The territory of Maine has been inhabited by Indigenous populations for about 12,000 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, Maine was admitted to the Union as the 23rd state.
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...)
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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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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...)
Blaine was born in the western Pennsylvania town of West Brownsville; after completing college he moved to Maine where he became a newspaper editor. Nicknamed "the Magnetic Man", he was a charismatic speaker in an era that prized oratory. He began his political career as an early supporter of Republican Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort in the American Civil War. During Reconstruction, Blaine was a supporter of black suffrage, but opposed some of the more coercive measures of the Radical Republicans. Initially in favor of high tariffs, he later worked to lower tariffs and expand international trade. Railroad promotion and construction were important issues in his time and, as a result of his interest and support, Blaine was widely suspected of corruption in awarding railroad charters, especially with the emergence of the Mulligan letters. Though no evidence of corruption ever surfaced from these allegations, they nevertheless plagued his 1884 presidential candidacy. (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 eight weeks. 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...)
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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Portrait of Willis by Mathew Brady studios, circa mid-1850s
Nathaniel Parker Willis (January 20, 1806 – January 20, 1867), also known as N. P. Willis, was an American writer, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children's nurse.
Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth's Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about $100 per article and between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867. (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...)
This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.
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Herbert L. Mitchell Jr. (June 18, 1937 – January 4, 2011), credited as Herb Mitchell and sometimes Herb L. Mitchell, was an American actor, director, and teacher. He was a stockbroker before he made the switch to acting, appearing in films; stage plays such as The Fiddler on the Roof, in which he played the lead role of Tevye; television shows including The Practice, on which he had a recurring role; and commercials, including ones for stock brokerage firms Dean Witter Reynolds and Paine Webber. He was married twice and had five children. (Full article...)
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Portrait of Hill from the El Ojo yearbook (1923)
John Henry Hill (July 4, 1852 – October 13, 1936) was an American lawyer, educator, school administrator, and military officer. He was the second principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute (present-day West Virginia State University) from 1894 until 1898. West Virginia State considers him its second president.
Hill was born into slavery in 1852 in Charles Town, Virginia, (present-day West Virginia). During the American Civil War, he relocated to Maine where he studied law. He became Maine's second African-American lawyer in 1879, and became West Virginia's first African-American lawyer after his admission to the bar of Jefferson County's circuit court in 1881. Hill then served in the 10th Cavalry Regiment for six years, during which time he participated in the Apache Wars. He was a schoolteacher and then principal at Shepherdstown's African-American public school, Shadyside School, from 1889 until 1893, and then served as the second principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute from 1894 until 1898. Hill resigned as principal to serve in the United States Volunteers during the Spanish–American War from 1898 to 1899. Hill returned to the institute in 1899, when he was appointed Commandant of Cadets and professor of mathematics, and remained there until 1903. Following his death in 1936, West Virginia State named Hill Hall in his honor. (Full article...)
The outcome of the referendum was reversed three years later when voters approved 2012 Maine Question 1, which legalized same-sex marriage in the state again. (Full article...)
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USS Portland (CA-33), at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 14 June 1942.
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...)
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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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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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Nichols in 2012
Rachel Nichols (born 1979 or 1980) is an American actress and model. Nichols began modeling while attending Columbia University in New York City in the late 1990s, and transitioned into acting by the early 2000s; she had a part in the romantic drama Autumn in New York (2000) and a one-episode role in the fourth season of Sex and the City (2002). Her first major role was in the comedy Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003), and she went on to achieve wider recognition playing Rachel Gibson in the final season of the action television series Alias (2005–2006) and for her role in the horror film The Amityville Horror (2005).
Sebago Lake (Sih-Bay-Goh) is the deepest and second-largest lake in the U.S. state of Maine. The lake is 1,900 feet (580 m) deep at its deepest point, with a mean depth of 1,200 feet (370 m). It is possible that Sebago is the deepest lake wholly contained within the entire New England region, although some sources say that Vermont's Lake Willoughby is slightly deeper. Along with Lake Champlain, Sebago is one of the only lakes in the area that do not consistently freeze solid during the winter months, with total ice cover occurring for only a short period of time every few winters. Sebago covers about 50 square miles (129 km2) in surface area, has a length of 18 miles (29 km) and has a shoreline length of roughly 113 miles (182 km). The surface is around 270 feet (82 m) above sea level, so the deep bottom is below the present sea level. It is in Cumberland County, and bordered by the towns of Casco, Naples, Raymond, Sebago, Standish and Windham. The seasonally occupied town of Frye Island is on an island in the lake. Sebago Lake and the surrounding area is known for its erratic and sudden changes in weather during all seasons, likely due to its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and to Mt. Washington, a very notorious extreme weather hotspot. The name comes from the Abenakisobagoo, meaning "it is the sea" or "it resembles the sea". (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 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.
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