Jan. 24, 1901: Wilbur Sweatt, 22, of Penacook, is accidentally stabbed in the chest by his friend, Fred Carr, while playing with a knife. Sweatt dies Feb. 6, and an autopsy will show that the knife pierced the lung and cut a half inch into his heart. It was considered a wonderful case that he could have lived so long with such a wound, a local history reports.
Jan. 24, 2002: The Concord Police Department announces that George Pregent of Concord has been arrested and charged with four felony-level counts of possession with intent to distribute marijuana. The police found 78 pounds of the drug, the largest recovery of marijuana in the department’s history.
Jan. 25, 2000: Concord receives nearly 9 inches of snow, hardly an extraordinary occurrence for late January; however, it is the first significant snowstorm of the season, and for that to come in late January is unusual.
Jan. 25, 2003: At the state Democratic Party’s annual convention in Concord, both U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt and former Vermont governor Howard Dean promise to do away with tax cuts for the wealthy, provide universal health insurance and fight terrorism through energy policy. They rouse the crowd with a vow to make the world safe for liberals again.
Jan. 26, 1839: In Concord, rain falls for 24 hours straight. The Merrimack rises 15 feet in 15 hours. Several bridges are destroyed.
Jan. 26, 1968: U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy brings his presidential campaign to Concord. He meets with Gov. John King, who is leading President Johnson’s campaign in the state, and says of New Hampshire: “It looks like Minnesota.”
Jan. 27, 1848: Franklin Pierce returns home to Concord after leading a brigade in the Mexican War. A crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 people meet him at the city’s new railroad station. Pierce has been gone eight months. In that time, the Concord town meeting has banned “bowling, saloons and circuses.” Among those present for Pierce’s welcome home is his old friend and Bowdoin College classmate Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Jan. 27, 1943: An anonymous Webster man applies to the Concord War and Price Rationing Board for 600 pounds of sugar. “I make alky mash and need sugar to make it ferment and taste right,” he writes. The board rejects his request.
Jan. 27, 1983: Concord native John Bluto makes a brief TV appearance on an episode of Cheers. He plays an insurance salesman, a role he played in real life in Concord for more than 10 years.
Jan. 27, 1992: The morning after Bill and Hillary Clinton’s 60 Minutes appearance, most people interviewed by a Monitor reporter on Main Street blame the media for excessive coverage of Clinton’s private life. “I think his wife made a clearer point than he did,” says Amy Menin. “She said she’s not just Tammy Wynette standing by her man – I thought that was great – that she really loves this guy. If she can say that, the rest of it is none of our business.”
Jan. 27, 2003: The Concord City Council votes to take the historic Rolfe barn through eminent domain, stopping Ken Epworth, the barn’s owner, from dismantling the building and selling the parts to an unnamed client. The Penacook Historical Society asked the city to step in so it can use the barn as a museum and community center.
Jan. 28, 1942: John G. Winant of Concord, the U.S. ambassador to England, tells a national defense luncheon in London that the United States will recruit an army of 7 million men. “Idleness has not been part of our national life,” he says. “That is not America.”
Jan. 28, 1979: Lawyer Carroll Jones of Concord, who heads Sen. Bob Dole’s New Hampshire GOP presidential campaign, says Dole’s last-place finish in Iowa means he will have to pull out all the stops between now and the state’s Feb. 26 primary. “Number one,” says Jones, “it would be necessary to put about $100,000 into advertising. . . And step two, he would have to be in the state of New Hampshire 50 percent of the time between now and then.”
Jan. 28, 1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes 72 seconds after liftoff, killing all aboard, including Concord High teacher Christa McAuliffe.
Jan. 28, 2000: Mel Bolden, the charismatic portraitist and political activist who became a friend to people of all ages around the Concord area, dies on his 81st birthday. Bolden, whose artistic career spanned six decades, gained particular notoriety for his portraits of Concord teacher Christa McAuliffe, who died on the same day in 1986 in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. One of the portraits hangs in the National Air and Space Museum.
Jan. 28, 2002: Convicted killer and Monitor columnist Ray Barham, 72, dies from cancer in the state prison infirmary. He was convicted in 1983 of first-degree murder after shooting his estranged wife’s boyfriend, and started writing for the paper’s editorial page in 1987. Editor Mike Pride will remember him by writing, “Ray joked about wanting to win the Pulitzer Prize. He said it was the only way to change the headline on his obituary. In fact, for many years it was his writing, not the killing, that defined him. He could not outlast the sentence he had brought upon himself, but his pen bore him through it.”
Jan. 29, 2002: Citing a lack of evidence, a Merrimack County Superior Court judge sends Richmond Co.’s supermarket and shopping center proposal back to the planning board, overturning the board’s unanimous decision against the Massachusetts company and upsetting some South End residents.
Jan. 30, 1988: Jon Bodell is born in Weymouth, Mass. Some decades later he would move to Concord and become a beloved reporter for the Insider.
