April 6, 1807: Advocates of the District of Maine’s separation from Massachusetts suffer their worst referendum defeat – 9,404 to 3,370. Of the district’s 150 towns, most voters in 100 of them oppose separation. The momentum for Maine statehood is at a low ebb, but that will change during and after the War of 1812. […]
Bicentennial
News and information about Maine’s 2020 bicentennial from the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel.
Posted inBicentennial, Local & State, News
On this date in Maine history: April 5
April 5, 1974: Horror writer Stephen King’s novel “Carrie” is published. It is King’s fourth novel but the first to appear in print. The book and a subsequent movie of the same name make King world-famous. King was born in Portland and raised mostly in Durham, although he also spent part of his childhood in […]
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On this date in Maine history: April 4
April 4, 1802: Dorothea Dix, who becomes renowned nationwide as a reformer of treatment of the mentally ill and champion of their rights, is born in Hampden. Dix teaches Sunday school lessons in the Cambridge House of Corrections in Massachusetts and witnesses the horrific conditions that people living in such places endure. From 1841 to […]
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On this date in Maine history: April 3
April 3, 1993: The University of Maine men’s hockey team, under the leadership of coach Shawn Walsh, wins the NCAA Division I men’s hockey championship in Milwaukee, playing against Lake Superior State University. It is the team’s first national title. Maine is down 4-2 after two periods, but the team’s all-time leading scorer, Jim Montgomery, […]
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On this date in Maine history: April 2
April 2, 1865: On the day he becomes a brevetted Army brigadier general, Col. Thomas W. Hyde (1841-1899) of Bath leads an assault force at the tip of a wedge of Union troops that breaks through the Confederate defenses at Petersburg, Virginia, during the Civil War’s Third Battle of Petersburg. This successful gambit, following 10 […]
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On this date in Maine history: April 1
April 1, 1968: Dow Air Force Base in Bangor officially closes. The city of Bangor obtains the airfield and reopens it the following year as Bangor International Airport. Bangor had allocated $75,000 for development of the base in 1940. The Maine Military Defense Commission funded the purchase of the base’s land. With construction of what […]
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On this date in Maine history: March 31
March 31, 1907: An irritated President Theodore Roosevelt reluctantly accepts the resignation of West Gardiner native John Frank Stevens (1853-1943) as chief engineer on one of the 20th century’s most challenging engineering projects – construction of the Panama Canal. Stevens, who came on board when the project already was underway and plagued with problems, engineered major […]
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On this date in Maine history: March 30
March 30, 1937: The Maine Legislature adopts Roger Vinton Snow’s “State of Maine Song” as the official state song. Snow (1890-1953), a probate and corporate lawyer and frequent moderator of Falmouth town meetings, submitted the song for a 1931 competition sponsored by the Maine Publicity Bureau, which he won. Cressey and Allen, of Portland, published the […]
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On this date in Maine history: March 29
March 29, 1602: The Concord, a small vessel called a bark, sails from Falmouth, England, to establish a colony in North America. On May 14, five years before the establishment of the permanent English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, it anchors in what is now York Harbor after cruising along Maine’s coast from Cape Elizabeth. The ship, […]
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On this date in Maine history: March 28
March 28, 2006: Caspar Weinberger, U.S. secretary of defense for seven years under President Ronald Reagan, dies at age 88 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor from pneumonia complications. In the Reagan administration, Weinberger took the lead in directing a rollback strategy against Soviet communism. He was indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, involving a violation […]