July 24, 1927: Two months after his pioneering solo trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, aviator Charles Lindbergh lands the same plane in Old Orchard Beach while on a goodwill tour. His original landing site – Portland’s new airfield in Scarborough – is fogbound, so he uses Old Orchard Beach instead. “You see, […]

July 23, 1849: Gov. John Dana signs a bill permitting the incorporation of Augusta, Maine’s capital, as a city. At a special meeting held the following Dec. 31, voters approve the incorporation, 586-196. City government and its departments are organized in 1850. In the first mayoral election, candidates run on a partisan basis, unlike the […]

July 22, 2010: The only financial backer of a proposed $1 billion liquefied natural gas terminal in the small Canadian-border city of Calais withdraws from the project. The pullout of investment bank Goldman Sachs and its subsidiary, GS Power Holdings, LLC, was one of many problems that doomed the project. A group called Calais LNG […]

July 19, 1969: A fire breaks out in the amusement area known as the White Way in Old Orchard Beach, destroying about two blocks and one-third of the town’s famous pier, from which many visitors are evacuated by ladder. The fire, striking at the height of the tourist season, inflicts severe burns on one person […]

July 18, 1864: Three men in civilian clothes walk into the Calais Bank in Calais. Just as they begin to draw revolvers to rob the bank, armed federal agents who have been tipped off about the plan catch the would-be robbers off-guard and arrest them. The ringleader, William Collins, is a Confederate army captain who […]

July 16, 1915: Ellen Gould Harmon White, 88, a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church who was born in Gorham and raised in Portland, dies in California. Raised in the Methodist church, she suffered permanent disfigurement at the age of 9 when another girl threw a stone at her face and broke her nose. White […]

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 […]