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3/1/2006: Today is the birthday of artist Margaret Kelly Cable, who was born in 1884 of Scottish-Irish decent. This is the woman who became the leading force behind UND pottery – and if you know your antiques, you know UND pottery is among the most collectible of all American ceramics.

3/4/2006: About this time in 1911, the town of Milton saw the murder trial of one of the town’s most highly regarded citizens, Dr. J. J. Reilly. It started with the unexpected death of Mrs. Will Drury.

3/5/2006: Today’s story is about Joe Albert, who lived in the Belcourt area during the first part of the 20th century. In February 1940, he was interviewed by WPA workers in Williston as part of the Federal Writers Project for North Dakota, and authors William Sherman, Paul Whitney and John Guerrero later included his story in their 2002 book, Prairie Peddlers: The Syrian-Lebanese in North Dakota.

3/6/2006: We have two stories for you today. The first is from the late Bill Shemoory, a newspaperman in Williston. He told a story of a winter day in the 1930s when several boxes of coyote pelts were brought to the Williston post office for shipping. Postal employees rolled the boxes inside to weigh the pelts, when one fell off and burst open. Out jumped thousands of little red fleas that promptly licked their chops and went after everyone in the place. One man was so overcome by the little munchers, he stripped off his clothes and ran down to the basement to shower. It didn’t work. He was still infested and ended up having to bathe in kerosene.

3/9/2006: On this date, William Clark recorded in his journal that the great Hidatsa chief, Le Borgne – which is French for One-Eyed – had finally visited the Lewis and Clark expedition at their winter quarters at Fort Mandan.

3/11/2006: If he were still living, Lawrence Welk would turn 102 today. For those few listeners who may have never heard of Welk, he was one of America’s most successful bandleaders.

3/14/2006: Leonard Peltier has become larger than life since receiving back-to-back life sentences for the murders of two FBI agents in a shootout in Pine Ridge, SD nearly 30 years ago. It was on this date in 1977 that his trial before Federal Judge Paul Benson began in Fargo.

3/16/2006: With tomorrow being St. Patrick’s Day, we bring you the story of one of North Dakota’s better-known Irishman. He was a Civil War veteran, a frontiers-man, a friend of governors and of the men who made governors, but he was also an enemy of Native Americans. He was born in 1835, and yesterday was his birthday.

3/20/2006: As closely as archeologists can figure, North Dakota’s first export commodity was flint, a semi-translucent igneous rock that was mined in Dunn and Mercer Counties about 9,500 B.C.

3/22/2006: Today is the birthday of Louis L’Amour, one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century. His father was a large-animal veterinarian who had moved to Dakota Territory in 1882, and it was in Jamestown that Louis was born in 1908, the last of seven children.