April 21, 1951: Maine singer-songwriter David Mallett, who has released more than a dozen albums, is born in the Piscataquis County town of Sebec. One of his early compositions, “Garden Song,” is recorded by John Denver, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, and many other acts. Mallett begins performing at the age of 11 in […]

April 20, 1775: Sixty militiamen from the town of York begin marching to Massachusetts to confront the British after receiving news about the opening battles of the Revolutionary War at Lexington and Concord. Other groups of fighters from Biddeford, Scarborough and Falmouth soon follow them, but all are turned back because they no longer are […]

April 19, 2013: Associate Justice Donald G. Alexander of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court  rules that former celebrity lawyer F. Lee Bailey of Yarmouth is “almost fit to practice law, except for an outstanding tax debt of nearly $2 million,” essentially clearing a path for Bailey to return to the profession. The Maine Board of […]

April 18, 1983: Foreshadowing her gold-medal triumph the following year at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, Cape Elizabeth native Joan Benoit wins the Boston Marathon for the second time and notches a women’s world-record – 2:22:43. Greg Meyer of Michigan wins the men’s race that year, finishing at 2:09:00. After that, through 2020, only one […]

April 17, 2014: Aerospace engineer John C. Houbolt, who convinced NASA to use the lunar-orbit rendezvous method to land American astronauts on the moon, dies at 95 in Scarborough, where he has been living in retirement. Houbolt, who grew up in Iowa and Illinois, was the key figure in a rancorous, protracted behind-the-scenes debate in […]

April 16, 1778: Continental Army soldier William Bayley of Falmouth, which later became Portland, writes from George Washington’s Revolutionary War encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to his mother in Falmouth, saying he was sick with a fever but has recovered. According to historians’ estimates, 1,700 to 2,000 of Washington’s 12,000 soldiers die of illness, in […]

April 15, 1905: The U.S. War Department transfers ownership of the Kennebec Arsenal in Augusta from the federal government to the state. The arsenal, located on the eastern bank of the Kennebec River within sight of downtown Augusta, is the northernmost 19th-century U.S. arsenal and one of the best preserved. Eight granite structures built from […]

April 13, 1976: President Gerald Ford signs the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, which affects Maine’s fishing industry directly. The law, which takes effect in 1977 and later is amended several times, establishes an exclusive fishing zone 200 miles out to sea from all U.S. coastlines. The law, which prescribes fishery management through […]

April 12, 2019: Bernstein Shur, Maine’s largest law firm, picks a female chief executive officer for the first time. Joan Fortin assumes her new duties in January 2020. At the time of her selection, no woman holds the top job at Maine’s 15 largest law firms, according to a MaineBiz magazine annual survey. Bernstein Shur […]