Aug. 17, 1994: Paramount Pictures releases the film “Andre” about an orphaned seal in Rockport that grows up in the care of a girl and her father. The film is based on a real orphaned seal pup named Andre (1961-1986) that was rescued and raised by Rockport’s harbormaster, Harry Goodridge, and that chose to stay […]

Aug. 16, 1941: President Franklin D. Roosevelt arrives in Rockland aboard the presidential yacht Potomac. He recently returned to the United States from a shipboard meeting off the coast of Newfoundland with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. At that meeting, Churchill and Roosevelt drafted the Atlantic Charter, which mapped out the Allied World War II […]

Aug. 13, 1607: Colonists led by George Popham and traveling on the ship Gift of God arrive at the mouth of the Kennebec River after an 11-week voyage from Plymouth, England. An accompanying ship, the Mary and John, arrives a few days later. The colonists, who number about 120, build Fort St. George in what […]

Aug. 12, 1873: President Ulysses S. Grant arrives in Augusta for a multi-day visit at U.S. House Speaker James G. Blaine’s Augusta residence, the future Maine governors’ mansion. It is Grant’s third trip to Augusta. The first occurred in August 1865, four months after the conclusion of the Civil War, in which Grant was the […]

Aug. 11, 1978: Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman, riding in the helium-filled balloon Double Eagle II, launch at 8:42 p.m. from Presque Isle. After 137 hours and six minutes, they land in a barley field in Miserey, France, about 60 miles northwest of Paris, completing the first successful manned transatlantic balloon flight. Their […]

Aug. 10, 1674: A Dutch force commanded by naval Capt. Jurriaen Aernouts, aboard the frigate Flying Horse, overruns the 30 lightly armed French soldiers at Fort Pentagouet during the Franco-Dutch war of 1672-78. The Dutch also seize the French military headquarters there. Pentagouet, located on the Bagaduce River at the current site of the town […]

Aug. 9, 1842: The U.S. signs the Treaty of Washington, or Webster-Ashburton Treaty, with the United Kingdom, establishing what is now the boundary between the United States and Canada, including the boundary in northern and eastern Maine. The treaty resolves a dispute known as the “Aroostook War,” a disagreement that led to deployment of militia […]

Aug. 8, 1901: Chansonetta Stanley Emmons (1858-1937) opens a two-day exhibit of her photography in Farmington. Emmons is the sister of the Stanley brothers, who invented and marketed the Stanley Steamer car. The brothers turned to transportation technology after becoming wealthy through pioneering work in manufacturing and marketing dry-plate photography equipment, but their sister stuck […]