Feb. 26, 2000: Donna Sytek, the first female speaker of the New Hampshire House, informs her colleagues by letter that she will not run for a third term as speaker this fall. She cites her belief in voluntary term limits for legislators and her own health troubles as reasons for stepping down.
Feb. 26, 1942: The H.J. Heinz Co. runs a large ad in the Monitor telling readers: “Blame Hitler, Hirohito, and Benito! … Don’t Blame Your Grocer.” The problem? Because of the shortage of sugar and other commodities, many of Heinz’s 57 varieties may be missing from the shelves.
Feb. 26, 1973: The Concord city manager proposes increasing downtown parking fines from $1 to $2.
Feb. 27, 2002: In Canterbury last year, residents raised $360,000 in less than two months to save the town’s country store, the Monitor reports. This year, library supporters hope residents will be almost as generous to the library. Over the next two years, library trustees want to raise $200,000 to help pay for an expansion.
Feb. 27, 1873: A select committee of the U.S. Senate recommends the expulsion of Sen. James W. Patterson, Republican of New Hampshire, on grounds of corruption. Patterson, a Henniker native, Dartmouth graduate and former educator, has bought stock at a heavy discount in the Credit Mobilier scandal. He will be saved by the bell. His term expires in just four days, and on March 1 a party caucus will decide there is not enough time to deliberate the matter.
Feb. 27, 2000: Trucks full of steel beams arrive in Concord, the first shipment of materials for new seating to be installed at Memorial Field. The construction project comes in preparation for the Babe Ruth World Series, to be played in Concord in August.
Feb. 27, 1958: At one of President Eisenhower’s stag dinners, the guest of honor, the 82-year-old Robert Frost, tells his old friend Sherman Adams: “There may not be much time left, you know.”
Feb. 28, 2003: Two men have been charged with brutally beating a McDonald’s night janitor earlier in the month, the Monitor reports. Mitchell J. Edward, 20, of Elkins Street in Franklin, and Travis Turcotte, 23, of South State Street in Concord, were arraigned on several charges related to the early-morning robbery at the Fisherville Road McDonald’s.
Feb. 28, 1894: At Sewalls Falls, George and Charles Page of the Page Belting Co. open the second hydroelectric dam of its kind in the United States. The powerhouse is equipped with four 2,300-volt, 225-kilowatt generators driven by leather belts from reaction-wheel water turbines. Sewalls Falls will generate power until 1968.
Feb. 28, 1987: Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire says he was “thunderstruck” to hear that the candidate he was backing for the 1988 GOP presidential nomination, Howard Baker, had pulled out of the running to become President Reagan’s chief of staff. Rudman takes a shot at Vice President George Bush and tells reporters he will probably support Sen. Bob Dole.
March 1, 2002: Jury selection starts in the murder trial of Dwayne Thompson, the man accused of killing his longtime roommate and downtown Concord fixture, Robert Provencher.
March 1, 1923: Two Concord newspapers, the Evening Monitor and the New Hampshire Patriot, merge. They will operate as the Concord Daily Monitor and New Hampshire Patriot under Editor James M. Langley, Dartmouth graduate and World War I veteran. Circulation by the mid-’20s will exceed 5,000.
March 1, 1973: Gov. Mel Thomson says he will veto any effort to remove “Live Free or Die” from the state’s license plates. Rep. Jack Chandler of Warner agrees. “Those who don’t like the motto should get out of New Hampshire and live in Massachusetts,” he says.
March 1, 1860: During the afternoon, Abraham Lincoln addresses a large crowd at the Phenix Hotel in Concord. He speaks to an even larger one in the evening at Manchester. The mayor of Manchester introduces him as “the next president of the United States.” Lincoln’s appearances follow a trip to see his son, Robert, at Phillips Exeter Academy.
March 1, 1926: The Granite Monthly magazine reports: “The completion of the Concord Monitor-Patriot poll on Prohibition showed an overwhelming victory for the Drys. The totals: Prohibition is right: 1,022. Prohibition is wrong: 152. For modification: 347.
March 2, 2003: Two Merrimack Valley High School students are killed in a car accident. Amy Gilbert, 17, of Boscawen and Kristin Wagner, 15, of Loudon are in Gilbert’s car when it crosses into an oncoming lane of traffic on Route 106.
March 2, 2000: A Keene State College seminar discussing sexual relationships between faculty members and students fails to produce a consensus of opinion. Some people say such relationships amount to sexual harassment because professors have power over students. Others in attendance argue that college students, as adults, should be accountable for their personal lives.
March 2, 1848: On the eve of gubernatorial elections, the New Hampshire Patriot, the state’s leading Democratic newspaper, announces imminent peace with Mexico and says the fruits of war redound to the credit of President James K. Polk.
March 2, 1960: Mayor Charles Johnson of Concord appeals to the Capitol Theatre not to show the movie Jack the Ripper. Johnson hasn’t seen the film but has heard from more than a dozen callers to city hall that it contains scenes of violence and horror. Two days before the movie is scheduled to open, theater manager Theresa Cantin agrees to cancel it.
March 3, 2003: Rescuers use helicopters and a snowmobile to pluck plane crash survivors, including three children, from a snowy state forest in south-western Massachusetts. Three members of the family of seven, from Swanzey, are found dead at the scene. The father, Ronald Ferris, dies later at Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington, Mass.
March 3, 2002: In the Class I boy’s basketball quarterfinals at UNH, Pembroke beats Merrimack Valley 80-57.
March 3, 2000: Reporters from around the country descend on the Wolfeboro home of Dennis Moran, a 17-year-old known in cyberspace as Coolio. He says a joking comment to friends that he hacked into several major web sites is the reason the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are investigating him.
March 3, 1832: Benjamin Brown French of Chester, soon to go to Washington as a clerk in the U.S. House, writes to state Rep. and future U.S. Sen. John P. Hale of Dover: “Politics – how I pity the poor devil who must worship at your shrine. He must discard conscience – bid farewell to truth – say adieu to virtue – and swear by all that’s holy that he & his party are right and everybody else is wrong.”
March 3, 1993: The new $36.5 million federal courthouse in Concord makes the list of “pork projects” named by a citizens’ group that is a member of a coalition headed by Sen. Bob Smith. “Sen. Smith doesn’t necessarily agree with all the projects on the list,” says Smith’s spokeswoman.
March 3, 1863: To the ringing of bells, the firing of cannon and the music of bands, the Second New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment is feted in Concord on its return from the front. The regiment has been fighting with the Army of the Potomac since the first Battle of Bull Run in July 1861.
March 3, 1945: G-men with machine guns swarm Main Street after word reaches Concord that two prison escapees from Iowa are holed up downtown. At midday an inspector and three FBI agents arrest 31-year-old killer Edgar Cook at the point of machine guns at the Phenix Hotel. Cook is described as “a tough-looking character with plenty of cash.” Later, a Concord police officer has a hunch that Cook’s partner may have gone to the Capitol Theater to see a matinee of the current feature, The Suspect. The hunch proves correct, and George Stubblefield, a/k/a William Giles, is captured outside a barbershop shortly after leaving the theater.
