Nov. 15, 1888: The Maine Steamship Co. accepts a $160,000 bid from Bath Iron Works for the construction of the steamship Cottage City. It is the 4-year-old Bath shipyard’s first shipbuilding project. The vessel is delivered to the owners in May 1890. It carries passengers between Portland and New York for more than seven years […]

Nov. 14, 1899: Walter Wyman, who studied engineering, and Harvey Eaton, a lawyer, begin operating the Oakland Electric Light Co., which they had bought for $4,500 seven days earlier. The company eventually buys up other electric companies and becomes the Central Maine Power Co., Maine’s largest electric utility. Construction of dams began in Oakland in […]

Nov. 13, 2000: The federal government lists the wild Atlantic salmon as an endangered species in Maine. The decision, made by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, grants federal protection for the species, which at the time is believed to have dwindled to fewer than 150 fish. Gov. Angus […]

Nov. 12, 1932: An equestrian statue of Leeds native Oliver Otis Howard is unveiled at the site of the Civil War’s Battle of Gettysburg, in which Howard fought as commander of XI Army Corps. Pennsylvania Gov. Gifford Pinchot and Maine Gov. William Tudor Gardiner, who will become a wartime Army officer himself a decade later […]

Nov. 9, 2017: Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap files a federal lawsuit against President Trump’s voter-fraud commission, of which Dunlap is a member, in an effort to get information about the panel’s correspondence and its work. One of four Democrats on the 11-member Presidential Advisory Committee for Election Integrity, Dunlap says he requested the […]

Nov. 8, 1836: Milton Bradley, future business manager and board game pioneer, is born in the Kennebec County town of Vienna. Bradley’s family moves to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1847. He becomes a mechanical engineer and patent solicitor in Springfield, Massachusetts, then develops a board game, The Checkered Game of Life, which includes such punishments as […]

Nov. 7, 1837: Journalist and slavery opponent Elijah Parish Lovejoy, 34, an Albion native who graduated at the top of his class from what is now Colby College in Waterville, is shot to death in Alton, Illinois, by a mob that has come to destroy his printing press. Lovejoy started his career in education, becoming […]

Nov. 6, 1860: Hannibal Hamlin, a Republican from Bangor, is elected U.S. vice president, serving with Republican President Abraham Lincoln. Hamlin (1809-1891), a former Democrat who bolted from the party over its pro-slavery stance, was selected for the Republican ticket to provide a regional and partisan balance with Lincoln, who is from Illinois. He serves […]