140 Fun Facts About Maine

What is the capital of Maine?

Augusta grew from a trading post that Plymouth colonists set up on the Kennebec River in the 1620s; it replaced Portland as the seat of government because it lay nearer the middle of the state.

Which is the only U.S. state that shares a border with Maine?

New Hampshire is the only one, and the two have quarrelled over the line: in 2001 the Supreme Court threw out New Hampshire's claim to the naval-shipyard island in the river between them.

Which two Canadian provinces border Maine?

New Brunswick and Quebec meet Maine along a line that the 1783 peace treaty left so unclear that Britain and the United States argued over it for more than half a century.

Maine became a state in 1820 as part of which famous political bargain?

The Missouri Compromise let Maine in as a free state so that Missouri could follow as a slave state, keeping the Senate evenly split between the two camps.

Before statehood, Maine was part of which state?

Massachusetts ran Maine as a district until 1820; its failure to shield the coast from British raids in the War of 1812 swung Mainers behind separation.

Which reformer, born in Hampden, Maine, in 1802, campaigned across America for humane care of the mentally ill?

Dorothea Dix found her cause while teaching a class in an East Cambridge jail, where she saw mentally ill inmates locked up with criminals; she later ran the Union's army nurses in the Civil War.

What is Maine's nickname, a nod to its endless forests?

The Pine Tree State put a lone pine on its first state flag in 1901; in 2024 voters turned down a referendum to bring that design back.

Which seabird did biologists bring back to Maine's Eastern Egg Rock from 1973, luring it ashore with wooden decoys?

Atlantic puffin numbers in Maine were down to two nesting islands when Audubon's Stephen Kress began moving chicks to Eastern Egg Rock; decoys coaxed the grown birds back, and four pairs nested there in 1981.

The Old Town Canoe Company entered the market building wooden canoes covered in what material?

Canvas-covered canoes were Old Town's take on the birch-bark boats of its Penobscot neighbours, and by 1940 they had made the firm the biggest canoe maker in the world.

Which Maine town is the easternmost municipality in the contiguous United States?

Lubec was the scene of a notorious swindle in 1897-98: a clergyman sold stock in a plant he said could draw gold from seawater, then vanished in the summer of 1898, and the fraud was exposed.

What is the highest mountain in Maine?

Katahdin marks the northern end of the Appalachian Trail, so hikers who set out in spring finish on its summit after walking roughly 2,190 miles.

The Appalachian Trail runs about 2,190 miles from Maine to its southern end in which state?

Georgia's Springer Mountain is the southern end; forester Benton MacKaye proposed the footpath in 1921, and it now crosses 14 states.

Which is the largest lake in Maine?

Moosehead Lake covers about 116 square miles; the cliffs of Mount Kineo on its shore supplied a flint-like stone that Native toolmakers travelled long distances to collect.

Acadia National Park lies mostly on which island off the Maine coast?

Mount Desert Island holds most of the park; a wildfire in October 1947 burned more than 10,000 acres of the park and razed 67 summer estates and five grand hotels in and around Bar Harbor.

Which philanthropist financed the car-free carriage roads that wind through Acadia National Park?

John D. Rockefeller Jr., a skilled horseman, built 45 miles of carriage roads between 1913 and 1940 so that he could cross the island by horse and carriage, away from motor traffic.

Acadia became a national park in 1919 under the name of which French hero of the American Revolution?

Lafayette National Park was renamed in 1929 to revive Acadia, the old French name for the region.

Which Acadia summit is famed as the first place in the continental U.S. to see sunrise for part of the year?

Cadillac Mountain was Green Mountain until 1918, when it was renamed for the French adventurer who was once granted the island and later founded Detroit, which is why a car brand shares the name.

Which U.S. president directed the building of Portland Head Light, Maine's oldest lighthouse?

George Washington reminded the masons that the young government was poor, so the tower was raised from stone gathered in nearby fields and on the shore; it was finished in 1791.

What colour pattern makes the West Quoddy Head lighthouse instantly recognisable?

Red-and-white stripes mark the 1858 tower on the easternmost point of the contiguous United States; despite the 'West' in its name, the East Quoddy light stands across the water in Canada.

Which horror author, born in Portland in 1947, set many of his novels in fictional Maine towns?

Stephen King threw the first pages of 'Carrie' in the trash while living in a trailer in Hermon, Maine; his wife Tabitha fished them out and told him to keep going.

Which fictional Maine town is terrorised by the shape-shifting entity in the novel 'It'?

Derry is a thinly veiled Bangor: the author told his biographer that the haunted town is his portrait of the Maine city where he made his home.

Which poet, author of 'Paul Revere's Ride', was born in Portland in 1807?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow grew up in the first all-brick house in Portland; his sister Anne kept it as it was and willed it to the Maine Historical Society, which opened it to visitors.

In which Maine town is L.L.Bean headquartered?

Freeport's flagship store went round-the-clock in 1951: so many travellers bound for Maine's woods and waters were dropping in at all hours that Leon Bean announced he had 'thrown away the key'.

Which single product did L.L.Bean sell when it began as a one-room mail-order business in 1912?

A waterproof hunting boot, the Maine Hunting Shoe, was the whole range; 90 of the first 100 pairs came back faulty, and Bean refunded every buyer, the start of his famous guarantee.

Colonel Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine won fame for holding which position at Gettysburg?

Little Round Top anchored the far left of the Union line; with ammunition running low, Chamberlain ordered the 20th Maine into a bayonet charge that won him the Medal of Honor.

Which Mainer served as Abraham Lincoln's first vice president?

Hannibal Hamlin was dropped from the ticket in 1864 in favour of Andrew Johnson, so it was Johnson, not Hamlin, who became president when Lincoln was shot the following spring.

Which Maine senator delivered the 1950 'Declaration of Conscience' speech criticising Joseph McCarthy?

Margaret Chase Smith never named McCarthy in the speech, but he hit back by mocking her and her six co-signers as 'Snow White and the Six Dwarfs' and removing her from his investigations subcommittee.

Maine senator Edmund Muskie, later Secretary of State, championed which landmark environmental law of 1970?

The Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act two years later both carried Muskie's stamp; he had already backed clean air and water laws as Maine's governor in the 1950s.

The battleship USS Maine blew up in 1898 in which harbour, helping to trigger the Spanish-American War?

Havana was where the Maine sank; American newspapers blamed Spain and cried 'Remember the Maine!', though the cause of the explosion has never been settled.

Maine is the largest U.S. producer of which seafood?

Lobster stocks are protected by a simple rule: a harvester who traps an egg-bearing female must cut a V-shaped notch in her tail and throw her back, and no one may keep a notched lobster.

Maine is the top U.S. producer of which fruit?

Wild blueberries are not planted like the cultivated kind: the low bushes spread on their own across Maine's barrens, and growers mow or burn each field to spur the next crop.

Which Maine county is famous for its potato crops?

Potatoes bring the state more than $166 million a year.

What is Maine's official state treat, recognised in 2011?

South Portland bakers made a record 1,062-pound example that year; blueberry pie is the separate official state dessert.

Which bitter soft drink, flavoured with gentian root, is Maine's official state soft drink?

Moxie began as a patent medicine: Maine-born doctor Augustin Thompson sold it as 'Moxie Nerve Food', with claims that it could cure a range of ailments, before it became a soda.

In one legend, the Maine Coon descends from cats shipped to Maine by which doomed queen before a failed escape?

Marie Antoinette's cats, the tale goes, sailed on without her and reached the Maine coast; the breed's real roots lie with the cats that came ashore in New England with early settlers.

Which children's classic did E. B. White write on his farm in Brooklin, Maine?

Charlotte's Web began on White's own farm: he came across the spider there in October 1950 and, unable to identify it, asked the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, a butterfly expert, for help.

What does Maine's Latin state motto 'Dirigo' mean?

'I lead' refers to the North Star above the shield on the state seal: the 1820 resolution called that star the mariner's guide and meant the state to be its citizens' guide in the same way.

Which weapon did Maine-born inventor Hiram Maxim perfect in London in 1884, later earning a British knighthood?

The machine gun he built used the recoil of each shot to load and fire the next; the same restless inventor, born in Sangerville, also patented a mousetrap and hair-curling irons.

Maine has the largest population of which large mammal in the lower 48 states?

Moose had been hunted down to about 2,000 animals in Maine by the early 1900s; the herd has since rebounded into the biggest in the lower 48 states.

Which boxer floored Sonny Liston with a so-called 'phantom punch' in Lewiston, Maine, in 1965?

Muhammad Ali won in the first round in a junior hockey rink; after a big-city venue fell through, Lewiston became the smallest city to stage a heavyweight title fight in decades.

Powerful Fundy tides racing past Eastport create Old Sow, the Western Hemisphere's largest what?

Whirlpool: Old Sow can spread some 250 feet across, with smaller 'piglets' spinning off around it, and boaters who make it through can join the Old Sow Whirlpool Survivors' Association.

Maine's Popham Colony was founded in 1607, a few months after which more successful English settlement?

Jamestown endured, while Popham's settlers sailed home after a single winter; before leaving they built the Virginia, a small ship sturdy enough to cross the Atlantic again in 1609.

Which French explorer and mapmaker spent the winter of 1604 with the Saint Croix Island settlement on Maine's eastern border?

Samuel de Champlain was cartographer to the expedition's leader, Pierre Dugua; scurvy killed 35 of the 79 settlers that winter, so the French moved on to Port-Royal in Nova Scotia.

The 'Maine Penny', an 11th-century silver coin, was minted in which country?

Norway struck it under King Olaf Kyrre; an amateur archaeologist said he found it at a Native village site on the Maine coast in 1957, where it may have arrived through Native trade rather than with Norse sailors.

What food-related nickname does the 1838-39 US-British border confrontation over northern Maine have?

The Pork and Beans War was bloodless: Maine called out its militia over the disputed borderland, but a truce agreed in March 1839 held until diplomats drew the border.

In 1851 Maine led the nation by becoming the first state to do what?

Prohibit the sale of alcohol: the 'Maine Law' was driven by Portland mayor Neal Dow, and in 1855 a crowd rioted over liquor the city itself held for 'medicinal' use; one man was shot dead.

The Great Fire that destroyed most of Portland's commercial buildings broke out on which date in 1866?

July 4 celebrations set it off, most likely a firecracker or cigar ash in a waterfront boathouse; by the next morning some 10,000 people were homeless.

Bar Harbor was known by what name until 1918?

Eden was the town's name from 1796 until 1918, when it became Bar Harbor after the sand bar that surfaces at low tide and leads across to Bar Island.

Which presidential family's summer estate, Walker's Point, is in Kennebunkport?

The Bushes got the point through George H. W. Bush's mother, Dorothy Walker, whose father bought it in 1902; as president, Bush hosted François Mitterrand and John Major there.

Bangor's 31-foot fiberglass statue depicts which legendary figure?

Paul Bunyan honours the decades when Bangor was the world's largest lumber port; the statue even turns up in the horror novel 'It'.

Which teenager from Farmington, Maine, invented earmuffs in 1873?

Chester Greenwood was 15 when cold ears spoiled his ice skating; he bent wire into loops, had his grandmother sew on fur, and later ran a Farmington factory that shipped ear protectors worldwide.

Which game maker, born in Vienna, Maine, made his name in 1860 with The Checkered Game of Life?

Milton Bradley turned to games after his lithograph of a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln stopped selling: Lincoln grew a beard, and buyers demanded their money back.

Maine schoolgirl Samantha Smith became 'America's Youngest Ambassador' after writing to the leader of which country in 1982?

The Soviet Union's leader, Yuri Andropov, wrote back and invited the ten-year-old to visit; after she died in a 1985 plane crash, Moscow issued a postage stamp in her honour.

Which painter moved to Prouts Neck, Maine, in 1883 and painted the sea from a carriage house?

Winslow Homer worked in the studio until his death there in 1910; the Portland Museum of Art bought it in 2006, restored it and now takes small groups through.

Which Maine shipbuilder builds Arleigh Burke-class destroyers for the U.S. Navy?

Bath Iron Works was founded in 1884 by Thomas Hyde, a Civil War general who had bought a local foundry; the yard failed in 1925 and stood idle until new owners revived it and returned it to Navy work.

In 2003, the Portland Sea Dogs became the Double-A affiliate of which MLB team?

The Boston Red Sox link reshaped the ballpark: after the switch from the Marlins, Hadlock Field gained a 37-foot replica of Fenway's Green Monster, known as the Maine Monster.

Which novelist befriended future president Franklin Pierce while both were students at Maine's Bowdoin College?

Nathaniel Hawthorne graduated in 1825 and later wrote his old friend's campaign biography; once elected, Pierce made him U.S. consul in Liverpool.

Which community at Maine's southern tip, home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, is the state's oldest incorporated town?

Kittery was incorporated in 1647; the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War, was signed at its naval shipyard rather than in the city across the river that gave the treaty its name.

Which former governor donated the land for the state park around Maine's highest peak?

Percival Baxter could not persuade the legislature to buy the mountain, so he spent his own fortune on it, handing over the land in 28 gifts between 1931 and 1962 on condition that it stay 'forever wild'.

Which writer climbed Maine's highest mountain in 1846, a trip recounted in his book 'The Maine Woods'?

Henry David Thoreau set out weeks after his famous night in jail for refusing to pay a tax, the act behind 'Civil Disobedience'; the book appeared in 1864, two years after his death.

Which bottled-water brand takes its name from the Maine town where it was first drawn?

Poland Spring owes its start to innkeeper Hiram Ricker, who claimed in 1844 that the water had cured his chronic dyspepsia; by 1859 he was selling it commercially.

In the 2024 election, Maine and which other state split their electoral votes by congressional district?

Nebraska is the only other state that awards electoral votes district by district; in 2024 each of the two duly gave one vote to the candidate who lost the state as a whole.

Which baked-bean brand was made on Portland's waterfront for over a century before its plant was sold in 2021?

B&M beans were made there for over 100 years; when owner B&G Foods announced the sale, the plant was earmarked as the home of Northeastern University's Roux Institute.

Which runner from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, won the first women's Olympic marathon, at Los Angeles in 1984?

Joan Benoit had arthroscopic knee surgery just 17 days before the U.S. trials, yet qualified and went on to take the gold medal in Los Angeles that August.

Which electoral system did Maine adopt by referendum in 2016, becoming the first state to use it in federal elections?

Ranked-choice voting decided a U.S. House race two years later: Bruce Poliquin led the first count in Maine's 2nd District, but Jared Golden won once later choices were counted.

Former Maine senator George Mitchell helped broker which 1998 peace accord as President Clinton's envoy?

The Good Friday Agreement crowned a career Mitchell nearly swapped for the bench: in 1994 he turned down a Supreme Court seat to fight for health-care reform, then left the Senate and took on Northern Ireland.

The Grand Trunk Railway, completed in 1853, linked Portland's ice-free harbour to which Canadian city?

Montreal's rail link made Portland the main ice-free winter seaport for Canadian exports, a role it kept until Halifax was built up as a rival port.

What left Bubble Rock, a huge boulder, perched on a mountain ledge in Acadia National Park?

A glacier carried it: the ice sheet that once buried Acadia hauled boulders 20 miles or more and stranded them as it melted, and its weight pressed the coast down so far that the sea flooded in.

Fort Kent, in Maine's far north, marks the northern end of which highway that runs to Key West, Florida?

U.S. Route 1 owes its number to the 1920s plan that numbered north-south highways from east to west: the road down the Atlantic coast, starting at the border bridge in Fort Kent, came first.

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Bridge links easternmost Maine to which Canadian island, site of FDR's summer home?

Campobello Island is where Roosevelt fell ill with polio in August 1921; his 34-room 'cottage' is now the heart of a park run jointly by the United States and Canada.

In which fictional Maine town did Jessica Fletcher solve crimes on television's 'Murder, She Wrote'?

Cabot Cove was really Mendocino in Northern California, where the exterior scenes were shot; the series ran for 12 seasons from 1984.

A Harrington, Maine, wreath maker's 1992 gift of 5,000 surplus wreaths to which national cemetery grew into Wreaths Across America?

Arlington was a boyhood memory for Morrill Worcester, who sent his company's unsold wreaths there with the help of a local trucking firm and kept doing so every December.

Portland, Oregon, was named for Portland, Maine, by an 1845 coin toss; which city's name lost?

Boston was the hometown of Asa Lovejoy, who lost two of three tosses to Francis Pettygrove of Portland, Maine; the 'Portland Penny' they flipped is on show at the Oregon Historical Society.

The city seal of Portland, Maine, recalls four devastating fires with which mythical creature?

A phoenix suits a city destroyed and rebuilt four times: by raids in 1676 and 1690, a bombardment in 1775 and the great fire of 1866.

Which director of Westerns, raised in Portland, Maine, won a record four Academy Awards for Best Director?

John Ford is best remembered for 'Stagecoach' and 'The Searchers', yet none of his four directing Oscars came for a Western: they went to films such as 'The Grapes of Wrath' and 'The Quiet Man'.

Which novel did Harriet Beecher Stowe write in Brunswick, Maine, while her husband taught at Bowdoin College?

Uncle Tom's Cabin was her answer to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; much of it was written in the family's house near the campus, now a National Historic Landmark.

What did English settlers call the fishing and trading village they founded in the 1630s on the site of Portland, Maine?

Casco lives on as the name of the bay; the village, founded by Englishmen George Cleeve and Richard Tucker, kept the name for only a generation before it was renamed.

For more than a century before 1786, Portland, Maine, went by the name of which English port?

Falmouth was the name from 1658; after the Revolution the busy harbour district broke away as Portland, while the rest carries on as the town of Falmouth next door.

The settlement that became Portland, Maine, was destroyed in 1676 during which colonial-era war?

King Philip's War began in southern New England in 1675 and spread north; the village was rebuilt, only to be largely destroyed again by French and Native raiders in 1690.

On 18 October 1775, which force bombarded and burned the town that is now Portland, Maine?

The Royal Navy's Captain Henry Mowat shelled the town for nine hours; news of the attack spurred the Continental Congress to found a navy of its own.

Portland, Maine draws its unfiltered drinking water from which lake?

Sebago Lake, Maine's deepest, is clean enough to be exempt from federal filtration rules, a status shared by only about 50 of the country's 13,000 surface-water supplies.

Which Arctic explorer, a Bowdoin College graduate raised in Maine, retired to Eagle Island off the Maine coast?

Robert Peary was long credited with reaching the North Pole in 1909, a claim now widely doubted; his Eagle Island house in Harpswell is a Maine state historic site.

The Portland Company, on the waterfront of Portland, Maine, built more than 600 of what in the 19th century?

Steam locomotives were its reason for being: the works opened in 1846 to equip the new railroad out of Portland, and later built the engines for two Civil War gunboats.

Which 'Grey's Anatomy' star, born in Lewiston, Maine, lends his name to a cancer support centre in the city?

Patrick Dempsey helped start the centre after his mother Amanda's long fight with cancer; he grew up nearby, in Turner.

What is Portland, Maine's long-standing nickname, earned from the trees once planted along its streets?

Elms once shaded almost every downtown block before Dutch elm disease thinned them. Bangor, upriver, is the one Mainers call the Queen City.

Maine has the highest percentage of which ancestry group of any US state?

Over a quarter of Lewiston, Waterville and Biddeford is Franco-American, and 3.93% of households speak French at home, more than Louisiana.

Which 1842 treaty between the United States and Britain finally settled Maine's disputed northern border?

Webster-Ashburton split the disputed land, 7,015 square miles to the United States and 5,012 to Britain, ending a quarrel left over from the peace treaty of 1783.

Which lighthouse island off the coast of eastern Maine is claimed by both the United States and Canada?

Machias Seal Island has carried a lighthouse since 1832, and Canada has kept it staffed to press its claim: the 2015 heritage listing says keepers are stationed there 'for sovereignty purposes'.

Which Amtrak service links Brunswick, Maine, to Boston's North Station?

The Downeaster began running in 2001 after a volunteer group, TrainRiders/Northeast, spent more than a decade campaigning to restore the passenger trains Maine had lost in 1965.

The shipping line Eimskip, which began container sailings to Portland, Maine, in 2013, is based in which country?

Iceland's Eimskip made Portland its main American port of call, and the port's container traffic nearly tripled between 2013 and 2019.

Which boxer floored Sonny Liston with the so-called 'phantom punch' in Lewiston, Maine, in 1965?

Muhammad Ali won by a first-round knockout that many in the arena never saw land, and Lewiston was the smallest city to host a heavyweight title bout since 1923.

Which appliance did Howland, Maine native Percy Spencer invent after a candy bar reportedly melted in his pocket?

The microwave oven came out of radar work: Spencer was standing by an active radar set at the time, and the first commercial model of 1947 stood about six feet tall.

The town of Strong, Maine, was once nicknamed the world capital of which small wooden item?

Toothpicks left Strong at a rate of 20 million a day, all from the Strong Wood Products plant.

Which TV mystery series starring Angela Lansbury is set in the fictional coastal town of Cabot Cove, Maine?

Murder, She Wrote set only 54 of its 264 episodes in Cabot Cove, yet the term 'Cabot Cove syndrome' was coined for the constant appearance of dead bodies in remote places.

Which 1994 film starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman is set inside a fictional Maine state prison?

The Shawshank Redemption never filmed in Maine: the Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield stood in for the prison, and a Caribbean island played the Mexican beach of the final scene.

Which author wrote 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' while living in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband taught at Bowdoin College?

Harriet Beecher Stowe said the story came to her as a vision of a dying slave during a communion service at Brunswick's First Parish Church.

Which author's farm in North Brooklin, Maine, was the inspiration for his children's classic 'Charlotte's Web'?

E. B. White, a New Yorker essayist, died at the farm in 1985; he also wrote 'Stuart Little' and updated the writer's guide 'The Elements of Style'.

Which seabird did an Audubon project begin restoring to Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast in 1973?

The puffin came back after 954 chicks were moved in from Great Island and wooden decoys were set on the boulders to lure the returning birds ashore.

Quoddy Head in Maine, rather than any point in Florida, is the closest place in the 50 states to which continent?

Africa is nearer to this headland than to anywhere else in the 50 states, since the park stands on the easternmost point of land in the continental United States.

Which 'Pitch Perfect' star, born in Portland, Maine, earned a Tony nomination for a Broadway role at 12?

Anna Kendrick's nod came for the 1998 musical 'High Society', and she later added an Oscar nomination for 'Up in the Air'.

Which 'Grey's Anatomy' actor, born in Lewiston, Maine, helped start a cancer centre there after his mother's illness?

Patrick Dempsey grew up in the nearby towns of Turner and Buckfield, and away from acting he has raced sports cars at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Which Cape Elizabeth, Maine runner won the first women's Olympic marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Games?

Joan Benoit took up distance running to recover from a broken leg suffered while slalom skiing, and later founded Cape Elizabeth's Beach to Beacon 10K road race.

Which artist painted 'Christina's World' at the Olson farm in Cushing, Maine, where he kept a summer home?

Andrew Wyeth sold the 1948 picture to the Museum of Modern Art for $1,800, and although Christina Olson inspired it, his wife Betsy posed for the figure's torso.

Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine, became the last active community of which religious group?

The Shakers are strict believers in celibacy, so the village has always depended on converts and adopted orphans instead of children born into the faith.

Which philanthropist financed and directed the network of car-free carriage roads in Maine's Acadia National Park?

John D. Rockefeller Jr. laid out about 57 miles of crushed-stone roads and paid for 16 of their 17 stone-faced bridges; motor vehicles are banned from them.

Which island, the largest in Maine and second-largest on the Eastern Seaboard, is home to Bar Harbor?

Mount Desert Island covers 108 square miles, trailing only Long Island on the East Coast and edging out Martha's Vineyard.

Which small songbird, long pictured on Maine's standard licence plate, is the official state bird?

The black-capped chickadee hides seeds for the winter and can remember its caches for up to 28 days; its hippocampus even grows during the caching season.

Maine is the least densely populated U.S. state lying east of which major river?

The Mississippi marks the line: with about 41 people per square mile, Maine is emptier than any other state on the river's eastern side.

Which personal-care brand, founded in Maine in 1984, made its first $200 at a Dover-Foxcroft school craft fair?

Burt's Bees grew out of Roxanne Quimby's idea to use Burt Shavitz's leftover beeswax, and recipes in one of his 19th-century beekeeping books steered them into personal care products.

Which 'Silent Spring' author, who spent summers in Maine, is honoured by a wildlife refuge on the state's coast?

Rachel Carson asked for her ashes to be scattered along the rocky shores of Sheepscot Bay, and the refuge created in 1966 protects estuaries used by migratory birds.

An attraction in Yarmouth, Maine, was measured for Guinness in 1999 as the world's largest rotating what?

Globe is the word: Eartha spans just over 41 feet, weighs about 5,600 pounds and turns through a simulated day every 18 minutes.

Maine began splitting its electoral votes by congressional district in 1972; which state followed suit in 1992?

Nebraska copied the Maine plan: two electoral votes go to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district.

Which highway, the longest north-south road in the United States, runs from Fort Kent, Maine, to Key West, Florida?

U.S. Route 1 covers about 2,370 miles; its far southern stretch joined the route only after the Overseas Highway to Key West was completed in 1938.

Which film director, raised in Portland, Maine, won a record four Academy Awards for Best Director?

John Ford, born John Martin Feeney, played fullback at Portland High School and won his Oscars for films including 'The Grapes of Wrath' and 'The Quiet Man'.

Which 1999 animated film directed by Brad Bird is set in the fictional town of Rockwell, Maine, in 1957?

The Iron Giant opens with its robot crash-landing off the Maine coast during the Cold War, and part of the animation team spent a week in the state photographing five small cities.

John B. Curtis's State of Maine gum of 1848, the first commercial chewing gum, was made from the resin of which tree?

Spruce resin had long been chewed by American Indians before settlers copied the habit, and within a few years a paraffin-wax gum had overtaken it in popularity.

Which gemstone did two college students discover on Mount Mica in Paris, Maine, in a first for the United States?

Tourmaline from Maine tends to come in raspberry pink-red and minty green, and one 69-carat stone from the state was bought by Tiffany & Co.

The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, ships more than 13,000 strains of which animal to researchers worldwide?

Mouse models from the lab reach more than 2,400 organisations in 68 countries; it was founded in 1929 by Clarence Cook Little, a former University of Maine president.

Which inventor born in Sangerville, Maine, created the first automatic machine gun after moving to Britain?

Hiram Maxim was knocked over by a rifle's recoil as a child, which inspired him to harness that force to work a gun; he also devised an automatic fire sprinkler that alerted the fire station.

Which early automobile, built by twin brothers born in Kingfield, Maine, set a land speed record in 1906?

The Stanley Steamer hit about 127 mph on the Florida sands in 1906 with Fred Marriott at the wheel, and its makers had earlier sold their photographic dry-plate business to Eastman Kodak.

Which former senator from Waterville, Maine, was a primary architect of Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday Agreement?

George Mitchell, whose father was a janitor at Colby College, later led the 2007 investigation into performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Which confederacy that includes Maine's Penobscot and Passamaquoddy nations has a name often translated as 'Dawnland'?

Wabanaki lands roughly matched the area that became Acadia, and the alliance joins five principal nations, among them the Abenaki, Mi'kmaq and Wolastoqiyik.

The University of Maine, whose men's ice hockey team won national titles in 1993 and 1999, is based in which town?

Orono even lent its name to the school: the legislature renamed it the University of Maine at Orono over the objections of the faculty, and the old name returned only in 1986.

Which 1962 satellite carried the first transatlantic television service through a giant antenna at Andover, Maine?

Telstar 1's solar cells produced only 14 watts, and the horn antenna that AT&T built at Andover in 1961 to follow it stood seven storeys tall.

Which astronaut born in Caribou, Maine, made the first all-female spacewalk alongside Christina Koch in 2019?

Jessica Meir and Koch stepped outside the International Space Station on October 18, 2019, to replace a faulty battery charging unit.

Which Pulitzer-winning book of linked stories follows an abrasive math teacher in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine?

Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, is told in 13 stories and became a 2014 HBO miniseries with Frances McDormand in the title role.

Which Rodgers and Hammerstein musical moved a Hungarian play's Budapest setting to the Maine coastline?

Carousel reworked Ferenc Molnár's 'Liliom' in 1945, and the 1956 film version shot on location in Boothbay Harbor, Camden and Newcastle.

Which lighthouse did Maine residents choose by popular vote to appear on the state's commemorative quarter?

Pemaquid Point Light was commissioned in 1827 by President John Quincy Adams, and its keeper's house has become a fishermen's museum of local maritime history.

Which island 12 nautical miles off Maine became an artist colony that drew Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent?

Monhegan has been inhabited for over 400 years, and George Bellows was among the other painters who found inspiration on its cliffs.

In which 1994 film does the hero's cross-country run first reach the Atlantic at Maine's Marshall Point Lighthouse?

Forrest Gump won six Academy Awards including Best Picture, and the light station he reaches was set up to guide boats in and out of Port Clyde Harbor.

Which fictional Maine town, the setting of the novels 'Cujo' and 'Needful Things', also named Rob Reiner's film company?

Castle Rock in turn took its name from the mountain fort in William Golding's novel 'Lord of the Flies'.

Maine's first state flag, adopted in 1901, set a green tree and which blue symbol on a buff-coloured background?

A North Star alludes to the state motto, and the simple 1901 design lasted only until 1909, when the legislature approved a new flag.

Which Maine politician won the Republican presidential nomination in 1884 but narrowly lost to Grover Cleveland?

James G. Blaine, a Pennsylvania native, moved to Maine after college to edit a newspaper, and went on to serve as Speaker of the House and twice as Secretary of State.

Which poet born in Rockland, Maine, won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry after early fame with 'Renascence'?

Edna St. Vincent Millay grew up in Camden, where the view from Mount Battie opens 'Renascence', the poem that launched her career when she was 20.

Which crooner raised in Westbrook, Maine, sang through a megaphone and recorded the University of Maine's 'Stein Song'?

Rudy Vallée reached for the megaphone because his voice failed to project in venues without microphones; he had briefly attended the University of Maine himself.

Which logging tool, a refinement of the cant hook, is named for the Maine blacksmith who invented it in the 1850s?

The peavey honours Joseph Peavey, and unlike the blunt-ended cant hook it has a spike in its working end that is rammed into the log.

Which poet raised in Gardiner, Maine, wrote 'Richard Cory' and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry three times?

Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in the village of Head Tide and was also nominated four times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which gothic soap opera followed the wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, and their vampire relative Barnabas?

Dark Shadows began in 1966 as a family saga and gothic romance; Barnabas arrived only in April 1967 and quickly became the breakout character.

Which reformer born in Hampden in the District of Maine campaigned for America's first generation of mental asylums?

Dorothea Dix lobbied state legislatures and Congress on behalf of the poor mentally ill, then served as Superintendent of Army Nurses during the Civil War.

Which general, the first secretary of war in Washington's cabinet, retired to Thomaston in the District of Maine?

Henry Knox, a former bookseller, held the post from 1789 to 1794 and then filled his Thomaston retirement with business ventures built on borrowed money.