The skeleton of the great Nanson Ski Jump, which, when constructed in 1938, was the highest in the country, still stands on a hillside between Berlin and Milan. Later the skiklubben was named the Nansen Ski Club after adventurer Fridtjof Nansen, who skied across Greenland. In 1872 Norwegian immigrants formed what is now the oldest ski club in America, according to "unofficial historians" (gotta love 'em). The Atlantic Monthly responded to one submission: 'We regret that the Atlantic Monthly has no place for your vigorous verse.'" After Frost became famous, the Atlantic Monthly "came calling." Frost submitted "the very same poems that had been rejected earlier." Ha! where he grew apples, raised chickens and continued to write and suffer consistent rejection. In 1900, our beloved Robert Frost "moved his family to a farm in Derry. Perhaps Governor Winant was influenced by the stirring words of Royal Bailey Farnum, director of the Rhode Island School of Design: "History has shown again and again that the state and the nation which supports its art lives on forever." Commission of Arts and Crafts - the first in the nation. The tradition of supporting the arts can be traced to 1931 when we established the N.H. The Woodsville bridge, built in 1829, is believed to be the oldest the Cornish-Windsor bridge wins the prize for the longest. We boast the oldest and longest covered bridges in the country. Among the historical snapshots that caught my eye: In this short space, I can offer just a few tastes from this book's rich menu. We meet New Hampshirites of note from poet Celia Thaxter to teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe, from Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy to inventor Dean Kamen. Other themes: "Home, Town, Community," "Ingenuity and Enterprise," "Forests and Mountains," "Sea, Lake and Sky." She covers a lot of territory, but the book never feels disjointed or haphazard. Whitney included that story under the "Government, Politics and War" theme. Each year, people from all around the world "revisit the hotel they knew in 1944." dollar - all without benefit of the Wifi or iPhones. Sure enough, in this whitest of hotels, the dignitaries managed to establish the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the gold standard at $35 an ounce, and to tie other currencies to the U.S. Roofs had collapsed under heavy snow, wallpaper was peeling of the walls and everything was in need of a coat of paint.Īs the Walking Tour guide booklet states, "Each worker got 50 cans of white paint, and was told if it didn't move, they should paint it white - which is what they did! They painted all of our beautiful mahogany doors white, the brass light fixtures in the Great Hall and even some of the Tiffany windows." The government brought in 150 workers - including enlisting a group of Army military police who outworked the hired help - to overhaul the hotel that has 2,000 doors and 1,200 windows. The hotel had been closed for two years because of the war, so quickly preparing it for the conference presented considerable challenges. Pretty sure the new owners of the Mount Washington Hotel would be delighted to host dignitaries from around the world to hash out ways to get us out of a financial pickle, as they did in July of 1944, "within a few weeks of the D-Day Normandy landing and Hitler's bombing of London," Whitney tells the story behind the story, including who attended and which disputes threatened to clog the works. Recently, you may have heard murmurings of a second Bretton Woods world monetary summit. Organized thematically, the stories are short (usually no more than a page or two), fact-filled but not bogged down in facts (she's a lively writer), and often, surprising - even to those of us who think we know quite a bit about our state, having lived here all our lives (so far). She selected the most intriguing of those "Firsts and Bests" and combined them with several other stories for "Hidden History." Whitney started work on this book about 10 years ago when she was tapped by the State Council on the Arts to research and write about "New Hampshire Firsts and Bests," for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, featuring - in 1999 - the Granite State. Quincy Whitney of Nashua shows there's always something new to learn about our small state.
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