Jan. 20, 1968: New Hampshire loses its 100th military man in the Vietnam War. He is Eliot Guild of Keene, a 21-year-old Marine medical corpsman.
Jan 20, 1926: Nathaniel Lovell, a champion golfer at the Manchester Country Club, dies at the age of 25. The Granite Monthly magazine reports that the cause of death is “blood poisoning, which set in after the opening of a pimple on the golfer’s face.”
Jan. 20, 1973: The Monitor reports on downtown progress: “Storrs Street, long planned as a bypass to Main Street traffic congestion, will probably have a traffic light of its own soon.”
Jan. 21, 2002: James Ewing, co-owner of The Keene Sentinel for nearly four decades, dies at the age of 85. During his tenure as publisher, the newspaper successfully campaigned for a wide range of causes including land-use planning, freedom of information and public services for the needy. After leaving day-to-day newspapering in the mid-1980s, he helped launch the International Center for Journalists, a Washington-based training institute for journalists around the world.
Jan. 21, 1990: The new Concord Monitor building is dedicated off Sewalls Falls Road. In April, the staff will move into the building. The paper and predecessors to which it can trace its roots have been published in downtown Concord since 1808.
Jan. 21, 1766: At Concord’s first legal town meeting, Lieutenant Richard Hasseltine is elected moderator. Among the other elected town officials are tythingmen, a sealer of leather and a scaler of lumber.
Jan. 22, 1942: The Monitor reports that rather than wait for the draft, 32 men have enlisted at the Concord recruiting office for the duration of the war. Eleven are from Concord. Most have signed up for the air corps and been sent to Missouri to train.
Jan. 22, 1808: Gilmanton Academy burns to the ground.
Jan. 22, 1811: A cow belonging to Abner Farnum Jr. of Concord gives birth to a two-headed calf.
Jan. 23, 2000: Concord’s Tara Mounsey is named one of two defensemen on the Hockey News All-World Team of the 1990s. Mounsey’s Olympic teammate Cammi Granato is the other American in the starting six; they are joined by three Canadians and a Finn.
Jan. 23, 1938: The Sacred Heart Hockey Club, composed mostly of young Concord men of French Canadian descent, plays Butterfield of Quebec at the White Park rink. A crowd of 1,167 pays the 15-cent price of admission.
Jan. 24, 2000: U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter of Weare writes the majority opinion for a divided court upholding strict dollar limits on political contributions. Such restrictions are justifiable, Souter writes, because “Democracy works only if the people have faith in those who govern, and that faith is bound to be shattered when high officials and their appointees engage in activities which arouse suspicion of malfeasance and corruption.”January 24, 1857: The mercury drops to 37 below zero in Concord.
Jan. 24, 1988: For the first time in a decade, Aerosmith has a hit album. “Permanent Vacation” is in the Top 20 and has sold 1.3 million copies. “All those people who thought Aerosmith was dead were dead wrong,” Steven Tyler, who formed the band in Sunapee in 1970, tells the L.A. Times.
Jan. 25, 2002: awmakers approve $24.2 million worth of renovations and additions to the Merrimack County jail, wrapping up years of discussion on whether and how much county taxpayers should pay to reduce the facility’s crowding.
Jan. 25, 2000: Concord receives nearly 9 inches of snow, hardly an extraordinary occurrence for late January; however, it is the first significant snowstorm of the season, and for that to come in late January is unusual.
Jan. 26, 2003: Nearly 200 people gather outside St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Manchester to support victims of clergy abuse, organized by New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful and the Coalition of Catholics and Survivors.
Jan. 26, 1839: In Concord, rain falls for 24 hours straight. The Merrimack rises 15 feet in 15 hours. Several bridges are destroyed.
Jan. 26, 1984: Webster Bridges, chairman of the state Sweepstakes Commission, brings a sample of the state’s newest instant lottery games to the State House. Gov. John Sununu buys a scratch ticket and promptly wins $2.