The territory of Maine has been inhabited by Indigenous populations for thousands of years after the glaciers retreated during the last ice age. At the time of European arrival, several Algonquian-speaking nations governed the area and these nations are now known as the Wabanaki Confederacy. The first European settlement in the area was by the French in 1604 on Saint Croix Island, founded by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons. The first English settlement was the short-lived Popham Colony, established by the Plymouth Company in 1607. A number of English settlements were established along the coast of Maine in the 1620s, although the rugged climate and conflict with the local Indigenous people caused many to fail. As Maine entered the 18th century, only a half dozen European settlements had survived. Loyalist and Patriot forces contended for Maine's territory during the American Revolution. During the War of 1812, the largely undefended eastern region of Maine was occupied by British forces with the goal of annexing it to Canada via the Colony of New Ireland, but returned to the United States following failed British offensives on the northern border, mid-Atlantic and south which produced a peace treaty that restored the pre-war boundaries. Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1820 when it voted to secede from Massachusetts to become a separate state. On March 15, 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, it was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state.
After graduating from Williams College, Brown joined the family corporation, then known as the Berlin Mills Company, and became manager of the Woods Products Division, overseeing the company's woodlands and logging operations. He became an early advocate for sustainable forest management practices, was a member of the New Hampshire Forestry Commission from 1909 until 1952, and served on the boards of several forestry organizations. As chair of the Forestry Commission, Brown helped send sawmills to Europe during World War I to assist the war effort. He was influenced by the Progressive movement, instituting employee benefits such as company-sponsored care for injured workers that predated modern workers' compensation laws. As a Republican, he served as a presidential elector for New Hampshire in 1924. (Full article...)
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Neal Dow (March 20, 1804 – October 2, 1897) was an American Prohibition advocate and politician. Nicknamed the "Napoleon of Temperance" and the "Father of Prohibition", Dow was born to a Quaker family in Portland, Maine. From a young age, he believed alcohol to be the cause of many of society's problems and wanted to ban it through legislation. In 1850, Dow was elected president of the Maine Temperance Union, and the next year he was elected mayor of Portland. Soon after, largely due to Dow's efforts, the state legislature banned the sale and production of alcohol in what became known as the Maine law. Serving twice as mayor of Portland, Dow enforced the law with vigor and called for increasingly harsh penalties for violators. In 1855, his opponents rioted and he ordered the state militia to fire on the crowd. One man was killed and several wounded, and when public reaction to the violence turned against Dow, he chose not to seek reelection.
Dow was later elected to two terms in the Maine House of Representatives, but retired after a financial scandal. He joined the Union Army shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general. He was wounded at the siege of Port Hudson and later captured. After being exchanged for another officer in 1864, Dow resigned from the military and devoted himself once more to prohibition. He spoke across the United States, Canada, and Great Britain in support of the cause. In 1880, Dow headed the Prohibition Party ticket for President of the United States. After losing the election, he continued to write and speak on behalf of the prohibition movement for the rest of his life until his death in Portland at the age of 93. (Full article...)
Unanticipated problems beset the expedition as soon as it left the last significant colonial outposts in Maine. The portages up the Kennebec River proved grueling, and the boats frequently leaked, ruining gunpowder and spoiling food supplies. More than a third of the men turned back before reaching the height of land between the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers. The areas on either side of the height of land were swampy tangles of lakes and streams, and the traversal was made more difficult by bad weather and inaccurate maps. Many of the troops lacked experience handling boats in white water, which led to the destruction of more boats and supplies in the descent to the Saint Lawrence River via the fast-flowing Chaudière. (Full article...)
John Neal (August 25, 1793 – June 20, 1876) was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art, fought for women's rights, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement.
The first American author to use natural diction and a pioneer of colloquialism, Neal was the first to use the phrase son-of-a-bitch in a US work of fiction. He attained his greatest literary achievements between 1817 and 1835, during which time he was America's first daily newspaper columnist, the first American published in British literary journals, author of the first history of American literature, America's first art critic, a short story pioneer, a children's literature pioneer, and a forerunner of the American Renaissance. As one of the first men to advocate women's rights in the US and the first American lecturer on the issue, for over fifty years he supported female writers and organizers, affirmed intellectual equality between men and women, fought coverture laws against women's economic rights, and demanded suffrage, equal pay, and better education for women. He was the first American to establish a public gymnasium in the US and championed athletics to regulate violent tendencies with which he himself had struggled throughout his life. (Full article...)
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The unnamed hurricane at peak intensity on November 1
The 1991 Perfect Storm, also known as The No-Name Storm (especially in the years immediately after it took place) and the Halloween Gale/Storm, was a damaging and deadly nor'easter in October 1991. Initially an extratropical cyclone, the storm absorbed Hurricane Grace to its south and evolved into a small unnamed hurricane later in its life. Damage from the storm totaled over $200 million (1991 USD) and thirteen people were killed in total, six of which were an outcome of the sinking of Andrea Gail, which inspired the book and later movie, The Perfect Storm. The nor'easter received the name, playing off the common expression, after a conversation between Boston National Weather Service forecaster Robert Case and author Sebastian Junger.
The initial area of low pressure developed off the coast of Atlantic Canada on October 28. Forced southward by a ridge to its north, it reached its peak intensity as a large and powerful cyclone. The storm lashed the east coast of the United States with high waves and coastal flooding before turning to the southwest and weakening. Moving over warmer waters, the system transitioned into a subtropical cyclone before becoming a tropical storm. It executed a loop off the Mid-Atlantic states and turned toward the northeast. On November 1, the system evolved into a full-fledged hurricane, with peak sustained winds of 75 miles per hour (120 km/h), although the National Hurricane Center left it unnamed to avoid confusion amid media interest in the precursor extratropical storm. The system was the twelfth and final tropical cyclone, the eighth tropical storm, and fourth hurricane in the 1991 Atlantic hurricane season. The tropical system weakened, striking Nova Scotia as a tropical storm before dissipating. (Full article...)
Smith attracted extensive media attention in both countries as a "Goodwill Ambassador", becoming known as America's Youngest Ambassador and subsequently participating in peacemaking activities in Japan. With the assistance of her father, Arthur (an academic), she wrote a book titled Journey to the Soviet Union, which chronicled her visit to the country. She later became a child actress, hosting a child-oriented special on the 1984 United States presidential election for The Disney Channel and playing a co-starring role in the television series Lime Street. Smith died at the age of 13 in 1985, onboard Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808, which crashed short of the runway on final approach to the Auburn/Lewiston Municipal Airport in Maine. (Full article...)
A commemorative coin craze in 1936 saw some coins authorized by the United States Congress that were of mainly local significance; the York County issue was one of these. Legislation permitting the half dollar passed Congress without opposition in the first half of 1936. Maine artist Walter H. Rich designed the issue; his work has garnered mixed praise and dislike from numismatic authors. (Full article...)
The base's origins began in 1947 with an order for construction of an airfield by the New England Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The chosen site, in northeastern Maine within both Limestone Township and Caswell Plantation, was the closest point in the continental U.S. to Europe, providing high strategic value during the Cold War. The base was originally named Limestone Army Air Field, and was renamed Limestone Air Force Base following the establishment of the Air Force in 1947. It was named in 1954 for Major Charles J. Loring, Jr., USAF, a Medal of Honor recipient during the Korean War. From 1951 to 1962, it was co-located next to Caribou Air Force Station. (Full article...)
The Burning of Falmouth (October 18, 1775) was an attack by a fleet of Royal Navy vessels on the town of Falmouth, Massachusetts (site of the modern city of Portland, Maine, and not to be confused with the modern towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts or Falmouth, Maine). The fleet was commanded by Captain Henry Mowat. The attack began with a naval bombardment which included incendiary shot, followed by a landing party meant to complete the town's destruction. The attack was the only major event in what was supposed to be a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported Patriot activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War.
Among the colonies, news of the attack led to rejection of British authority and the establishment of independent governments. It also led the Second Continental Congress to contest British Naval dominance by forming a Continental Navy. Both Mowat and his superior, Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves, who had ordered Mowat's expedition, suffered professionally as a consequence of the event. (Full article...)
Robinson led the Big Ten Conference in three-point shooting percentage (.450) from the beginning of conference play in December 2015 until early February 2016. In his three-year career at Michigan, he was a member of conference tournament champions in 2017 and 2018. Robinson was the 2018 Big Ten Conference Sixth Man of the Year. After going undrafted in the 2018 NBA draft, Robinson signed with the Miami Heat. Robinson has set numerous three-point shot records during his tenure with the Heat and has helped Miami reach the NBA Finals in 2020 and 2023. He is the only player from Williams College to ever play in the NBA. (Full article...)
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Grace Harriet Macurdy (September 12, 1866 – October 23, 1946) was an American classicist, and the first American woman to gain a PhD from Columbia University. She taught at Vassar College for 44 years, despite a lengthy conflict with Abby Leach, her first employer.
Macurdy eventually rose to become chair of the department of Greek before embarking upon an illustrious international career. One of her major areas of research was royal women during the Hellenistic period. Macurdy shaped the field of classics and the study of ancient history by pulling together both material evidence and textual evidence as sources in her pioneering studies of individual women. (Full article...)
For nearly a half century, Costello was one of the most prominent members of the Lewiston-Auburn community. In addition to running its largest morning and afternoon papers, he was a longtime trustee of both Bates College and the Androscoggin County Savings Bank, serving as the latter institution's president from 1931 to 1939. He was an active Freemason and member of the United Baptist church. (Full article...)
Born in Portland, Maine, Loring joined the United States Army in 1942 and was quickly selected to undergo pilot training. He spent several months stationed in Puerto Rico before being transferred to duty in the United Kingdom in 1944. There, he flew 55 combat missions in P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft before being shot down and serving six months as a Nazi Germanprisoner of war. By the outset of the Korean War, Loring was working in an administrative role in the United States, but by 1952 had been transferred to combat duty in Korea. (Full article...)
Following the outbreak of the war, British authorities enlisted Loyalist merchant Ichabod Jones to supply the troops who were under the Siege of Boston. Two of his merchant ships arrived in Machias on June 2, 1775, accompanied by the British armed sloop HMS Margaretta (sometimes also spelled Margueritta or Marguerite), commanded by Midshipman James Moore. The townspeople of Machias disapproved of Jones' intentions and arrested him. They also tried to arrest Moore, but he escaped through the harbor. The townspeople seized one of Jones' ships, armed it alongside a second local ship, and sailed out to meet Moore. After a short confrontation, Moore was fatally wounded, and his vessel and crew were captured. (Full article...)
The trail was first proposed in 1921 and completed in 1937. Improvements and changes have continued since then. It became the Appalachian National Scenic Trail under the National Trails System Act of 1968. (Full article...)
Its nickname is the "Shire Town". The Houlton High School sports teams are named "The Shiretowners". The Meduxnekeag River flows through the heart of the town, and the border with the Canadian province of New Brunswick is 3 mi (4.8 km) east of the town's center. Houlton was the home of Ricker College, which closed in 1978. (Full article...)
This list was generated from these rules. Questions and feedback are always welcome! The search is being run daily with the most recent ~14 days of results. Note: Some articles may not be relevant to this project.
... that John Bunker was inspired to propagate old apple tree varieties after encountering Black Oxford apples while managing the food co-op in Belfast, Maine?
... that among the special events broadcast by the Maine Television Network during its brief existence were a fashion show, a basketball tournament, and an ordination ceremony?
The list below, for each city, shows the population in 2010, the population estimate of 2019, the growth/shrinking percentage between the three, and the date of incorporation as a city.