Christina Campbell

On this date in 1931, an F3 tornado collided with the Empire Builder passenger train, the pride of the Great Northern Railway. The train had just left Fargo, heading east on a hot afternoon. The engineer and several passengers saw a small funnel cloud to the southwest. The funnel bobbed up and down; then the top of a haystack blew apart. Seconds later, the train shook and the windows blew out in several cars.

6/30/2015: When Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed office in 1933, more than 13 million Americans were out of work. But North Dakota was arguably the hardest hit of the 48 states. From 1929 to 1938 North Dakota received less than 20 inches of rain per year, well below average.

2/11/2007: In 1861, Dakota Territory included portions of present-day Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. As each region became separate territories, it appeared that the borders of the three future states failed to join; leaving a triangular section between Montana, Wyoming and Idaho that still belonged to the Territory of Dakota. Land office maps from the 1860’s marked this area as almost 100 miles wide and 35 miles deep.

10/12/2006: First-time visitors to Minot, North Dakota are often surprised to find a Norwegian Stave Church in the town’s center. The large wooden church, located in the Scandinavian Heritage Park, is a full-scale replica of the 750-year-old Gol Stave Church currently located in the Bygdøy Folk Museum near Oslo, Norway.

10/5/2006: One of the first items visitors encounter in the Scandinavian Heritage Park of Minot is a life-size bronze statue of Hans Christian Anderson. Anderson was born in Denmark over two centuries ago, but his fairy tales are today known worldwide. The statue was dedicated by the Souris River Danish Society on this day, October 5, 2004, in anticipation of Anderson’s 200th birthday.

7/25/2006: On this day, July 25, 1913, Jack Law and Jack Allen arrived in Minot, ND and set up headquarters across from the local Salvation Army. As organizers for the International Workers of the World, better known as the Wobblies, they had been invited into the community by J.M. Near of the Iconoclast; Minot’s socialist newspaper. Near had been pushing for a group of local contractors to unionize.

7/12/2006: On this day, July 12, 1955, the Air Force and the city of Minot conducted groundbreaking ceremonies on a site that would become Minot Air Force Base.

6/29/2006: On this day, June 29, 2003, residents of San Diego, California were introduced to the huge swamps, extensive forests, exotic plants and animals of subtropical North Dakota. This of course, is the North Dakota of the Paleocene Epoch 60 million years ago. The grand opening of a traveling exhibition, "After the Dinosaurs: When Crocodiles Ruled," gave visitors of the San Diego Natural Museum of History a glimpse of the environmental, biological and geological changes that occurred after the dinosaurs’ extinction and before the arrival of humans.

6/20/2006: Fort Union was established near the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in 1828 by John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company.

6/17/2006: On June 17, 1867, Brevet Major George H. Crosman, commanding a battalion of the 10th US Infantry, arrived at the newly established Fort Ransom. Crosman later described life at the fort in a letter: