April 21, 1789: When John Adams arrives at Federal Hall in New York after being elected the nation’s first vice president, he is greeted by John Langdon of New Hampshire, president pro tempore of the Senate. There is as yet no oath of office for the vice president, so Langdon simply escorts Adams to his seat at the head of the chamber.
April 21, 1881: At 6 p.m., a small closed car drawn by a horse leaves Abbot & Downing shops for Fosterville. The ride ushers in the era of trolleys in Concord. The cars, made by Abbot & Downing, will carry 200,000 people in their first year of operation.
April 22, 1994: Richard Nixon dies at 81. His New Hampshire friends remember him fondly. Former governor Meldrim Thomson, who supported Nixon almost to the day of his resignation, recalls introducing his son and chief of staff Peter to the president 20 years before. “Mel,” Nixon told him, “you are smart to have your son watch your back.”
April 22, 1995: Poet Jane Kenyon dies of leukemia at her home in Wilmot.
April 23, 2001: Kimballs Country Store in Pembroke gets a quirky piece of notoriety thanks to some number-crunching from the 2000 census. New Hampshire’s population centroid – or that point around which there is an equal concentration of the state’s population in every direction – is inside the store.
April 23, 1945: Thirteen-year-old Larry West of Concord is killed with a 12-gauge shotgun. The weapon discharges accidentally while he is climbing a tree to shoot a porcupine.
April 24, 1992: The Concord Monitor publishes its last afternoon edition. Henceforth it will be a morning paper.
April 24, 1900: Harriet P. Dame dies in Concord at the age of 85. She was renowned for having ventured south with the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. She served as a nurse and helpmate to the soldiers and was captured at Bull Run.
April 25, 1996: A packed house comes to the City Auditorium to hear five poets read in honor of Jane Kenyon, who was New Hampshire’s poet laureate when she died a year earlier. Among the readers are two Pulitzer Prize winners – Maxine Kumin and Charles Simic – and Kenyon’s widower, Donald Hall.
April 25, 1893: Edward H. Brooks is born in Concord. A graduate of Concord High and Norwich University, he will serve in both world wars, rising to the rank of lieutenant general. A highlight of his long, distinguished career will be leading the Second Armored Division onto Omaha Beach. His division will also be the first Allied force to enter Belgium.
April 26, 2000: The Executive Council unanimously approves the appointment of Linda Dalianis to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, making her the first woman named to the state’s highest court.
April 26, 1948: On the first day of spring vacation, Concord students take to the streets of downtown brandishing placards. Their cause: a new swimming pool in West Concord. The state Board of Health closed the old one as unsanitary in 1945, and a committee of the city’s alderman has recommended against spending $110,000 to build a new one.
April 26, 1991: President Bush says he is likely to seek changes in the travel policy that authorizes White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor, to use military airplanes for all his trips. Bush is dismayed by the extent of Sununu’s use of Air Force jets, according to associates.
April 27, 1987: U.S. Rep. Bob Smith is among a group offering a $1 million reward to any Southeast Asian defector who frees an American POW.
April 27, 1977: Gov. Meldrim Thomson says a planned protest at the Seabrook nuclear plant site is “cover for terrorist activity,” adding: “Once the demonstrators occupy the site, they do not plan to leave alive.”
