Due to the significance of this day, we are featuring just the 100 years ago item.

100 years ago: 1918

(One hundred years ago tomorrow, Nov. 11, Lewiston Daily Sun readers woke up to this welcome historic news.)

At 6 o’clock this morning Lewiston’s Mayor Lemaire declared a public holiday. There is to be a continuous celebration throughout the day and evening with a monster bonfire tonight when 200 tar barrels will be burned in the public square. Mayor Burnham has ordered all places in Auburn closed for the day, the two cities to join in one of the greatest celebrations ever held here. The public schools of both cities will remain closed for the day. It was expected the mills and shoe factories would join in the holiday plans, although at an early hour, the heads of these local industries had not completed definite arrangements. A bulletin announcing the signing of the armistice was flashed to the Sun over a direct Associated Press wire from New York, at 2:45 this morning. The Sun immediately notified Mayor Lemaire and Mayor Burnham the fire stations of the two cities and police departments.

Lewiston Evening Journal readers read the following news of the day!

Lewiston and Auburn this morning went stark mad with joy. It was the greatest day in the world’s history. To match it, there was the greatest celebration in Lewiston-Auburn history — a Fourth of July, a Mardi Gras and a thousand ordinary celebrations rolled into one. Nobody pretended to do any, work — outside the newspaper and telephone offices. Everybody, regardless of race and color and station and creed, contributed his might. All ordinary routine, all commonplace bounds of conduct, were swept away. It was the day of greatest individual liberty we ever recall. The first long-drawn scream of the whistles, the first chiming of the bells, came an hour before dawn; Lewiston-Auburn stirred into life. A half hour later the streets were filled and an hour later the streets were thronged, and when daylight came — wonderfully fine and clear and splendid, like the dawn of hope within the world: strangely symbolical, in contrast with Sunday’s rain and clouds — the wildest demonstration within the memory of the oldest inhabitants that, broke over these cities.

The material used in Looking Back is reproduced exactly as it originally appeared, although misspellings and errors may be corrected.