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 […]

Oct. 26, 1775: Benedict Arnold’s northbound wilderness expedition to Quebec conducts a 10-mile portage of heavy boats and supplies connecting a series of Maine ponds to reach the Height of Land, from which his men can descend to waterways flowing toward the St. Lawrence River and the British fortress they intend to attack. “We advanced […]

Oct. 25, 1836: The passenger steamship Royal Tar, heading from Saint John, New Brunswick, to Portland, burns and sinks in Penobscot Bay while carrying a variety of circus animals, as well as 72 passengers and 21 crew members. Thirty-two people and most of the animals die in the sinking. Two of the ship’s four lifeboats […]

Oct. 24, 2007: The Navy says its Arleigh Burke-class of destroyers, some of which were built at Bath Iron Works in Maine, need about $59.8 million worth of upgrades to their bows because they tend to sustain structural damage when fully loaded and traveling in rough seas. A Navy spokesman says defense industry reports of […]

Oct. 23, 1651: The Massachusetts Bay colony’s General Court sends a letter to authorities in southwestern Maine, the part of Maine that retains the name after a division of that colony into four parts, saying that the area is under Massachusetts’ jurisdiction. No response is given. In November 1652, four Massachusetts commissioners arrive in Kittery […]