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.
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...)
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Detail of a 1795 map, overlaid with Arnold's expedition route: *A: Cambridge *B: Newburyport *C: Fort Western *D: Fort Halifax *E: Great Carrying Place *F: Height of land *G: Lake Mégantic This map does not accurately represent the area around the height of land and Lake Mégantic. In September 1775, early in the American Revolutionary War, Colonel Benedict Arnold led a force of 1,100 Continental Army troops on an expedition from Cambridge in the Province of Massachusetts Bay to the gates of Quebec City. The expedition was part of a two-pronged invasion of the British Province of Quebec, and passed through the wilderness of what is now Maine. The other expedition invaded Quebec from Lake Champlain, led by Richard Montgomery.
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...)
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...)
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First page of the first issue: January 1, 1828
The Yankee (later retitled The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette) was one of the first cultural publications in the United States, founded and edited by John Neal (1793–1876), and published in Portland, Maine as a weekly periodical and later converted to a longer, monthly format. Its two-year run concluded at the end of 1829. The magazine is considered unique for its independent journalism at the time.
Neal used creative control of the magazine to improve his social status, help establish the American gymnastics movement, cover national politics, and critique American literature, art, theater, and social issues. Essays by Neal on American art and theater anticipated major changes and movements in those fields realized in the following decades. Conflicting opinions published in The Yankee on the cultural identity of Maine and New England presented readers with a complex portrait of the region. (Full article...)
Officials in Maine wanted a commemorative half dollar to circulate as an advertisement for the centennial of the state's admission to the Union, and of the planned celebrations. A bill to allow such a coin passed Congress without opposition, but then the state's centennial commission decided to sell the coins for $1, double the face value. The Commission of Fine Arts disliked the proposed design, and urged changes, but Maine officials insisted, and de Francisci converted the sketches to plaster models, from which coinage dies could be made. (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...)
Darabont purchased the film rights to King's story in 1987, but development did not begin until five years later, when he wrote the script over an eight-week period. Two weeks after submitting his script to Castle Rock Entertainment, Darabont secured a $25 million budget to produce The Shawshank Redemption, which started pre-production in January 1993. While the film is set in Maine, principal photography took place from June to August 1993 almost entirely in Mansfield, Ohio, with the Ohio State Reformatory serving as the eponymous penitentiary. The project attracted many stars for the role of Andy, including Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, and Kevin Costner. Thomas Newman provided the film's score. (Full article...)
This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.
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Mill Complex on the site of Fort Andross c. 2022 reading "1834 CABOT 1891". 1834 being the year the building was first erected by The Brunswick Company, and 1891 the year the expansion "wings" were added by The Cabot Manufacturing Company.
In the 19th century, the site of the fort was repurposed as a location for several cotton mills, including the Cabot Manufacturing Company, and in the 20th century several industrial buildings accupied the locale. In 1986, the mills were revitalized and transformed into office and retail spaces and renamed back to Fort Andross to reflect the original name. (Full article...)
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R.D. Hume in the 1890s
Robert Deniston Hume (October 31, 1845 – November 25, 1908) was a cannery owner, pioneer hatchery operator, politician, author, and self-described "pygmy monopolist" who controlled salmon fishing for 32 years on the lower Rogue River in U.S. state of Oregon. Born in Augusta, Maine, and reared by foster parents on a farm, Hume moved at age 18 to San Francisco to join a salmon-canning business started by two of his brothers. They later re-located to Astoria on the Columbia River, where they prospered. After the death of his first wife and their two young children, Hume moved again and started anew in Gold Beach, at the mouth of the Rogue.
In 1877 Hume bought rights to a Rogue River fishery, then built a salmon cannery and many other structures and acquired all of the tidelands bordering the lower 12 miles (19 km) of the river. He remarried, invested in a small fleet of ships and a salmon hatchery and expanded his business interests to include a store, hotel, newspaper, and many other enterprises in Gold Beach and in the nearby community of Wedderburn, which he founded. Canning, shipping, and selling hundreds of tons of salmon over the years, he became known as the Salmon King of Oregon. (Full article...)
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At the Marathon Center for the Performing Arts in Findlay, Ohio, January 2022
Oshima Brothers is an American folk-pop duo known for each playing multiple instruments and looping their own samples on stage to create a complex soundscape as if they were more than two. They share responsibilities based on natural proclivities, with Sean in charge of external communications and songwriting, and Jamie focusing on mixing and production. Almost every song is paired with a music video, which they produce on their own.
As siblings raised by American folk musician parents in rural Maine, Sean and Jamie Oshima are self-taught musicians who started singing and playing music together as young children. Performing together as a band since 2015, they attracted a fan base within Maine following the release of their eponymous debut album in 2016. They developed a larger national audience with their 2019 EPUnder the Same Stars and subsequent national tours. Though the COVID-19 pandemic kept them from performing live for over a year, they put out a second EP, Sunset Red, in 2020 and returned to touring in 2021. They released their second album Dark Nights Golden Days in April 2022, by which time they had over 115,000 Spotify followers and almost five million streams on the platform of their song "These Cold Nights". This is accompanied by a visual album of the same name released the following October. (Full article...)
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Big Blood in 2011 L to R: Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella
Big Blood is an American band formed in South Portland, Maine, in 2006. The band's music fuses psychedelic folk, experimental rock, and an eclectic array of other styles and influences. Big Blood originated as a husband-and-wife duo of Colleen Kinsella and Caleb Mulkerin, who had previously been bandmates together in Cerberus Shoal. They formed Big Blood shortly after the birth of their daughter, Quinnisa Rose Kinsella Mulkerin, who began featuring in the band's recordings in 2010 and later became a full-fledged member.
Big Blood has self-released most of their recordings with unique handmade packaging, although starting with their 2010 album Dead Songs they have also distributed some albums through independent record labels. The band has also made most of their discography available to freely stream or download via the Free Music Archive. Big Blood is regarded as a mainstay of the 21st-century underground music scene in New England and they have garnered an international cult following. Music critic Byron Coley wrote in 2017 that Big Blood had "long been one of the most belovedly strange outfits in the sonic universe revolving around Portland, Maine." (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...)
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USS Portland (CA-33), at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 14 June 1942.
WCSH (channel 6) is a television station in Portland, Maine, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Congress Square in Downtown Portland, and its transmitter is located on Winn Mountain in Sebago. Together with WLBZ (channel 2) in Bangor, which simulcasts most of WCSH's local newscasts, it is known as News Center Maine.
WCSH is the oldest operating television station in Portland, signing on in December 1953. It was an outgrowth of WCSH radio, one of NBC's charter affiliates when it was constituted as a radio network in 1926, and broadcast from its namesake, the Congress Square Hotel in downtown Portland, for nearly 25 years. Founded by the Rines family and sold to Tegna predecessor Gannett Company in 1997, it has generally been the highest-rated station in TV news in the market since the mid-1980s. (Full article...)
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Susanna Paine, also known as Susannah and Susan (June 9, 1792 – November 10, 1862), was an American portrait artist in New England in the 19th century. She published poetry, a Christmas hymn, a novel, and an autobiography entitled Roses and Thorns, or Recollections of an Artist.
As a young girl, she was an excellent student, but needed to quit school at the age of 11 to care for her ill grandmother. At 15, she taught school and a year later joined an academy in Providence, Rhode Island, where she earned her way through school by making and selling needlework. She graduated with highest honors and established a school that she operated for years. Paine gave the profits to her family, and she helped support them throughout most of her life. (Full article...)
Portland International Jetport (IATA: PWM, ICAO: KPWM, FAALID: PWM) is a public airport two miles (3 km) west of downtown Portland, Maine, United States. It is owned and operated by the City of Portland. A portion of the Jetport's property, including the main runway, is located within the neighboring city of South Portland. PWM covers 726 acres (293 ha) of land.
The airport is the busiest in the state. In 2018, the jetport handled more than two million passengers for the first time, breaking the previous record of 1.86 million set in 2017. (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 in 2009, residents of Maine voted to repeal a law that would have legalized same-sex marriage?
... 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?
... that a Maine TV station was so protective of its evening newscast that it preempted nearly 40 percent of all NBC Sports programming in 1994?
... 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?
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.