Leewana Thomas

2/22/2012: Last week some of us enjoyed chocolates, flowers, and romantic canoodling with our sweethearts for Valentine’s Day. But then others were celebrating “Singles Awareness Day,” an equally legitimate holiday where single people can choose to celebrate or commiserate their independent lives.

9/5/2011: If you tuned in Friday, you’ll remember that we left off in 1954 with four North Dakota Agricultural College professors at war with the college president. Their dispute would become the top news story of 1955.

9/2/2011: North Dakota’s highest rated news story in 1955 was chock full of slander and politics. It was around this time of year that four college professors were packing their bags to leave North Dakota Agricultural College (now NDSU), and the state. This controversy, later coined “The Purge,” would tarnish NDSU’s reputation for years to come.

9/1/2011: Margaret Mead once said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." On this date in 1981, a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens were excited to begin changing their piece of the world in North Dakota. Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of Bismarck’s first public radio station.

8/26/2011: When Max Eastman, the famous pacifist and socialist, was invited to speak in Fargo, nobody knew how much his appearance would impact the community, and Eastman himself. I

8/18/2011: After Agnes Rex ventured to St. Louis in 1919 for the first meeting of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women, she was excited to return to North Dakota and start organizing local clubs.

8/17/2011: On this date in 1956, the Bismarck Tribune wrote about a rising star’s dazzling performance at a Bismarck Barons baseball game. The star’s name was London, and he had fur, four legs, and a tail. Little did the fans know, that one day a writer would call London "the smartest dog that ever lived."

8/12/2011: On today’s date in 1932, North Dakota lost a great champion. Her name was Marguerite – Golden Marguerite – and she was truly a “Gold Medal Cow.” In 1921, she produced 977.7 pounds of butter fat in one year, a record not beaten until 1969.

8/10/2011: Nobody likes to think about their garbage. But the fact is, each year Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times. So, there are a lot of stories, many of them untold, about land once part of a vast wilderness that now serves instead as a place for our junk.

8/8/2011: 1920 was a crucial year for women’s rights in America. The struggle for equality certainly wasn’t over, but when women were finally granted the right to cast their vote as equal citizens, it was the result of decades of strenuous effort. In August of 1920, a lot of North Dakotans were talking about the future for female kind.