Nov. 11, 1825: Portland’s Eastern Argus newspaper reports that a third riot in a year’s time has broken out in reaction to the presence of bordellos in the city. The first round of the so-called Portland Whorehouse Riots took place in 1824, when a group of men and boys ejected the bordellos’ tenants and tore […]

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 […]

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 […]