May 6, 1967: Speaking in Manchester, Gen. Wallace Greene Jr., the top U.S. Marine, says America is winning the Vietnam War, “and I say that without any doubt whatsoever.”
May 6, 1848: Colonel Dudley “Dud” Palmer, a leader of Concord’s temperance movement, puts forth a resolution requiring the town’s selectmen to enforce the laws against the sale of intoxicating drinks. It passes unanimously.
May 6, 1799: Blazing Star Lodge No. 11, Free and Accepted Masons, is “consecrated in ample form” at Union Hall in Ben Gale’s inn. It is the first of innumerable fraternal organizations in Concord.
May 6, 1933: Concord’s trolley system, begun in 1881, shuts down.
May 7, 2002: In a closely watched case about sexual harassment laws, and about the powers of the agency charged with enforcing them, the New Hampshire Supreme Court rules that prison officials sufficiently protected a corrections officer who was groped by a colleague, even though they did not fire the man who admitted he grabbed her breasts.
May 7, 2001: A Concord man is sentenced to 25 to 60 years in prison for raping a 6-year-old girl with his brother while videotaping the crime.
May 7, 2000: The temperature in Concord tops out at 94 degrees, breaking by one degree a record that had stood for 64 years. The normal high for this time of year is 66 degrees.
May 7, 1973: Maxine Kumin of Warner wins the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Up Country. “I’m just absolutely knocked out,” she says. “I can’t believe it.” Kumin says the book “took the pulse of the times a little bit. People are turning away from urban things.”
May 7, 1861: The First New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry Regiment, gathered in Concord, completes its organization under Col. Mason Tappan of Bradford. Company I is the Concord company, with 34 members from the capital, including its three officers, Capt. Edward E. Sturtevant, 1st Lt. Henry W. Fuller and 2nd Lt. Enoch W. Goss.
May 7, 1732: John Pittman is born. He will be an early settler of Barnstead and live to the age of 101. Around his 100th birthday, a town history reports, “he procured a set of teeth, white, strong and fashionable, which was in truth a wonder in the neighborhood, and he began to look young again.”
May 8, 2001: More than 150 firefighters from 32 departments are called on to put out an Allenstown fire that destroys one home and its barns while scorching 10 acres of dry ground. “We need rain badly,” says Hooksett Fire Chief Michael Howard. “Until we get some, this state is a tinderbox.”
May 8, 1996: Concord’s South Congregational Church votes to officially welcome lesbians and gays. The measure passes, 123-26, at the congregation’s 159th annual meeting. The church will now write acceptance of gays and lesbians into its bylaws.
May 8, 1996: Pitching for the San Diego Padres, Bob Tewksbury of Concord makes the 200th start of his major league career. He is in the midst of a streak in which he will win five of his first six starts for the Padres.
May 8, 1900: Having made several battery-powered cars at his American Manufacturing Co. in Penacook, Adrian Hoyt secures a 10-year local tax exemption for his auto-making concern. He hopes to employ 150-250 men and make three cars a day. A few days later he will drive one of his cars through downtown Concord to show how efficiently a car can deliver the mail. The car business never takes off, but Hoyt Electric does.
May 9, 2003: Two Weare police officers who were accused of gate-crashing their way into the Hopkinton State Fair last summer are cleared of all charges in Concord District Court. The state fails to prove that Sgt. James Carney and Officer HichamGeha each committed a $12 theft by attending the fair in August, Judge John Yazinski says just before he acquits the officers.
May 9, 1944: The woman who played the title role in “Cover Girl,” the current feature at the Concord Theater, is living on Court Street in Concord. She is Susann Foster, a blonde who stands 5-foot-8 in high heels. Foster’s husband, Private Ralph Foster, was a flight instructor at Concord Airport but has been reassigned to the Midwest. Susann Foster stayed behind temporarily to see through her pregnancy. She is due in two weeks. The Monitor reports that Foster “doubts she’ll ever return to modeling, believing motherhood to be a far more important career.”
May 9, 1970: Attorney General Warren Rudman defends the state’s decision to allow Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and David Dellinger to speak at the University of New Hampshire and, in a press conference, lashes back at “those bloodthirsty people” who advocated arresting Hoffman, Dellinger and Rubin or imposing some kind of restraint against the three to prevent them from speaking. “I did some exhaustive research and found that in the many appearances made by these three people, violence did not usually occur except when police or military force was evident.”
May 9, 1944: Norman F. Whippen, New Hampshire’s assistant superintendent of emergency farm labor, puts out a call for 275 “live-ins” – high school students willing to work on farms for $30 a month plus laundry expenses.
May 10, 2003: A few hundred of the Old Man of the Mountain’s fans gather in a field in Franconia Notch State Park to celebrate the granite profile’s 10,000-year reign over the Notch, and to shed a few tears over the loss. Several people leave flowers on the shore of Profile Lake, and families and groups of friends pose for pictures below the crumbled face.
May 10, 1847: Residents of Concord gather to honor Franklin Pierce after he is commissioned brigadier general for the war with Mexico. The ladies of the town present Pierce with a sword. The men have purchased a fine horse for him. When the horse suddenly dies, William Walker, proprietor of the Eagle Hotel, sells the men his black horse, which is given to Pierce.
May 10, 1943: The state announces that liquor will now be among the commodities subject to war rationing. The limit: two quarts per person per day.
May 10, 1944: Pinched by the labor shortage, the Brezner Tannery in Penacook has put up cash prizes for the best slogan aimed at a convincing women to take jobs. The results are in. Contestants had to complete the sentence: “I shall help bring an early victory by taking a job because . . .” Taking home the $10 top prize is Margaret Fanning of Hills Avenue, whose entry read: .” . . now is the time, any job calling for help is the place, any unemployed woman is the girl, an age-old threesome guaranteed to bring speedy, satisfactory results when they are properly combined.”
May 11, 2002: Notre Dame College celebrates its final graduation before closing its doors.
