Derek Dahlsad

4/24/2013: On a cool but sunny March morning in 1944, schoolteacher Pauline Rebel was preparing the one-room Wild Plum School House, 20 miles south of Richardton, North Dakota, for the arrival of her eight students. It appeared to be a day like any other, but after the students arrived, strange things began to happen.

4/17/2013: The steadfast county sheriff was on the front lines of the war against alcohol during the years of Prohibition. A sheriff executed warrants on behalf of the attorney general and performed arrests for violating liquor trafficking laws. As an elected official, the sheriff was often given the duty of arresting the friendly neighbors that voted him into office. The conflict between duty and community wasn't easy for a sheriff, particularly in the case of Rolette county Sheriff Charles Sager.

4/16/2013: Despite their similar names, Fargo and West Fargo have been separate cities for many years, and only in the past few decades have those towns grown enough that their boundaries touched. Until 1923, Fargo was also neighbors with the city of North Fargo, but their relationship wasn't as polite as it is with West Fargo today.

3/10/2013: Wolford, North Dakota, was originally settled as the town of Orkney. The name was changed to Wolford in 1905, but Wolford's identity confusion didn't stop there. After Watford was settled in 1913, Great Northern Railroad shipments were often misrouted because "Watford" and "Wolford" looked similar on handwritten forms.

2/4/2013: As thousands of Model Ts rattled across the Dakotas in the 1910s, Henry Ford needed a way to keep those cars running and to get new cars to customers. Ford built additional factories in cities across the United States because it was cheaper to ship parts from Detroit and assemble the cars in these "branch houses" than to ship a complete Model T.

12/29/2012: In December 1921, Martin Gunseth drove to Napoleon North Dakota with a team of horses. On returning to where he had left the wagon, he caught Mrs. Christ Schock unharnessing the horses. "Well, she was trying to unhitch mine team, and I couldn't stop her," Gunseth said, and with no other recourse he kicked Mrs. Schock in the shins.

12/15/2012: In the fall of 1900, Sanborn North Dakota farmer Erick Anderson learned that his neighbor, Charles Freiburg, had told other farmers that Anderson was a dishonest man. Not letting the insult go unpunished, Anderson sued Freiburg for slander.

11/17/2012: After Mr. Curtis Dirlam and Miss Hulda Bergstrom exchanged vows in Bismarck on this date in 1920, they thought packing for their honeymoon marked the end of the celebration ... until they got to Curtis's driveway.

10/5/2012: Horace Greeley ordered Americans to "Go west, young man," and a group of U.S. leaders, called Annexationists, wanted to take this one step further by annexing Canadian lands and connecting Alaska to the Pacific Northwest. A rebellion in Manitoba seemed to be the opportunity the Annexationists needed.

4/19/2012: The Eltinge Theater in Bismarck was packed with movie stars on this date in 1928. It was the opening day for "The Patent Leather Kid," a silent film about a New York boxer drafted into World War I and wounded during an act of heroism. The actors in the lead roles didn't make it, but the soldiers from Fort Lincoln who performed as extras in the battle scenes were excited to see their work on the silver screen.