March 3, 1972: Four days before the New Hampshire primary, 1,800 people rally for President Nixon at the armory in Manchester. Among them is Gov. Walter Peterson, who beams: “There is no doubt this is Nixon country.”
March 3, 1915: The Legislature takes a poll on Prohibition. Of Concord’s 18 state representatives, only one votes in favor. After all, that year there are 33 places in Concord where liquor can be legally sold: 13 saloons, five hotels, six “bottled goods places,” eight drug stores and one club.
March 4, 2001: Bishop Brady upsets previously undefeated Merrimack Valley, 45-44, in the quarterfinals of the Class I boys’ basketball tournament. Brady will advance to the finals but lose to Plymouth on a last-second basket.
March 4, 1968: State Police Chief Joseph Regan leads 23 state troopers on a raid on a dormitory at Franconia College. The lawmen arrest nine students. The charges: lewd and lascivious behavior and possession of marijuana and hashish.
March 5, 1968: The actor Paul Newman comes to New Hampshire – one in a parade of stars campaigning for Sen. Eugene McCarthy this week in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary.
March 6, 2001: A true blizzard sends New Hampshire residents to check the record books. The official tally in Concord is 18.1 inches. That’s a lot for one storm, but it’s considerably short of the 28 inches that fell in December 1969. Other parts of the state (Nottingham is tops with 40 inches) get hit harder.
March 6, 1991: With five seconds left in the state Class I semifinal basketball game, which is tied at 74, Merrimack Valley’s Scott Drapeau miraculously reaches around a Stevens High player to tip in a missed free throw. The MV win sets up a rematch with rival Pembroke Academy and a final showdown between Drapeau and Matt Alosa, two of the biggest basketball stars in area history. Alosa’s Spartans will win the title.
March 6, 1972: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, tells a Keene audience that Richard Nixon is no different from his immediate predecessors in lying to the public about U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. “Richard Nixon has killed, wounded or made homeless more than 3 million persons, including 2 million in Cambodia and one third of the population of Laos,” Ellsberg says.
March 7, 2002: The House votes by a landslide to repeal the statewide property tax as of Jan. 1, 2004. The tax is the cornerstone of the $900 million education funding plan the Legislature adopted last year.
March 7, 1972: Edmund Muskie of Maine wins the New Hampshire Democratic primary with 46 percent of the vote, but the number falls short of expectations. Runner-up George McGovern gets 37 percent and is perceived as the winner. President Nixon takes 69 percent of the GOP vote with Paul McCloskey and John Ashbrook splitting the rest.
March 7, 1968: Under the headline “Rocky Should Withdraw,” the Union Leader reprints an article from a Roman Catholic magazine on New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce and remarriage. Rockefeller is running for the GOP presidential nomination.
March 7, 1825: A team of horses crossing the frozen Merrimack in Concord falls through the ice.
March 8, 2002: After losing a bet to House Democratic Leader Peter Burling that the St. Louis Rams would beat the New England Patriots in January’s Super Bowl, U.S. House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, visits the Legislative Office Building in Concord. He puts on a Patriots jersey with “Vinatieri” on the back.
March 8, 2001: Carolyn Bradley, principal of Concord’s Rundlett Middle School, announces she will resign at the end of the school year. Bradley has earned praise for her work in Concord and elsewhere in the state, but some will most remember her collection of eyeglasses: 13 pairs, a shade to match every suit.
March 8, 1968: In a press release on the Vietnam War, U.S. Sen. Norris Cotton of New Hampshire says: “No longer can honeyed words and cheering predictions conceal the stunning truth – we are taking a beating and can’t win, or at least can’t win under present strategy.”
March 8, 1912: Meldrim Thomson Jr. is born in Pittsburgh, Pa. He will be a three-term New Hampshire governor in the 1970s.
March 9, 2000: The New Hampshire House votes, 191-163, to abolish the death penalty, a punishment the state last used in 1939. The measure moves next to the state Senate, but Gov. Jeanne Shaheen restates her position: If the bill reaches her desk, she will veto it.
March 9, 1943: A winter for the ages continues as the temperature in Concord falls to 16 below zero. Just three weeks earlier, the city suffered through its coldest day ever recorded, when the mercury fell to 37 below.
March 9, 1812: Town meeting voters in Concord declare “that no swine be allowed to run at large on the road from Concord bridge to Boscawen bridge under a penalty to the owner of 25 cents for each offense.”
March 10, 1991: A funeral tribute is held at the Monitor for former longtime editor Tom W. Gerber, who died Feb. 22. Steve Winship, Gerber’s old friend and fellow Dartmouth College alum, places a green hood over Gerber’s typewriter. On the hood is this motto: “Words, words, words.”
