New Minas was founded in 1682 by Acadians from the Grand Pré area, the largest of the settlements known as Les Mines or Minas after the French copper mines explored at Cape d'Or at the entrance to the Minas Basin in the 1600s [REF].
New Minas was the site of one of the first accounts of a UFO sighting in North America on October 12, 1796.