Oct. 7, 2003: Kathleen Gregg, wife of Sen. Judd Gregg, is kidnapped at knifepoint in her Virginia home, forced to withdraw money from a bank and released unharmed. Two men will be arrested the next day in northern New Jersey.
Oct. 7, 2001: Concord native Tom Mailhot begins the Ward Evans Atlantic Challenge, a 2,900-nautical mile rowing race from the Canary Islands off Africa to Barbados in the Caribbean. Mailhot is a member of the only American team in the race.
Oct. 7, 2000: Concord High quarterback Matt Skoby sets the school record for touchdown passes thrown in a game with five during a 38-10 win over Manchester Central.
Oct. 8, 2003: The Executive Council unanimously approves Gov. Craig Benson’s nominee for commissioner of the state Health and Human Services Department, Assistant Safety Commissioner John Stephen.
Oct. 8, 2001: Concord area cancer patients and their families win a prolonged and sometimes agonizing battle, when a state board approves Concord Hospital’s plan to bring radiation treatments closer to home. The decision clears the way for the hospital to install a $7.8 million radiation device in its new cancer treatment center.
Oct. 8, 1856: A show called Price’s Ethiopian Minstrels opens at Concord’s Phenix Hall. The show, according to an ad in Concord’s Patriot, is “affectionately portraying the lights & shadows of a darky’s life.”
Oct. 8, 1869: Franklin Pierce, 14th president of the United States, dies in Concord.
Oct. 9, 2001: Red River Theatres, a nonprofit organization set on bringing movies back to Concord’s downtown, receives $15,000 from the city council to conduct a feasibility study on whether a downtown movie theater would succeed. The group plans to buy the former Concord Theater building on South Main Street and restore it.
Oct. 9, 1992: In the first Gile concert of the season, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra play to a full house at the Concord City Auditorium.
Oct. 10, 1973: Speaking at a dinner meeting of the new Hampshire Petroleum council, Gov. Mel Thomson expresses his desire to bring more oil to the state, saying that we must “drill in the mountains and drill in the valleys.”
Oct. 10, 1774: Reacting to the Intolerable Acts and Britain’s closing of Boston Harbor, a special town meeting in Portsmouth votes to send 200 pounds to Boston for poor relief. The amount is four times Portsmouth’s annual province tax. Other New Hampshire towns, including Concord, will soon follow Portsmouth’s example and send money to Boston.
Oct, 11, 1894: James M. Langley is born in Hyde Park, Mass. He will be the editor and publisher of the Concord Monitor for four decades, beginning in 1923. He will be instrumental in the campaign to elect Dwight D. Eisenhower president in 1952 and will later serve as Eisenhower’s ambassador to Pakistan.
Oct. 11, 1983: The Concord Library’s collection of 500 stuffed birds and mammals is loaded into a U-Haul and trucked to the new Science Center of New Hampshire in Holderness for display. Just as well. The library used to lend the animals to Concord residents, whose household pets chewed their wings and took swipes at their feathers. Estimated cost to restore them: $5,000-$10,000.
Oct. 11, 1854: In a closed-door meeting at Concord’s Eagle Hotel, former New Hampshire congressman Edmund Burke leads a group of disenchanted Democrats who vote to repudiate President Franklin Pierce.
Oct. 12, 2002: It used to be that Concord has an affordable housing shortage, the Monitor reports. Today, it simply has a housing shortage – one that’s hitting every income sector, from minimum wage workers to wealthy executives.
Oct. 13, 2000: Concord developer Steve Duprey announces the new conference center at Horseshoe Pond will be named for the Grappone family, who “stood out among all our wonderful donors.” The Grappones donated more than $700,000 to the project.
Oct. 13, 1863: In a letter, New Hampshireman Benjamin Brown French, whose job as commissioner of public works includes handling matters for the First Family, complains to a relative of his difficulties with Mary Todd Lincoln. “The Republican Queen,” he writes, “plagues me half to death with wants with which it is impossible to comply.”
Oct. 13, 1987: The temperature in Concord falls to 22 degrees, a record low.
Oct. 13, 1964: The Monitor reports the state GOP is doing brisk sales with a small book called None Dare Call it Treason, accusing former President Eisenhower of being soft on communism. When Perkins Bass finds out, he calls for the sales to end.
Oct. 13, 1976: Attorney General David H. Souter says the proposal to make the attorney general’s position an elective office is “an abominable suggestion.”
