100 Years Ago: 1921

One Lewiston man who is in a position to meet a great many people stated yesterday that he feels very strongly in favor of daylight saving and that it would be an easy matter for him to get hundreds of signers for a petition making for an adoption this year.

50 Years Ago: 1971

By walking to the North Pole, Robert Edwin Peary became one of the world’s most honored men. Born on May 6. 1886, in Cresson, Penn., Peary arrived in Maine three years later, after the death of his father. He and his mother settled in her native South Portland. From then on he claimed to be ” a man of Maine.” At the age of 20, Peary graduated from Bowdoin College, second in his class and the first in engineering. In the early part of his life, he worked as an engineer.  At one time he was second in command of an engineering team in Nicaragua surveying for a canal to be built from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. From savings, he bought Eagle Island in Casco Bay, off South Harpswell, where he later built the present house. It was said it was the only home he ever owned or wanted.

25 Years Ago: 1996

Bright, sunny skies greeted fishermen at day-break Monday, the opening day of the 1996 water fishing season. It was an  April Fool Day joke on most of the early birds, as the fish refused to cooperate. The shores of Lake Auburn were filled with fishermen and a concentration of anglers was found on Lake Shore Drive from the Townsend Brook culvert all the way to the North Auburn bridge. Although  fish weren’t biting on a regular basis during the first few hours, most of those casting a line were simply happy that the fishing season had finally arrived.

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