Nov. 12, 2003: Concord’s Luke Bonner, a senior and basketball star at Trinity High School in Manchester, signs his national letter of intent to play for West Virginia.
Nov. 12, 2000: Concord High routs longtime nemesis Londonderry, 53-8, advancing to the state Division I football championship. The win ends a streak of lopsided defeats the Tide had recently suffered at the hands of Londonderry. Concord will go on to win the state title in equally convincing fashion, defeating Manchester Central, 38-0.
Nov. 12, 1941: After spending three days in the country with Winston Churchill, John G. Winant of Concord, U.S. ambassador to Britain, writes a five-page memo to Franklin D. Roosevelt outlining three scenarios Churchill has posed. The worst: Japan enters the war against Britain, but the United States stays out. Better: Neither country enters the war. Best: The United States enters the war, but Japan doesn’t. Less than a month later, Pearl Harbor will put a fourth scenario into effect.
Nov. 12, 1885: Ten women in their late teens and early 20s form the Flower Mission, whose purpose is to deliver flowers at Concord hospitals and homes for the aged.
Nov. 14, 1989: The majority of Franklin’s city council endorses Brenda Elias for mayor over incumbent Chester Wickens. Weeks later, the voters will agree, choosing both Elias and the tax cap she champions. Elias is the city’s first woman mayor.
Nov. 14, 1861: A fire at Main and School streets, the fourth major fire of the year in downtown Concord, destroys a harness factory, a shoe store, the gas-light company offices and homes.
Nov. 15, 2002: New Hampshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin, who has seen the state through a high-profile murder spree in the North Country, a successful challenge to the state’s school funding system and charges of misconduct against state Supreme Court judges, announces he will retire next month.
Nov. 15, 2001: After a request by Ward 3 City Councilor Andy Tarbell, a recount confirms that Kipp Cooper has won the seat, by 263-260. The original count was 262-260.
Nov. 16, 1861: After several devastating fires in the city in preceding months, a committee under Concord Mayor Moses Humphrey releases a study recommending that a steam fire engine replace the hand pumper stationed on Warren Street near Main. The new engine, the “Gov. Hill,” will go into service in early 1862. It will work so well that the city will soon be shopping for another.
Nov. 16, 1896: A paltry turnout of 100 people comes to the 1,100-seat White’s Opera House on Park Street in Concord for the first motion picture, which is to be shown on Edison and Dow’s Rayoscope. The Rayoscope doesn’t work, and the crowd goes home disappointed.
Nov. 16, 1908: With a friend at the wheel, Mayor Charles Corning leaves Concord at 10:35 a.m. for a drive to Cambridge, Mass. “The highways are far from perfect, but we are covering mile after mile,” Corning writes in his diary. It takes them six hours to reach Harvard Square.
