Claiborne de Borda Pell was an American politician and writer who served as a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island for six terms from 1961 to 1997. He was the sponsor of the 1972 bill that reformed the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, which provides financial aid funding to American college students; the grant was given Pell's name in 1980 in honor of his work in education legislation.
The Portland Pirates were a minor league professional ice hockey team in the American Hockey League (AHL). Their home arena was the Cross Insurance Arena in downtown Portland, Maine. The franchise was previously known as the Baltimore Skipjacks from 1982 to 1993.
Alan Shaw Taylor is an American historian and scholar who, most recently, was the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the early history of the United States, Taylor has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic. Taylor has received two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize, and was also a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Cross Insurance Arena is a multi-purpose arena located in Portland, Maine. Built in 1977, at a cost of US$8 million, it is the home arena for the Maine Mariners of the ECHL. There are 6,206 permanent seats in the arena, and it seats up to 9,500 for concerts.
The Portland Press Herald is a daily newspaper based in South Portland, Maine, with a statewide readership. The Press Herald mainly serves southern Maine and is focused on the greater metropolitan area of Portland.
The Portland Museum of Art, or PMA, is the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882. It is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District in Portland, Maine.
Michael D. Sallah is an American investigative reporter and non-fiction author who has twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist.
James V. Hart is an American screenwriter and author. He is known for his literary adaptations, such as Hook (1991), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994).
Tom Caron is a sportscaster and anchor on New England's NESN network. He is a co-owner of the USL League One soccer team Portland Hearts of Pine. He is the Co-Chairman of the Jimmy Fund.
The Maine Italian sandwich, or Italian, is a submarine sandwich in Italian-American cuisine. The Maine Italian sandwich was invented in Portland, Maine.
Ethan King Strimling is an American non-profit executive, television personality, and politician from Maine. Strimling was elected to 3 terms in the Maine Senate (2003–2009), one term a Mayor of Portland, Maine (2015–2019), serving one term. Strimling previously served as a Democratic state senator from 2003 to 2009. He was the Executive Director of LearningWorks, a West End non-profit organization, and has served as a political columnist and commentator for the Portland Press Herald.
Guy Gannett Communications was a family-owned business consisting of newspapers in Maine and a handful of television stations in the eastern United States. The company was founded by its namesake, Guy P. Gannett, in 1921, and was managed by a family trust from 1954 to 1998, when it sold most of its properties to The Seattle Times Company and Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Agnes Bushell is an American fiction writer and teacher. She has published steadily since her work first appeared in print in the mid-1970s. She is the author of fourteen novels and innumerable essays and book reviews most of which have appeared in Maine newspapers and publications, including Down East Magazine. She has taught literature and writing at Maine College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Southern Maine, and lives in Portland, Maine with her husband, James Bushell, a criminal defense lawyer.
Kevin Sullivan is an American journalist and author who is an associate editor at The Washington Post. Sullivan was a Post foreign correspondent for 14 years, working with his wife, Mary Jordan, as the newspaper's co-bureau chiefs in Tokyo, Mexico City and London. Sullivan is known for parachuting into faraway places, from Congo to Burma to Baghdad. He went to Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and to Saudi Arabia when King Abdullah died, and again after Jamal Khashoggi was murdered. He has also worked as the Post's chief foreign correspondent, deputy foreign editor, and Sunday and Features Editor.
Colin Van Ostern is an American businessman and politician who served on the New Hampshire Executive Council from 2013 to 2017, where he represented the state's second district. He is a member of the Democratic Party, and was the Democratic nominee for Governor of New Hampshire in 2016. He was a candidate for a two-year term as New Hampshire Secretary of State in the New Hampshire General Court's 2018 election, which he lost to incumbent Bill Gardner. He ran in the 2024 Democratic primary to succeed Annie Kuster in New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district; he was defeated by Maggie Goodlander.
The Republic of Pirates was the base and stronghold of a loose confederacy run by privateers-turned-pirates in Nassau on New Providence island in the Bahamas during the Golden Age of Piracy for about twelve years from 1706 until 1718. While it was not a republic in a formal sense, it was governed by an informal pirate code, which dictated that the crews of the Republic would vote on the leadership of their ships and treat other pirate crews with civility. The term comes from Colin Woodard's book of the same name.
The Maine Mariners are a professional ice hockey team in the ECHL that began play in the 2018–19 season. Based in Portland, Maine, the team plays their home games at Cross Insurance Arena. The team participate in the North Division of the Eastern Conference. The team replaced the American Hockey League's Portland Pirates after the franchise became the Springfield Thunderbirds in 2016.
Avery Yale Kamila is an American journalist and community organizer in the state of Maine. Kamila has written a food column for the Portland Press Herald /Maine Sunday Telegram and its affiliated newspapers since 2009.
Donald Cotesworth Gellers, also known by his Jewish name Tuvia Ben-Shmuel Yosef, was an American lawyer. In the 1960s he lived in Eastport, Maine, where he represented members of the Passamaquoddy tribe in court and advocated for their civil rights. In 1968 he filed a land claim suit on the tribe's behalf. Immediately after filing the suit he was charged with constructive possession of six marijuana cigarettes. He was convicted on a felony charge and sentenced to prison. After an unsuccessful appeal process, he moved to Israel without serving his sentence. He returned to the United States in 1980 and practiced as a rabbi until his death. In 2020 he was granted a posthumous pardon by the state of Maine.
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America is an American non-fiction book written by Colin Woodard and published in 2011. Woodard proposes a framework for examining American history and current events based on a view of the country as a federation of eleven nations, each defined by a shared culture established by each nation's founding population.
