Yesterday afternoon at about 5:13, an alarm for fire was pulled in from Box 66. The Fire Department responded and found that the blaze was confined in the place occupied by F. X. Marcotte on the second floor and Joseph Roy’s bakery on the first floor, Lincoln street, opposite the school building near the corner of Chestnut.

50 Years Ago, 1954

Mica miners in Norway have made the largest strike of gem tourmalines in Maine history, Executive-Director Everett F. Greaton of the Maine Development Commission said today. A deep pocket of semi-precious stone was uncovered by a blast in the B.B. Mine No. 7 owned by the T.C. Mining Co. Greaton said 6,000 carets of the green gem crystals already have been taken from the pocket. One stone weighed 100 carets.

25 Years Ago, 1979

The two remaining Continental Mill Houses in Lewiston have been entered on the National Register of Historic Places, according to Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission whose staff prepared the nomination. Lewiston’s cotton textile mills, such as the Continental, had by the 1860’s begun to attract enormous numbers of workers to satisfy the demand for labor. To accommodate the rapid influx of people, mostly from Canada, mill owners constructed special tenements called mill blocks.

Each of these was under the strict supervision of a director who was charged with keeping a careful eye on the moral and physical condition of the tenants. The Continental Mill Houses are all that remain of many mill blocks that once lined Oxford Street.