Aug. 23, 1983: Gov. John Sununu denounces the issues raised in a lawsuit challenging New Hampshire's reliance on property taxes to fund schools as “garbage.” The suit, he says, is little more than a ploy by those who want a broad-based tax. Fourteen years later, the state Supreme Court will rule against the state in Claremont II, a similar lawsuit.
Aug. 24, 1979: Campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in Concord, U.S. Sen. Bob Dole acknowledges that former California governor and movie actor Ronald Reagan is the heavy favorite. Dole says he hopes to be “in a position to catch a falling star. If the star doesn't fall, the star will be the nominee.”
Aug. 24, 1975: Gov. Mel Thomson, just back from a trip to see the Alaska pipeline, encourages oil exploration off the New Hampshire coast: “Get it within the 3-mile limit and we will tax it and make money as well as bring in the oil and gas.”
Aug. 24, 1955: New Hampshire's highway death record is the worst in the nation for the first half of this year, the Monitor reports. Sixty-two people were killed, a 59 percent increase from the same months the previous year.
Aug. 25, 1855: Concord establishes its first public library. The city council appropriates $1,500: “$300 for fixtures, the residue for books.”
Aug. 26, 1988: Developers abandon plans for a seven-story hotel on Fort Eddy Road. Instead, Concord will get the LL Bean strip mall.
Aug. 26, 1952: In an effort to meet New Hampshire's draft quota, John Greenway, director of state Selective Service, announces that fathers, married men and single men over 26 years old face possible induction into the U.S. Army. This marks the first time these groups are eligible to serve their country.
Aug. 27, 1927: At a railroad crossing in Tilton, four young people, including two local girls, are killed just after midnight when an express train strikes the car in which they are riding. Witnesses say the Concord-to-Laconia night flyer struck the car squarely, knocking it into the Woodlawn Inn. The inn's wall is crushed. The impact of the collision was so great that the cow catcher on the locomotive was “ripped from its hangings.” The victims were thrown free of the car and “horribly mangled,” the Monitor reports. Tilton residents argue that the crossing should be better marked.
Aug. 27, 1869: Edmund Cox, the most daring coachman in the White Mountains, takes President Ulysses S. Grant on a wild ride from Bethlehem to the Profile House in Franconia Notch. For the bumpy 11-mile trek, Grant joins Cox atop the Concord Coach. As he climbs down from the box, the president is “a curious sight, covered with dust from head to foot.”
Aug. 27, 1991: Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder arrives in Concord and plays coy about plans to run for president. “I'm not unmindful at all of all the portents, the omens and the signs relative to being in New Hampshire. I take all of them seriously.” Wilder will eventually jump into the race but then back out.
Aug. 27, 1990: David Souter's friends and neighbors describe for the Monitor their interviews with the FBI after he is nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. “They asked me if David had ever been in any trouble with liquor or speeding or any kind of dope. But I never knew David to drink or anything,” said one neighbor.
Aug. 28, 2000: The board of directors of First Night New Hampshire announces it won't hold its annual New Year's Eve celebration this year. The organization has accumulated debts over the past three years, in part due to cold weather and a 1999 bomb scare.
Aug. 29, 1900: Workmen erecting electric light poles find two rusted tin boxes buried by a dirt road in Bow. The boxes contain documents stolen from the State House more than five years earlier in a heist that netted $6,000 in cash.
Aug. 29, 1862: While ministering to soldiers of the 2nd New Hampshire Infantry at Second Bull Run, Harriet P. Dame of Concord is captured. She is taken to Stonewall Jackson's headquarters and will be released the next day. As long as the 2nd serves, Dame will be its “angel of mercy,” according to Maj. J.D. Cooper.
“Many days,” he will write, “she has stood by the side of our noble, patriotic sons who have gone to their long homes, doing all in her power to alleviate their sufferings, and soothe their sorrows in the dying hour.”
