Search results for

4/16/2015: Thomas Neary, a well-known attorney from Minot, had a marvelous invention to improve rifle gunsights, back in the year 1909. He was going to “revolutionize modern warfare” and make big-game hunting easier with a new idea.

4/20/2015: In the late 1800s, cattle rustling posed a serious danger to the cattle business on the open range. One of the most influential of the cattlemen was Granville Stuart. He wrote that the cattlemen were as peaceable and law-abiding as could be found, but they had $35,000,000 worth of property spread over some 75,000 square miles of nearly uninhabited country. They had to find a way to protect that property.

4/24/2015: The 1950s has been called the “Decade of Fear,” for in the time of the Cold War, the worst fear was of “ the Bomb” – the atomic bomb.

4/28/2015: everyone was counted, in order to demonstrate their growth and prosperity in numbers.

5/5/2015: On this date in 1901, a stream gauge began keeping tabs on the Red River. Established on a Fargo-Moorhead bridge by the U.S. Geologic Survey, the stream gauge was a vertical staff attached to a pier. The gauge was later moved, discontinued and reestablished many times. Today, it rests at a water plant east of 13th Avenue South on the river’s edge.

5/8/2015: The first two settlers in the Grafton area arrived in 1878. A few more arrived over the course of the year. Thomas Cooper settled there in 1879 and is credited with building the first permanent structure, and being the father of the town.

5/12/2015: The history of oil in North Dakota can best be described as episodic. From the early 1900s to more recent times, the search for oil has added an exciting chapter in the history of the state. The early homesteaders, drilling wells in search of water, found trace evidence of oil or natural gas, giving rise to a belief of vast deposits beneath our feet. Geologists, speculators and even schemers sought ways to extract the oil with various results. It was not until April 4th, 1951, that the first major-paying well came in – the Clarence Iverson #1 Well near Tioga.

5/13/2015: Needling someone can be annoying, offensive, and mean. But therapeutic? Well it turns out it can be, if done drily. On May 13th 2013, the North Dakota Board of Physical Therapy voted to extend the scope of practice for North Dakota physical therapists to include dry needling. Such a thing may sound scary or painful, but it is actually noninvasive. The practice is similar to acupuncture, but developed separately in the 1940s.

5/20/2015: The namesake of Fargo, North Dakota was born on this date in 1818 in Pompey, New York. William Fargo quit school at the age of thirteen, working as a store clerk, a mail carrier, and a baker. In 1844, he helped establish the nation’s first express mail service. In 1850, three such firms consolidated to form American Express. In 1852, he co-founded Wells, Fargo and Company to provide express service to the gold fields of California. Wells Fargo soon controlled virtually all the shipping west of the Missouri River.

5/21/2015: In 1920, the Minot Parks Board was laboring to establish tourism and park services throughout Minot. The effort was paying off, as the Ward County Independent boasted that "Minot, although a city of less than 15,000 people, is well in the lead in the state on account of the size and beautify of the park system and the service which it renders."