July 15, 1980: Cub Scout Todd Rogers draws the first winning entry from a giant rotating drum during Maine’s inaugural moose lottery at the Bangor Civic Center. The state was reviving moose hunting, which had been discontinued in 1935. The number of hunters authorized for 1980 was about 700 – less than one-fourth the total […]

July 14, 2013: Bill Warner, 44, of Wimauma, Florida, dies following a crash at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone while trying to set another motorcycle land-speed world record. His goal? To hit the 300-mph mark in less than a mile. His bike is clocked at 285 mph before the accident occurs during […]

July 13, 1658: Twenty-nine men in the town of Spurwink, now part of Portland, sign a document submitting to the authority of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Massachusetts authorities already seized Saco, Biddeford, Cape Porpoise and Kennebunk earlier. At this point, it has taken seven years for Maine to lose its autonomy. Maine won’t get it […]

July 12, 1896: Arthur Sewall of Bath is nominated for the vice presidency at the five-day Democratic National Convention in Chicago, running for election with populist and presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. Sewall is a wealthy shipbuilder and industrialist, but the only elective office he ever held was that of alderman and councilman in Bath. […]

July 11, 1814: During the two-and-a-half-year War of 1812, a British fleet under the command of Commodore Sir Thomas Hardy arrives off Eastport and demands the surrender of Fort Sullivan. Hardy gives the occupants only five minutes to reply. Maj. Perley Putnam, the fort’s commander, responds by saying his men will defend it at any […]

July 10, 1962: The newly built Andover Earth Station successfully transmits a television image from Andover to the Pleumeur-Bodou Ground Station, on the Brittany coast in northwestern France, via the Telstar 1 satellite, which was launched that morning in Florida. It is the first trans-Atlantic transmission of a TV signal via satellite. The first image […]

July 9, 1806: In one of the worst domestic-violence crimes in Maine history, Capt. James Purrinton, 46, assaults his entire family with an ax sometime between 2 and 3 a.m. at their farm on Belgrade Road in Augusta. His wife, Betsey, 45, is killed immediately, as are their children Polly, 19; Benjamin, 12; Anna, 10; […]

July 8, 1524: Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano arrives in France after a sea voyage that took him to North America, including, in early May, the coast of what is now Maine. His trip is the first clearly documented European visit to the Maine coast. Verrazano later will describe it as the “land of the […]

July 7, 1833: Several Irishmen beat a sailor severely near Carr’s Wharf in Bangor. Hundreds of other sailors disembark from ships along the waterfront and burn Joseph Carr’s pub and a nearby tenement house to the ground. The next night, sailors destroy Irish shanties and attack local Irishmen. The town calls out the militia. Several […]

July 6, 1854: A mob incited by a street preacher named Brown burns the Old South Meeting House in Bath, which was bought by Irish Catholics to serve as a church. The incident is one of several violent anti-Catholic crimes that occurs in the 1850s in Maine, including the tarring of the Rev. John (or […]