Maine became a state in 1820 and Augusta was designated its capital in 1827 over rival cities Portland, Brunswick and Hallowell. The Maine State Legislature continued meeting in Portland, however, until completion in 1832 of the new Maine State House designed by Charles Bulfinch.

Farmington native Chester Greenwood invented earmuffs in 1873, at the age of 15. He reportedly came up with the idea while ice skating and asked his grandmother to sew tufts of fur between loops of wire. To this day, Farmington, Maine, celebrates the revolutionary invention every year with the Chester Greenwood Day Parade, which features an array of earmuff-themed floats.

Maine is known as "The Birthplace of Prohibition". The state was the first to ban the sale and manufacture of alcohol in 1846, followed by a stricter law in 1851. Following Maine's lead, prohibition laws were soon passed in the states of Delaware, Ohio, Illinois, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York, and in 1880, Portland Mayor Neal Dow, sometimes called the "Father of Prohibition", ran for president on the Prohibition Party ticket.

Set during the Cold War in 1957, The Iron Giant tells the story of a young boy named Hogarth Hughes, who discovers and befriends a gigantic metallic robot who falls from outer space and crashes near the fictional town of Rockwell, Maine.

The first European settlement in the area was established by the French in 1604 on Saint Croix Island, by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons.

At 5,269 feet (1,606 m), Mount Katahdin is the highest mountain in the state of Maine. It is commonly called just "Katahdin", which means "The Greatest Mountain".

Kittery, notable for its long tradition of shipbuilding and commerce, is the oldest incorporated town in Maine. Before English settlers arrived in what is now Kittery in 1623, the area was known to Native Americans as Amiciskeag, which in the Algonquin dialect translated roughly into "fishing point".

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine, which was then still part of Massachusetts. He became the most popular American poet of his day and is remembered for works such as "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline.

The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is well known for its ability to lower its body temperature during cold winter nights, its good spatial memory to relocate the caches where it stores food, and its boldness near humans (sometimes feeding from the hand).

Bath is commonly known as "The City of Ships" because of all the sailing ships that were built in the Bath shipyards.