Merry Helm

3/14/2017: Leonard Peltier has become larger than life since receiving back-to-back life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents in a shootout in Pine Ridge, South Dakota over 40 years ago. It was on this date in 1977 that his trial in Fargo began.

3/8/2017: Today we learn of several lady bowlers who made their mark in the sport. First is Amy Lybeck, who was born on this date in 1916 in Heimdal, and grew up with her eight siblings on her parents’ farm near Maddock.

2/10/2017: It was this month in 1971 that country singer Lynn Anderson’s Rose Garden went gold.

1/16/2017: Michael Vetter was a soldier in the 7th Cavalry stationed at Fort Totten. Today, we bring you excerpts of three letters he wrote to his brother in Pittsburgh in January of 1876, which were translated from German.

1/10/2017: Think of North Dakota boxers, and you probably think Virgil Hill. But Hill is not the only great boxer from the state. Back in the 1920s and 30s, there was Billy Petrolle, a lightweight called the “Fargo Express.” He is ranked as one of the two greatest fighters to have never won a world championship.

12/27/2016: Cooperstown and Hope were once in the same county – Griggs – which was established by the Territorial Legislature in 1881. But that wasn’t to last.

12/14/2016: On this date in 1944, Senator Gerald Nye made news by marrying Arda Marguerite Johnson in Iowa Falls. It had been less than a year since Nye’s first wife divorced him. Nye was a Cooperstown newspaper editor when he began his 20-year U.S. Senate career in 1925 when he was 33 … a Republican endorsed by the Non-Partisan League.

12/12/2016: On this date in 1913, a Grand Forks story reported on the last living member of the infamous Wild Bunch passing through town. Frank Walness, 39, told the reporter he had just gotten out of a Utah prison after serving 21 years; he said he left home when he was only 16 and began a career of crime with Butch Cassidy.

11/9/2016: Today is the birthday of Esther Burnett Horne, who was featured in “Essie’s Story: The Life and Legacy of a Shoshone Teacher.” Essie was born in 1909, and the book, which she co-authored with Sally McBeth, was published in 1998, a year before Essie died.

9/23/2016: Stefan Popiel was born in 1907 and grew up in Poland. He was the nephew of an early chess master, Ignatz von Popiel, and he took a liking to chess at an early age; he played in his first tournament at age 12. He went on to became the best chess player in the region and is now regarded as one of the important masters of pre-World War II Europe.