1. In 1973, the last wooden-hulled four-masted schooner, the Hesper and Luther Little, built in 1919 in Bath, Maine, was burned as a publicity stunt in Salem, Massachusetts.

2. On March 31, 1931, the Portland City Council established the Portland Public Library, which is still in operation today and is the largest public library system in Maine.

3. In 1968, Maine became the first state to impose a bottle deposit law to reduce litter, an action that has been replicated in other states.

4. Maine’s first permanent settler, George Cleeve, and his wife Joan, arrived in what is now Portland in 1633, a date that is celebrated as Founders' Day by the Maine Historical Society on March 31.

5. March 31, 1820, marks the signing of the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Maine to enter the Union as a free state and Missouri to enter as a slave state, in an effort to maintain the balance of power between free and slave states in the United States. This compromise helped to delay the Civil War but ultimately failed to prevent it.