoundingly defeated.
