July 3, 1976: Gov. Mel Thomson says if Canada doesn't allow athletes for Nationalist China to participate in the Montreal Olympics, he will order the Taiwanese flag flown at the State House and at his official residence in East Concord throughout the Games.
July 4, 1842: Hooligans set a barrel of tar on fire in the State House plaza. “The tossing of fire-balls had begun when the police of this town interfered,” according to a city history.
July 4, 1891: A crowd of 6,000 to 7,000 people gathers at the circus grounds just above Bridge Street along the Merrimack River to watch a holiday baseball game. The Concord YMCA team, a perennial power, defeats the Concord Stars, 13-12. “Fielding at times was rather loose,” the Monitor reports.
July 4, 1899: Ten thousand people attend the dedication of the Memorial Arch in front of the State House. Cut from Concord granite, it is 33 feet 8 inches high and 53 feet wide. Though built on state land, it was paid for by the city and commemorates Concord's war veterans.
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 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 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, 2002: The State House is getting a makeover, the Monitor reports. The white portion of the octagonal structure, just below the gilded part of the dome, will be stripped and restored to the tune of $174,000.
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 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 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 8, 2003: At a house party in Concord, presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry tells a group of several dozen New Hampshire residents that he is the most electable of the nine Democrats seeking the party's nomination. Not everybody walks away convinced by Kerry's pitch. “I think he's very much a Washington politician,” says Ariana Hodes, a Derryfield High School senior who'll cast her first vote for president in the 2004 election. “And as a skeptical, cynical almost 18-year-old I have to say that is one of my concerns. . . voting for a politician who's been in Washington, who's been in the game. And that's what I like about Howard Dean, that he is very earnest and still very real about what he's saying.”
July 9, 1992: Bob Tewksbury of Concord is named to the National League All-Star team.
