Feb. 10, 2003: On the eighth day of deliberations in Manchester, jurors acquit John Bardgett, 26, a self-described nursing home “Angel of Death,” of murder by injecting two terminally ill patients with morphine.
Feb. 10, 1942: Robert Leon Harris, a 15-year-old student, agrees to leave Rundlett Junior High School “so as not to cause any trouble.” He is the second Jehovah’s Witness in the city to refuse on religious grounds to pledge allegiance to flag and country.
Feb. 10, 1927: The Schoonmaker Chair Co. signs a seven-year contract to use New Hampshire state prison inmates to make chairs. The company will pay 15 cents per man-hour.
Feb. 11, 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints John G. Winant of Concord to succeed Joseph Kennedy as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Winant, a Republican, is a former governor and served earlier in FDR’s presidency as the first administrator of the Social Security Administration.
Feb. 11, 1976: Gov. Mel Thomson introduces presidential candidate Ronald Reagan to a crowd in Pittsfield: “Any of you who farm know the prevailing winds come out of the West. A great wind has come out of the West to honor us today.”
Feb. 11, 1992: Hit by allegations of extramarital sex and draft evasion, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton tells a New Hampshire audience he’ll continue to fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. “I’m going to fight it like crazy to the very end,” he says.
Feb. 12, 1967: The weather observatory atop Mount Washington simultaneously records a temperature of minus-41 degrees Fahrenheit and a wind of 110 miles per hour. The chill factor is off the charts.
Feb. 12, 1979: In Concord on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, U.S. Sen. Robert Dole announces that he will run for president. “I’m a hard worker,” he says. “I think the record is there.”
Feb. 12, 1949: Joe McQuaid is born. He will become editor of the Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper.
Feb. 13, 1847: Thomas “Old Soldier” Haines dies at 87. A Concord man, Haines volunteered in the Patriot cause at the age of 19. He was slightly wounded at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777 and had worse luck near Saratoga. He was shot and lay two days among the dead before being rescued. The ball had passed through both cheeks, nearly severing his tongue. The Bouton history of Concord reported: “His face bore the mutilation till his death.”
Feb. 13, 1996: At the Monitor a week before the New Hampshire primary, Bob Dole says he is the one candidate who can provide “adult leadership.”
Feb. 14, 1916: The Boston Post publishes Carl Wilmore’s account of his trip to Franconia to interview Robert Frost, who moved there the previous spring. Frost tells Wilmore: “I hear everything I write. All poetry is to me a matter of sound. I hear my things spoken.”
Feb. 14, 1942: Although the manufacture of fireworks is banned for the duration of the war, wholesalers say they have plenty of firecrackers on hand so that New Hampshire people can celebrate the Fourth of July.
Feb. 14, 1983: Students at the Webster elementary school are delighted by a visit from Gov. John Sununu. “He has a great job. He just goes around visiting schools all over the state. I would like to do that,” says fourth-grader Sam Bailey. Jason Rockwell, asked to assess Sununu’s term in office, chooses a diplomatic response: “I liked his suit.”
Feb. 15, 2002: The Diocese of Manchester releases the names of 14 priests who have been accused of sexual misconduct with children between 1963 and 1987.
Feb. 15, 2001: The Sewalls Falls bridge is closed for repairs. One of the few crossings of the Merrimack River in Concord, the bridge has been slated for reconstruction in the past. As far back as 1993, the state said a new bridge would be in place by 1998.
Feb. 16, 2001: New Hampshire authorities issue a warrant for the arrest of a Vermont 17-year-old on charges that he murdered two Dartmouth professors three weeks ago. A second Vermont teenager will also be charged.
Feb. 16, 2002: In Concord, a blaze that brings the city’s entire firefighting fleet to Main Street damages the two brick buildings that house Granite Bank and Eye 2 Eye Gallery. Nobody is hurt.
