Jayme L. Job

12/31/2011: The cost of mailing a letter rose from ten to thirteen cents on this date in 1975. The three-cent increase came after the Postal Service reported losing 225 million dollars a month in 1975.

12/30/2011: A heartwarming story was reported by the Cass County Juvenile Court Commissioner in his annual report on this day in 1922. Too often, the Commissioner’s reports were filled with heartbreak rather than happy endings. However, for one small boy, the Christmas of 1922 proved to be the happiest in his young memory, as he reunited with his lost family. The story of “Billy” became known in Fargo as early as 1919. Although Billy was not the boy’s real name, it became the pseudonym that the papers chose to call him.

12/29/2011: A verdict on Fargo jay-walking was reported on this date in 1944 by the Minnesota Supreme Court. How the Minnesota Supreme Court came to rule on Fargo’s city ordinances came about after a Minnesota resident was hit by a Moorhead-owned vehicle in the streets of Fargo, leading to a string of court hearings and opinions regarding the letter of Fargo’s city laws.

12/28/2011: Searchers in Batesville, Arkansas, spent the day looking for a missing Cessna on this date in 1975. The plane, carrying five North Dakota residents, left from Fargo the previous day. Scheduled to fly to the Bahamas, ground control lost contact with the plane that evening, and search crews were sent out on the morning of the 28th.

12/26/2011: The largest mass execution in American history took place on this date in 1862 when thirty-eight Dakota Sioux prisoners who had taken part in the Dakota War of 1862 were hung in Mankato, Minnesota. “The mass hanging was the concluding scene in the opening chapter of a story of American-Sioux conflict that would not end until the Seventh Cavalry completed its massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota…” in 1890.

12/25/2011: North Dakotans celebrated their fourth consecutive wartime Christmas on this date in 1944. Many families gathered to hear President Roosevelt’s address to the nation, broadcast as a prayer for peace.

12/24/2011: The Fargo Forum reported on an admirable decision made by the Enderlin community on this date in 1934. Members of the executive committee of the Community Welfare Board and representatives of the American Legion and Kiwanis Club voted to sacrifice the annual community Christmas tree in order to help the city’s struggling families instead.

12/23/2011: Fargo’s postmaster, J. P. Hardy, announced a record amount of Christmas mail on this date in 1922. The post office processed twenty-five percent more holiday mail during the week of December 15th to December 22nd than any other year. Hardy attributed this massive increase to the Great War, citing the tendency for friends and relatives to mail packages to absent soldiers overseas who were not able to return home for the holiday. This, he said, was despite the increase in postage during the war – up from two to three cents.

12/22/2011: The annual Community Christmas Tree Program was held in Fargo on this date in 1922. Three thousand children filled the Fargo Civic Auditorium, creating an enormous Christmas children’s choir for the evening.

12/21/2011: The National Park Service announced a plan to reconstruct historic Fort Sisseton on this date in 1936. The government hoped to use the fort as temporary housing for homeless and unemployed. Across the nation, tent camps had sprung up to house these mostly-transient men created by the Great Depression.