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 […]

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, […]

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 […]