• July 5, 1979 – In Concord scouting toward a presidential bid, U.S. Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas comments on the vulnerability of President Jimmy Carter and how it has raised hopes within his party. “I walked into the Senate cloakroom the other day and said, 'Mr. President,' and 20 Republicans turned around,” Dole says.
July 5, 1874 – Prominent Concord lawyer Anson Southard Marshall dies of a gunshot wound. The previous day, Marshall took his wife and young son for a Fourth of July picnic near Lake Penacook. The family heard target shooting by a militia company nearby. Marshall stood to call to the shooters and request that they be careful. He was immediately shot in the abdomen.
July 6, 2001 – Joseph Whittey is found guilty of murdering 81-year-old Yvonne Fine in Concord nearly 20 years earlier. Although Whittey had been a suspect early on, it wasn't until 2001 that investigators discovered DNA evidence allowing them to charge him with the crime. Already in prison for attempted murder, Whittey is sentenced to life.
July 6, 1849 – The Legislature officially gives Concord permission to become a full-fledged city. One big argument in favor of abandoning the town meeting form of government is that there is no place big enough to accommodate all the town's voters.
July 6, 1941 – With a crowd of 60,948 jamming Yankee Stadium for the dedication of a monument to Lou Gehrig, Gehrig's former teammate and bridge partner, Red Rolfe of Penacook, hits three singles and a homer in the first game of a doubleheader sweep. Yankee center fielder Joe DiMaggio extends his hitting streak to 48 games. Rolfe is in a hot spell of his own. Over eight games, he will make 15 hits in 28 at-bats.
July 7, 1995 – Concord's Bob Tewksbury of the Texas Rangers pitches his first American League shutout. He wins 10-0 over the team that originally signed him, the New York Yankees.
July 7, 1989 – The state celebrates the opening of the new $30 million New Hampshire Hospital on Clinton Street in Concord. At 199,000 square feet, it is the state's largest building project ever.
July 7, 1853 – In arguing for the passage of prohibition in New Hampshire, George G. Fogg, a Concord editor, says legislators should line up against “the manufacturers of drunkards, paupers, and criminals.” The measure fails.
July 7, 1847 – President James Polk visits Concord, prompting a parade of bands up Main Street. “The streets were alive with sightseers and from the windows, ladies greeted the president with waving handkerchiefs,” one newspaper reports.
July 8, 1965 – Construction of a new King's Department Store begins on Loudon Road in Concord. Plans also call for a supermarket and five smaller stores.
July 8, 1967 – Monitor reporters set out in the streets of Concord to test a Harris poll's findings that President Lyndon B. Johnson's popularity is rising and that the Vietnam War will be a decisive factor in the 1968 presidential election. Interviews with 115 people in Concord turn up these results: 28.7 percent like Johnson more than they did in 1964, 58 percent like him less. Most of those who criticize Johnson cite his handling of the war as the main reason for their discontent.
July 9, 2000 – The new owner of the May King restaurant on Concord's Loudon Road plans a total makeover, the Monitor reports. The renovated restaurant, to be called Ginger Garden, will offer Chinese and Japanese cuisine, including the capital city's first sushi bar.
July 10, 1879 – John B. Buzzell is hanged at the state prison. Buzzell broke off his engagement with a young woman. She sued him for breach of promise, and he hired a young man to kill her. The young man fired a pistol through her window, blowing her head off. Buzzell was acquitted of murder. Later, when the hired gun turned state's evidence to save his own hide, Buzzell was convicted as an accessory to murder and sentenced to die. As he awaited the noose, his case was used by legislative proponents of a measure to abolish the death penalty in New Hampshire. The measure failed.
July 10, 1927 – A U.S. Army flying school opens at Concord airport with the arrival of the first class of 20 pilots in training. With the opening of the school, the Monitor reports, Concord becomes the air defense site for “all that territory in a triangle running from Concord to the fishing port of Gloucester and its splendid harbor, west to the more important commercial harbor at Portland and back to Concord.”
July 11, 1973 – The Concord City Council agrees to spend $1.6 million on a new police station and district court and extensive city hall renovations on Green Street.
July 11, 1824 – Dr. Asa McFarland, Concord's Congregationalist minister, writes to the town requesting that the contract obliging the town to pay him as a town officer be terminated. At their 1825 town meeting, Concord voters will honor this request. From this time forward, according to an 1850 town report, “no money has ever been raised by the town, in the capacity of a parish, or for the support of preaching.”
