Sitting Bull to Phil Jackson, cattle to prairie dogs, knoephla to lefse. North Dakota's legacy includes many strange stories of eccentric towns, war heroes, and various colorful characters. Hear all about them on Dakota Datebook, your daily dose of North Dakota history.
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Dakota Datebook is made in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota, and funded by Humanities North Dakota, a nonprofit, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the program do not necessarily reflect those of Humanities North Dakota or the National Endowment for the Humanities.
You can find all Dakota Datebooks from 2018-today below. Our archive of Datebooks from 2003-2017 can be found here.
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It’s hard to remember why there was fear that the world might end on January 1, 2000, when we now know that nothing happened. During the late 1990s, computer programmers around the world worked hard to fix computer software to ensure that computers did not mistake the year 2000 for the year 1900, which could have caused infrastructure crashes. Despite reassurances from experts that nothing bad would happen, many people reacted in panic, hoarding supplies or foreseeing an apocalypse. -
In the days when the Wild West was still wild, organized gangs roamed the frontier, holding up trains and stagecoaches, and targeting banks. One of the earliest documented bank robberies occurred in 1866, when Frank and Jesse James robbed the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri, escaping with sixty thousand dollars. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid led the Wild Bunch into the early 1900s. While they primarily robbed trains, the Wild Bunch was also responsible for several bank robberies, including one in which they took over $32,000.
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Mail delivery was a sporadic and unreliable system in the eighteenth century, both irregular and limited. The United States did not have a government postal service until 1847. Transatlantic service became more reliable with the advent of steamships, which were more dependable than sailing ships, but it took time to develop a truly reliable system.
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In 1897, under the advice of her father, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun asking if there was a Santa Claus.
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Elders who were children in the 1930s at Turtle Mountain remembered Midnight Mass as the main celebration of Christmas. Families traveled by sleigh to the church, with children bundled under blankets. Most people were Catholic, their roots tracing back to the late 1700s fur trade when Indigenous women married French and Scottish workers.
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The Twentieth Century was a time of rapid change. Americans were beginning to take to the roads in their automobiles, and daring young men and women were taking to the skies in their flying machines. Advances like the phonograph came fast and furious, and talking motion pictures and the radio were just around the corner. But some people had a difficult time adjusting to the fast pace of societal changes.
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On this date in 1944, Lieutenant R. C. Hagen, United States Navy Reserve and Senior Surviving Officer of the USS Johnston, wrote a letter to John Gillis of Dunseith, detailing the death of his son, Frank, who was killed in action during the Battle of Samar in the South Pacific.
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Herbert Hoover was elected president in 1928, when the country was enjoying the booming economy of the Roaring Twenties. It wouldn't last long. The stock market crashed just a year later, and a full-scale economic depression set in.
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America is a land of immigrants, and the U.S. is unusual in world history because people from all ethnic groups try to live peacefully side by side. One of those immigrants was Harry Imai, who, on this date in 1891 was born in Kyoto, Japan.
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The middle of December, the people of North Dakota are filled with anticipation for Christmas and the New Year. With winter in control, opportunities for recreation help people face the cold and longer nights. Winter sports are a wonderful pastime in North Dakota.
Dakota Datebook is made in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota, and funded by Humanities North Dakota, a nonprofit, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the program do not necessarily reflect those of Humanities North Dakota or the National Endowment for the Humanities.