Nov. 5, 1919: Maine becomes the 19th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which eventually gives women the right to vote. The decision reflects an about-face from the result of a statewide referendum only two years earlier, on Sept. 10, 1917, when Maine men voted by a 2-to-1 ratio to deny […]

Nov. 4, 1884: Republican James G. Blaine (1830-1893), a former U.S. House speaker and former U.S. secretary of state from Augusta, loses the U.S. presidential election to the Democratic nominee, New York Gov. Grover Cleveland, after one of the dirtiest presidential campaigns in U.S. history. During the campaign, Cleveland, a bachelor, answered accusations that he […]

Nov. 3, 2009: Maine voters overturn by referendum a law passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. John E. Baldacci that allows marriages of same-sex partners. The repeal question passes about 53 percent to 47 percent in an off-year election. Closer analysis reveals stark regional differences. A majority of voters in Cumberland, Hancock, Knox […]

Nov. 2, 1789: President George Washington, on his only visit to Maine – which is then part of Massachusetts – fishes for cod off the coast at Kittery, catching two of them. He also visits the site of what will become the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Nov. 2, 1860: The town of Bristol, like most of […]

Nov. 1, 1972: The Piscataqua River Bridge opens. The six-lane, 1,500-foot span becomes the third bridge linking Kittery, Maine, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. As a newly opened portion of Interstate 95, it also quickly becomes the most frequently used route into and out of Maine. The new bridge enables travelers to avoid the Portsmouth traffic […]

Oct. 30, 1991: A hurricane later commemorated in Sebastian Junger’s best-selling book “The Perfect Storm” and a film of the same name reaches peak intensity off Canada’s Atlantic coast. The then-unnamed storm began to grow Oct. 28, when it sank the Gloucester, Massachusetts-based fishing boat Andrea Gail, killing its six crew members. Also known as […]

Oct. 29, 2006: Heavy wind topples a 165-foot-tall construction crane being used at Maine Medical Center in Portland onto three nearby residential buildings, damaging all of them. The incident displaces about a dozen people, but nobody is injured. The collapse, reported about 9:56 a.m., prompts authorities to close off affected streets and to reroute traffic […]

Oct. 28, 1787: Kennebec Journal co-founder and editor Luther Severance is born in Montague, Massachusetts. Severance, who later serves as a two-term Whig Party member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine’s 3rd Congressional District, also becomes U.S. commissioner – equivalent to ambassador – to the Kingdom of Hawaii from 1850 to 1853. James […]

Oct. 27, 1775: Col. Benedict Arnold, continuing his three-month march to Quebec at the start of the American Revolution, writes a letter to Gen. George Washington to report that his Army expedition has lost many of the boats that it used to ascend the Kennebec River from Fort Western (now Augusta), and that he has […]