Aug. 20, 2010: Federal officials announce the arrests of 47 people – more than half of them known gang members – as part of a regional campaign against gangs. Twenty-four of the suspects were arrested in Maine. The other arrests occur in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those […]

Aug. 19, 1692: George Burroughs, 42, of Wells is hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, after being tried for and found guilty of witchcraft. The execution proceeds even though Burroughs’ chief accuser, Margaret Jacobs, 17, recants her testimony, saying that she suffered “such horror of conscience that I could not sleep for fear the devil should carry […]

Aug. 18, 1957: Amateur archaeologist Guy Mellgren, according to his own report, finds an 11th-century Norwegian coin at the Goddard prehistoric archaeological site on Naskeag Point in Brooklin. The coin, since donated to the Maine State Museum, has given rise to theories that Norsemen from that period traveled to Maine, or that local tribes acquired […]

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 […]