Oct. 19, 2003: A Manchester widow is going after big tobacco, the Monitor reports. Julien Longden smoked for 32 years died of lung cancer at the age of 49. Now his widow, Sheila Longden, is asking a Hillsborough County jury to make the Philip Morris tobacco company pay for the pain suffered by her husband and his death. The trial is the first of its kind in New Hampshire.
Oct. 20, 2003: Berlin records the national low temperature at -15 degrees.
Oct. 20, 2001: Salem’s Katie King, a member of the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey Team, scores 2 goals for Team USA. The U.S. wins over Canada, 4 to 1.
Oct. 20, 1814: The first boat of the Merrimack Boating Co., later the Boston & Concord Boating Co., arrives in Concord. Northbound commercial cargo will include sugar, molasses, rum and finished goods. The boats will carry lumber, firewood, potash (for soap) and granite south to Quincy Market.
Oct. 20, 2000: James Hall, convicted of second-degree murder for killing his mother, receives a prison sentence of 30 years to life. In April 1999 he strangled Joan Hall, 77, in the Concord apartment they had shared for about a year.
Oct. 20, 1989: The 57-year-old Johnny Cash fills the Capitol Theatre in Concord for two performances. His humble demeanor and his repertory, heavy on gospel, trains, fisticuffs, simple justice and simple pieties, bring down the house.
Oct. 21, 2000: Hilda Sargent, 97, attends the opening ceremony for Bow’s newly expanded Baker Free Library. The town’s oldest resident, Sargent says she still reads every day and actually had to put down a novel when her ride came to take her to the event.
Oct. 21, 1927: The newly formed Manchester board of aviation and recreation approves construction of an airport on an 84-acre tract of land near Pine Island Pond. Ground is broken four days later and within a month two 1,800 foot runways are cleared.
Oct. 21, 1983: The Monitor reports that Tio Juan’s restaurant has opened, using a logo and menu that brought protests and the threat of lawsuit by Hispanic groups in Connecticut. The logo shows a Mexican with drooping eyelids, wearing a sombrero and serape and holding a margarita. Patrick Gallagher, one of the owners, says no offense is intended. “People jump on all these bandwagons,” he says.
Oct. 22, 1987: After passing through a small crowd bearing signs reading “Run, Don, Run,” and “New Hampshire Needs Trump,” real estate magnate Donald Trump tells the Portsmouth Rotary: “This country is in trouble. It needs strength, competence and intelligence.” But he adds: “I am not a candidate for president.”
Oct. 22, 1770: The trustees of Dartmouth College hold their first meeting in Keene, inaugurating the administration of the new college.
Oct. 22, 1844: The Millerites, one of many cults and sects that have gained popularity in New Hampshire in recent years, believe that the world will end on this date. It doesn’t.
Oct. 23, 1973: U.S. Reps. Louis Wyman and James Cleveland, New Hampshire Republicans, praise President Nixon’s release of the Watergate tapes. “Hastily initiated resolutions for impeachment should now be withdrawn,” Wyman says. Undaunted, Minnie Murray, wife of UNH professor Don Murray, has begun circulating a petition calling for Nixon’s impeachment. “He’s set himself up against any authority,” she says, “and this is not the way to run a democracy.”
Oct. 23, 1890: A statue of John Stark is dedicated outside the State House.
Oct. 24, 2003: Madame Chiang Kai-shek, a visitor to Wolfeboro and wife of the longtime ruler of China and Taiwan, Chiang Kai-shek, dies at the age of 105. The first lady vacationed in Wolfeboro until the mid-1980s, but old-timers who remember her posh, 120-acre lakeside estate do not agree on how often she visited. “I’ve heard both sides,” says Harrison Moore, a 77-year-old local historian. “I’ve heard from so-called reliable people who live here year-round that she was here several times and spent some time in Wolfeboro. Other people say she was barely here at all.”
Oct. 24, 1788: Sarah J. Buell is born in Newport. Widowed at a young age, Sarah Josepha Hale will turn to letters, writing the novel Northwood and becoming editor of the Lady’s Book, a magazine published out of Philadelphia by Louis Godey. In 1830, she will write “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and in 1863, she will persuade Abraham Lincoln to declare the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving.
Oct. 24, 1805: The first Quaker meeting is held in Concord. It will be 10 years before a Quaker meeting house goes up on what is now the State House plaza.
Oct. 24, 1852: News of Daniel Webster’s death at Marshfield, Mass., reaches Concord at 2:38 p.m. Bells toll and flags are lowered to half-staff. At a memorial service the next day Gen. Franklin Pierce, just days before his election to the presidency, will be the principal speaker. Of Webster, Pierce will say: “The great heart of the nation throbs heavily at his grave.”
Oct. 25, 1843: Col. Richard M. Johnson, the noted Kentuckian who is reputed to have killed the Indian chief Tecumseh, visits Concord. Franklin Pierce and others greet him at the station, and Johnson rides down Main Street on a white horse. At the State House, he wears the same red vest he wore in the Battle of the Thames, during which he is said to have slain Tecumseh. Eleven shots pierced the vest. At a dinner presided over by Pierce, someone will raise doubts about Johnson’s famous act and ask him if it really happened. “In my opinion,” Johnson responds, “I did kill Tecumseh.”
Oct: 25, 1986: A few days after Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle writes, “Stick a fork in ’em. The Mets are done,” all New Hampshire stays up late on a Saturday night to watch game six of the World Series. The Sox come within one pitch of winning their first world title since 1918, but the Mets pull it out, 6-5 in 10 innings, on Mookie Wilson’s ground ball through Bill Buckner’s legs. The Mets go on to win game seven.
