July 18, 1945: The state liquor commission bans jukeboxes from hotel grills and says women may not work as bartenders.
July 18, 1945: In an effort to stop petty thievery on his Stone Porch Lodge poultry farm in Boscawen, Walter Marshall says he and all available men will sleep in tents with guns. Marshall promises they will use their weapons if necessary. He also wants to bring in a pack of dogs, “all good barkers.” Marshall tells a reporter he counts his flock of 8,000 chickens every morning, and this morning 10 were missing.
July 18, 1817: To a group of leading citizens on the Concord-Chichester line, a cloud of dust announces the approach of President James Monroe. A cheering crowd on Main Street greets Monroe, a lanky 59-year-old man in a formal long dark coat. He will spend three days in the capital, attending dinners, a concert and Sunday services, taking a ride on a new 75-foot boat on the Merrimack and visiting the State House construction site.
July 18, 1818: A gilded, carved wooden eagle is raised to a perch of the State House, which is nearing completion. The event is marked with a parade, toasts and refreshments.
July 18, 1863: Col. Haldimand S. Putnam, a West Pointer from Cornish who is leading the 7th New Hampshire infantry regiment, is shot through the head and killed during the futile Union assault on Fort Wagner, S.C. Among the regiments attacking with the 7th is the 54th Massachusetts, an African American regiment commanded by Col. Robert Gould Shaw. The 7th New Hampshire loses 212 killed, wounded and missing during the battle.
July 18, 1694: Two hundred fifty Indians under the command of a French soldier attack white settlements on both sides of the Oyster River in Durham, killing or capturing 100 settlers.
July 19, 2002: A top state health official says he was paid to quit after he raised questions about widespread waste, fraud and abuse within New Hampshire’s mental health system, the Monitor reports. The official, former Division of Behavioral Health director Tom Keane, left the state Department of Health and Human Services having accepted six month’s pay, or nearly $44,000, for not returning to work. He served 10 months in office.
July 19, 1976: A consultant recommends that the state build a new $20 million prison on Clinton Street and phase out the North State Street facility by 1980. City officials are outraged. City Councilor David Rogers suggests the site is Gov. Mel Thomson’s choice because it is “the residential area inhabited by many of his most outspoken critics.” (The plan never comes to fruition.)
July 19, 1970: Hart’s Location becomes the last community in New Hampshire to get electricity.
July 19, 1832: Fearing a cholera epidemic that has entered the country from Europe and Canada, a special Concord town meeting elects a board of health. The board is granted power “to make all necessary arrangements and accommodations for sick strangers and for the comfort and safety of its own citizens.” Fears of the cholera epidemic will prove unfounded.
July 19, 1985: In a White House ceremony, President Bush names Christa McAuliffe, a Concord High School social studies teacher, as the nation’s “Teacher in Space.” Scheduled for a January launch on the space shuttle, McAuliffe says: “I think students will … say that an ordinary person is contributing to history, and if they can make that connection, they are going to get excited about history and about the future.”
July 19, 1988: Gov. John Sununu travels to Washington to testify against a national sales tax which, he says, “would place the federal government in each of the three major tax areas: income, payroll and sales. This opens up the strong possibility of huge spending and tax increases over time.”
July 20, 1988: The New York Times reports that New Hampshire is among the top 10 states when it comes to wine consumption. At the top of the list: California. No. 50: Mississippi. New Hampshire comes in 9th, at 3.12 gallons per capita per year.
July 20, 1929: Daniell Rossiter, a photographer from Ludlow, Vt., is killed on the Mount Washington Cog Railway when the locomotive goes out of control.
July 20, 1945: The Carmelite nuns, a cloistered order engaged in meditation, prayer and manual labor, plan a new foundation in Concord. They have acquired a site on Bridge Street and will move to the city from Roxbury, Mass. The order is named after Mount Carmel in Palestine, site of the first church dedicated to the Immaculate Mother of God. The order’s first home in the United States was established in Baltimore in 1790.
July 20, 1987: A traveling exhibit in a trailer stops at the State House, and hundreds of people queue up to see what’s inside. Among many other items, the exhibit includes an original Magna Carta, a signed Emancipation Proclamation, a page of the 1638 Connecticut charter and a late draft of the U.S. Constitution with the notes of one of the delegates, Pierce Butler, in the margins.
July 21, 1857: The Coos Republican reports that Joseph Roby, 23, of Clarksville is struck and killed by a bolt of lightening while sitting in his house. “His cap and boots were torn in pieces, but no mark was found upon his person. Several individuals were in the house at the time, but none of the rest were injured materially.”
July 21, 1939: The Concord Ex-Service Men’s Council petitions the city to rename Concord streets in honor of soldiers killed in World War I.
