Derek Dahlsad

12/20/2011: Five hundred quarts of nine-year-old whiskey were carried from the jailhouse to the Stutsman County Courthouse on this date in 1922. Sheriff Dana Wright had seized the liquor from smugglers in 1921, during the first year of Prohibition, and the whiskey had been stored in the jail as evidence. At the orders of the court, Sheriff Wright smashed every whiskey bottle at the courthouse window, in full view of an audience gathered on the grounds below. This spectacle warned rum-runners that any liquor smuggled through North Dakota would not make it out.

11/16/2011: Picking up the phone in the early 1900s and ordering the operator to "get me the police!" only worked when the police were able to answer the call. On this date in 1909, the Bismarck Police Department installed their first "trouble phone," a twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week emergency phone number, after it became clear the old system wasn't working for the city.

10/6/2011: Every small-town baseball player believes that with a little hard work, a lot of practice, and maybe a touch of luck, he’ll make it to the World Series. On this date in 1950, eighteen players of the Mayville North Dakota Red Caps donned their uniforms and rolled into Yankee Stadium – even though they only sat in the stands. Their hard work and a little luck are exactly how they got to see the Yankees win the World Series.

8/11/2011: Settlers, speculators and squatters built a shanty-town on the Dakota side of the Red River the moment the Northern Pacific Railway surveyors showed any interest in the crossing, even though the area was still Indian land. US troops from Fort Abercrombie ran off unlawful squatters twice, but eventually the settlement grew into what we know today as the city of Fargo.

7/28/2011: Victorian baby buggy parts, corset stays, and pre-Prohibition bottle stoppers might sound like treasures found on Antiques Roadshow, but they are actually a sampling of the items pulled from the gravel roads of Langdon, North Dakota by a magnetic "nail picking" truck during the last week of July, 1931.

5/18/2011: The Boy Scouts of America was formed in Nineteen Ten and quickly spread to every corner of the United States. By the end of Nineteen Eleven, fifty Scoutmasters across North Dakota were teaching young men to follow Scout Law, to do a good turn daily, and, of course, be prepared.