Aug. 23, 1724: During a Colonial-era conflict known as Governor Dummer’s War, about 200 New Englanders under the command of Capt. Johnson Harmon and Capt. Jeremiah Moulton attack the Abenaki village at Norridgewock, killing dozens of Wabanaki Indians as well as the Rev. Sébastien Râle, leader of the Catholic mission there. The attackers are trying […]

Aug. 21, 1942: Walt Disney releases the animated film “Bambi,” which benefited from various Maine influences. Disney sent one of his employees, Damariscotta native Maurice “Jake” Day, a prolific artist, sculptor, photographer and naturalist, back to Maine to paint and photograph the area around Mount Katahdin in various seasons during the production of “Bambi.” As […]

Aug. 20, 2010: Federal officials announce the arrests of 47 people – more than half of them known gang members – as part of a regional campaign against gangs. Twenty-four of the suspects were arrested in Maine. The other arrests occur in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those […]

Aug. 19, 1692: George Burroughs, 42, of Wells is hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, after being tried for and found guilty of witchcraft. The execution proceeds even though Burroughs’ chief accuser, Margaret Jacobs, 17, recants her testimony, saying that she suffered “such horror of conscience that I could not sleep for fear the devil should carry […]

Aug. 18, 1957: Amateur archaeologist Guy Mellgren, according to his own report, finds an 11th-century Norwegian coin at the Goddard prehistoric archaeological site on Naskeag Point in Brooklin. The coin, since donated to the Maine State Museum, has given rise to theories that Norsemen from that period traveled to Maine, or that local tribes acquired […]

Aug. 17, 1994: Paramount Pictures releases the film “Andre” about an orphaned seal in Rockport that grows up in the care of a girl and her father. The film is based on a real orphaned seal pup named Andre (1961-1986) that was rescued and raised by Rockport’s harbormaster, Harry Goodridge, and that chose to stay […]

Aug. 16, 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrives in Rockland aboard the presidential yacht Potomac. He recently returned to the United States from a shipboard meeting off the coast of Newfoundland with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At that meeting, Churchill and Roosevelt drafted the Atlantic Charter, which mapped out the Allied World War II […]