April 26, 1948: Angry at city council delays, Concord school kids devote the first day of their spring vacation to picketing downtown in a plea for a new municipal swimming pool. Some of the signs read “Swimming Will Make Us Strong” and “Oh Give Us Water!”
April 27, 1861: The city of Concord appropriates $10,000 to aid the families of local volunteers who go off to war. It expects the state to reimburse it, and for the most part it will. By the end of the year, the city will have doled out $3,000 to soldiers’ families.
April 27, 1987: Fire breaks out in the south end of the Legislative Office Building in Concord. Hundreds gather to watch as a cool wind whips the flames pouring from the roof. Water streams out the door and down the steps into the street. The building suffers smoke and water damage.
April 28, 2001: A Concord doctor has been charged with sexually assaulting a patient in her bed at the state’s psychiatric hospital, the Monitor reports. The doctor is also accused of giving the patient addictive drug prescriptions in exchange for sex.
April 29, 2003: The former Blue Cross-Blue Shield building may not be vacant much longer, the Monitor reports. Local developer Steve Duprey purchased an option on the property this winter and now has several interested tenants, including the College of Lifelong Learning. The college wants to consolidate its administrative offices and local classrooms somewhere in Concord. The chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire also may move his office there.
April 30, 1697: In Penacook along the Merrimack River, Hannah Dustin and two other captives turn on the Indians who kidnapped them and killed Dustin’s newborn child in March. They catch all the Indians asleep, kill 10 of them and return home to Haverhill, Mass. For the 10 scalps they bring with them, they collect a bounty of 50 pounds.
April 30, 2003: After six months of haggling, the city reaches a tentative deal to buy the former Penacook tannery. The city plans to pay Dana Willis $143,000 for the condemned, contaminated tannery and 2.5 acres of land.
May 1, 1891: By custom, Concord’s May Horn ushers in a day of celebrating the final escape from winter. The horn is peculiar to Concord. “The ‘oldest inhabitant’ cannot recall a first day of May in his boyhood when the din of the horn did not reverberate in some wee hour,” the Monitor reports.
May 2, 1966: Former vice president Richard Nixon lands at Concord Airport for a speech at the Highway Hotel. Of the situation in Vietnam, he says: “We cannot tolerate the administration’s apparent resignation to a five-to 10-year war in South Vietnam because this will eventually mean an American defeat.”
May 2, 2001: The temperature in Concord hits 91 degrees, the hottest it’s been on this date since 1930. Meanwhile, in Laconia, Lake Winnipesaukee’s ice-out is finally declared – 10 days shy of the record for the latest ice-out.
