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9/6/2007: On this date in 1869, Justina Fisher was born in Tarutino, Bessarabien, in South Russia. When Justina was sixteen, she came to America with her parents, arriving in Scotland, South Dakota. A year later, in 1885, Justina followed her parents north, to a homestead in the hills twenty miles south of present day Kulm, North Dakota.

9/9/2007: A “motorless lizzie” visited the state on this day in 1927. The lizzie was a motorless car, that is, an old wreck of an automobile lacking an engine.

9/11/2007: Less than one year before his death in 1919, Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “I owe a personal debt to [the state of] Maine because of my association with certain staunch friends…; an association that helped and benefited me throughout my life...”

11/14/2006: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” is a saying that was especially true following World War Two. Since tractors took over for horses in the fields, many farmers were left with horses they couldn’t get rid of. According to the Mandan Pioneer, North Dakota farmers had found an outlet for their extra burden.

11/18/2006: Energy drinks are commonly used today to jumpstart the day, but a Willis farmer might have found the recipe long before Red Bull hit the market. What he found, however, literally gave his pigs a “lift.”

11/24/2006: Jewish cemeteries and memorials are scattered across the continent of Europe from Prague to Barcelona, and many are found in the city centers to pay tribute to a people who lived through many hardships. North Dakota may seem far away from all of that history, but on the vast, bare plains of Ramsey County, North Dakota has its own memorial to a Jewish settlement. The Sons of Jacob Cemetery is little known to most in the state, but on this day in 1971, the Devil’s Lake Journal brought this unique history and land back into the present.

11/26/2006: The North Dakota winters might seem like they’re good-for-nothing, but the conditions were perfect for future speed-skating champion Norval Baptie. Baptie was born in Ontario, but came to Bathgate at the age of one. By the time he was 16, Baptie had won his first world title.

8/14/2007: Joseph Harris Heckman, originator of the legislative bill to provide tax support for North Dakota’s public libraries, was born August 15, 1879, in Nova Scotia, Canada. The oldest of seven children, he went to sea with his father as a young boy and soon realized he didn’t want to do that as a career.

9/8/2007: During the Late Cretaceous period, rivers flowed east from the Rocky Mountains to the inland sea that once covered what is now eastern North Dakota. The weather was similar to that of south Florida, and deposits resembling the Mississippi Delta built up around what is now known as the Hell Creek Formation south of Bismarck/Mandan. It was an ideal habitat for dinosaurs.

9/26/2007: Wilmot P. Sanford enlisted in the United States Army in his hometown of Boston, Massachusetts in 1872. He was a member of Company D, 6th Regiment, United States Infantry. Private Sanford was eventually stationed at Ft. Buford, located at the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in western North Dakota.