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.
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 is the first to use the phrase son-of-a-bitch in a 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...)
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...)
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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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...)
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 author, 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...)
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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...)
This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.
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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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Tropical Storm Floyd near landfall in southern New York
The effects of Hurricane Floyd in New England stretched across the region from Connecticut to Maine and included two casualties. Floyd, once a large and powerful hurricane, made landfall in North Carolina and weakened as it tracked northward along the U.S. East Coast. By September 17, 1999, the storm, downgraded in strength to a tropical storm, was situated over New England. It produced heavy rainfall and gusty winds throughout the entire region, leading to widespread downing of trees and extensive power outages before it moved away later that day. In Danbury, Connecticut, Floyd triggered severe flooding, considered the worst in 40 years, that damaged hundreds of homes. Precipitation in some areas amounted to 10 in (250 mm), with wind gusts approaching hurricane force in Massachusetts. Damage totaled $4.819 million. (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...)
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Nichols in 2012
Rachel Nichols 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).
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...)
The effects of Hurricane Isabel in New York and New England were relatively minor and primarily limited to wind damage. Hurricane Isabel formed from a tropical wave on September 6, 2003, in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It moved northwestward, and within an environment of light wind shear and warm waters it steadily strengthened to reach peak winds of 165 mph (266 km/h) on September 11. After fluctuating in intensity for four days, Isabel gradually weakened and made landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with winds of 105 mph (169 km/h) on September 18. It quickly weakened over land and became extratropical over western Pennsylvania the next day.
Damage in New York totaled $90 million (2003 USD, $105 million 2008 USD), with Vermont reporting about $100,000 in damage (2003 USD, $117,000 in 2008 USD). Falling trees from moderate winds downed power lines across the region, causing sporadic power outages. Two people died as a result of the hurricane, both due to the rough surf from Isabel. (Full article...)
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Samuel S. Brannan
Samuel S. Brannan (March 2, 1819 – May 5, 1889) was an American settler, businessman, journalist, and prominent Mormon who founded the California Star, the first newspaper in San Francisco, California. He is also considered the first to publicize the California Gold Rush and was California's first millionaire. He used the profits from his stores to buy large tracts of real estate. He helped form the first vigilance committee in San Francisco and was disfellowshiped from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) because of his actions within the vigilance committee. Brannan's wife divorced him and he was forced to liquidate much of his real estate to pay her one-half of their assets. He died poor and in relative obscurity. (Full article...)
With an enrollment of approximately 11,500 students, UMaine is the state's largest college or university. The University of Maine's athletic teams, nicknamed the Black Bears, are Maine's only Division I athletics program. Maine's men's ice hockey team has won two national championships. (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 Maine state legislator Tracy Quint introduced a bill that would have banned all COVID-19 vaccination mandates in Maine until 2024?
... 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.