Author: admin - The New Hampshire Gazette

Mon, July 14

2004—The GOP tries to ban gay marriage but can’t rise to the occasion. 2000—Five tobacco companies are ordered to pay $145 billion in damages, but they wiggle off the hook. 1989—Alabama tries twice, 19 minutes apart, to electrocute Horace F. Dunkins, who’s Black and developmentally-disabled. The first try fails because the chair is wired wrong. 1981—New Hampshire businessman Max Hugel’s stint as Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA ends after 64 days due to revelations of unseemly stock market shenanigans. 1976—Persons unknown in Traves, France celebrate Bastille Day by burning the home of Nazi war criminal Joachim Peiper—while he’s in it. 1975—Boss Clarence Kelley …

Sun, July 13

2024—A weirdo fails to assassinate a weird presidential candidate. 1987—Senator Warren B. Rudman [R-N.H] sets Ollie North straight during the Iran-Contra hearings: “The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.” 1977—During a heat wave and a financial crisis, with Son of Sam on the loose, lightning strikes cause a blackout in New York City. Chaos ensues. 1959—A sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in Simi Valley, Calif. has a partial meltdown, releasing 300 times more radiation than Three Mile Island—a fact kept secret for 20 years. 1956—The “Dartmouth Workshop” begins. “Artificial Intelligence” is born in N.H. What could go wrong? 1950—A B-50 Superfortress crashes in Lebanon, …

Sat, July 12

2022—Seabrook sirens go off in error. 2020—A poorly-fought four-day fire turns the $2 billion USS Bonhomme Richard into $3.6 million in scrap. 1982—FEMA pledges that even in a nuclear war, the mail will get through. 1973—A fire in St. Louis, Mo. destroys the service records of 16 to 18 million Army and Air Force veterans. 1917—In Bisbee, Ariz., a 2,000-man posse herds 1,300 striking miners into cattle cars and sends them eastward, with no food and little water. 1892—The Pennsylvania militia arrives at Homestead, Pa. to protect Andrew Carnegie’s right to make a buck. 1872—Orangemen avoid casualties by refraining from marching through Irish tenements in …

Better Old News Than New Lies, July, 1888

Rev. O.D. Kimball, formerly pastor of the Baptist church in Leominster, Mass., and now of the West Newton Baptist church, has left the latter place after putting a letter of resignation in the hands of church officers. He admits that he was guilty of gross immorality with five members of his church in Leominster, who were some time ago expelled from that church for making the charges. Alvin Hunnewell of Norridgewock, Me., is held for trial on a charge of poisoning his wife with “rough on rats.” Hunnewell’s son, aged eighteen years, and a young man named Chace, also partook of the poisoned food. All …

Trump’s Secret is Hidden in Plain Sight

To the Editor: Why do people find Trump’s behavior puzzling? The reasons for it are remarkably clear. The “stooge” strategy has been a mainstay of mafias since before the Borgias: find a prominent but indebted businessman, bail him out, own him and have him bring your agenda into the mainstream. The Russian mafia bailed Trump out of massive debts accumulated from his many failed businesses from the mid-90s through 2008, making him a mafia stooge. A mafia stooge does what his mafia boss tells him to—or else. (The “or else” is another old mafia tradition.) Since before Peter the Great, Russia’s leadership has been obsessed …

President Dwight D. Eisenhower is alleged to have said, “Things are more like they are now than they ever have been.” * That was probably true then. Sadly, it seems even more so now. This could lead one to conclude that our ancestors never knew how good they had it. That’s a risky line of thought, though. Not to suggest that these things are in any way equal, but back in Ike’s day, in certain parts of the country, drinking from the wrong water fountain could get a person killed, single women could not get a credit card, and sidewalks were minefields of dog waste. …