April 13, 2003: A fire breaks out in an apartment building off East Side Drive in Concord, attracting the attention of Kyle Bissonnette, 12, Matthew Peters, 12, and Nate Bell, 10. Seeing flames shooting from a downstairs window in the Regency Estates apartment building, the three pull their bikes over and flag down a passer-by, who calls the police. Kyle and Matthew head into the building and start knocking on doors, making sure everyone is out and rousing residents who don’t hear the smoke alarms. Nate waits outside to make sure his friends come out okay. One apartment is destroyed in the blaze. Nobody is injured.
April 13, 1945: Responding to the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the previous night in Warm Springs, Ga., John G. Winant of Concord, the U.S. Ambassador to England, says: “The greatest American of our age is dead.”
April 13, 1775: With Revolutionary fervor running high, the town of Chester raises a company of 50 men “to go against any enemy that shall presume to invade us.”
April 14, 1865: At 5 p.m., Congressman Edward H. Rollins, a Concord Republican, stops by the White House to seek a pass for a constituent to visit his wounded son in an army hospital. President Lincoln comes downstairs to oblige Rollins, writing a note to the secretary or war. It is the last official business Lincoln will conduct before going to dinner and the theater – and possibly the last time he will sign his name. After Lincoln is assassinated at Ford’s Theatre, Rollins keeps the dated, signed note.
April 15, 1861: Three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the first call for troops reaches Concord by telegraph from Washington, D.C., at 8 a.m. Friends rush across to the Phenix Hotel to awaken Edward E. Sturtevant, a popular police officer and former printer. Sturtevant rushes to the State House and, fulfilling his fondest wish, becomes New Hampshire’s first Civil War volunteer.
April 16, 1965: After a major organizing and fund-raising effort by, among others, Dudley Orr, Russell Martin, Malcolm McLane and figure-skating Police Chief Walter Carlson, construction begins on the ice hockey rink that will become the Everett Arena.
April 17, 1882: President Chester Arthur appoints William E. Chandler, a prominent Republican politician, lawyer and journalist from Concord, secretary of the navy.
April 18, 2003: After almost two months of negotiation Ken Epworth agrees to sell the Rolfe Barn to the Penacook Historical Society. The deal means that the city will drop its bid to seize the barn through eminent domain.
April 19, 1976: New England’s biggest April heat wave of the 20th century reaches its crescendo, and the temperature in Concord hits 95 degrees. It’s the third day in a row with a temperature of 90 or above and the fourth day in a row above 80.
April 20, 2002: Many New Hampshire residents are jolted awake just before 7 a.m. when an earthquake shakes their homes. The quake, which originates just outside of Plattsburgh, N.Y., registers a 5.1 on the Richter scale and is felt as far north as Maine.
April 20, 1861: Balloonist Thaddeus S.C. Lowe of New Hampshire takes off from Cincinnati in a trial run for an attempt to cross the Atlantic. Friends have encouraged him to see how far he can go over land before attempting the ocean crossing. Nine hours after takeoff, Lowe lands in South Carolina.
April 20, 1826: Birth of Emma G. Bingum in Loudon. The adopted daughter of Countess Rumford, she grew up in Concord and became its oldest resident, dying in 1923 at the age of 97.
