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3/28/2006: On this date, during “the Great Blizzard of 1942,” Ev Albers was born in Oliver County. Dakota Datebook probably wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Albers, because he, as executive director of the ND Humanities Council, made sure we received the necessary funding.

3/30/2006: Visionary theater director Fred Walsh died on this date in 1999.

3/31/2006: On this date in 1951, The Fargo Forum ran a big spread titled, “Orchestra Success Regarded by Outsiders as Astounding.” The story, written by Roy P. Johnson, celebrated the symphony’s upcoming 20th anniversary.

4/2/2006: Around 1941, Fred Sinerius lost his farm to the Bank of North Dakota and moved in with his son, Bennie, six miles west of Beulah. Sinerius hadn’t left his home empty-handed; he took some storm windows, screen doors and some lumber with him. The bank sent 29-year-old V.P. Wolf to Bennie’s farm to look for these items, and Mercer County Deputy Sheriff Joseph Runion went with him.

4/4/2006: Mondak was a boomtown that spanned the Montana-Dakota border until it burned down in 1928. It was a more high-spirited town than many in the early days, because North Dakota had prohibition, and Montana didn’t. For example, a notorious hotspot called Jakey’s saloon let you enter from the ND side, and you could then cross the room and buy liquor on the other side, which was technically in Montana.

4/5/2006: Saturday marked the anniversary of when a Dakota town was tricked out of its status as a capitol. By the 1880s, Dakota Territory’s population was concentrated in very separate regions. In the far north, Pembina was made up of fur traders, trappers, hunters and mixed bloods.

4/8/2006: On March 10th, we did a story on Sheheke, the Mandan chief who went east with Lewis and Clark to meet President Thomas Jefferson.

4/9/2006: If you were alive in 1682 – and living in a large portion of what is now North Dakota – you would have theoretically become French on this date.

4/11/2006: On this day in 1833, the German aristocrat and naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied and his hired Swiss illustrator Karl Bodmer were on board the American Fur Company’s steam-driven paddleboat Yellowstone. They were heading west and north from St. Louis, toward the upper Missouri and Yellowstone river country of present day North Dakota and Montana.

4/19/2006: John Eldridge Haggart, Fargo’s first Town Marshal, was born on this date in 1846.