March 29, 1602: The Concord, a small vessel called a bark, sails from Falmouth, England, to establish a colony in North America. On May 14, five years before the establishment of the permanent English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, it anchors in what is now York Harbor after cruising along Maine’s coast from Cape Elizabeth. The ship, […]

March 28, 2006: Caspar Weinberger, U.S. secretary of defense for seven years under President Ronald Reagan, dies at age 88 at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor from pneumonia complications. In the Reagan administration, Weinberger took the lead in directing a rollback strategy against Soviet communism. He was indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, involving a violation […]

March 25, 1937: Workers at shoe manufacturers in Lewiston and Auburn initiate a strike that grows to more than 4,000 workers by early April. The strike draws widespread attention but ends three months later in failure. In Maine, where many shoe manufacturers had set up shop to flee the unions’ organizing power in Massachusetts, shoemaking […]

March 24, 1958: Life magazine’s cover depicts sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) wearing a witch’s hat and crouching behind one of her creations. The magazine’s cover article reveals to the nation Nevelson’s “Moon Garden + One” exhibition at the Grand Central Moderns gallery in New York, which opened in January that year and elevates Nevelson, who grew […]

March 22, 1848: Dr. Valorus Perry Coolidge of Waterville is convicted of murder and sentenced to hang for killing Edward Mathews on the night of Sept. 30, 1847, in Waterville and robbing him of about $1,500 that Mathews had just withdrawn from a local bank to lend to the debt-ridden Coolidge. The case became a […]

March 21, 2015: A lift at Sugarloaf ski resort in Carrabassett Valley stops and rolls backward, injuring seven adults, four of whom require hospital treatment. The incident strands about 200 skiers and snowboarders on the lift for about 90 minutes. On June 25, Sugarloaf announces $1.3 million in upgrades to lift safety, including a new […]