Feb. 8, 1897 – Concord's first movie plays at White's Opera House. The show includes bathers at Rahway, N.J., a watermelon-eating contest, a mounted policeman stopping a runaway horse and a three-minute boxing match featuring Gentleman Jim Corbett. “There is nothing fake about it,” the Monitor reviewer reports, adding that the pictures are “vivid and truthful.”
Feb. 8, 1943 – The crew of nine women running the sawmill at Turkey Pond is forced to shut down the operation until the pond thaws. The women have been working at the mill since October and all vow to return in May. Timber boss Howard E. Ahlskog says the women are more loyal and dependable than the last male crews he hired.
Feb. 8, 1939: The Monitor reports on the state of the city's residential real estate: 3,484 single family homes, 1,044 two-family homes, 97 three-family homes, 105 dwellings for four or more families and 16 apartment houses.
Feb. 10, 1942 – Robert Leon Harris, a 15-year-old student, agrees to leave Rundlett Junior High School “so as not to cause any trouble.” He is the second Jehovah's Witness in the city to refuse on religious grounds to pledge allegiance to flag and country.
Feb. 10, 1927 – The Schoonmaker Chair Co. signs a seven-year contract to use New Hampshire state prison inmates to make chairs. The company will pay 15 cents per man-hour.
Feb. 11, 1941 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints John G. Winant of Concord to succeed Joseph Kennedy as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Winant, a Republican, is a former governor and served earlier in FDR's presidency as the first administrator of the Social Security Administration.
Feb. 12, 1942 – Charles H. Barnard, the state's rationing director, announces that retread tires will be rationed as of next week. Also coming soon: sugar rationing.
Feb. 13, 1847 – Thomas “Old Soldier” Haines dies at 87. A Concord man, Haines volunteered in the Patriot cause at the age of 19. He was slightly wounded at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777 and had worse luck near Saratoga. He was shot and lay two days among the dead before being rescued. The ball had passed through both cheeks, nearly severing his tongue. The Bouton history of Concord reported: “His face bore the mutilation till his death.”
Feb. 14, 1947: Judd Gregg is born. He will serve as an executive councilor, congressman and two-term governor before barely beating John Rauh in the U.S. Senate race of 1992.
