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12/29/2016: Fifty years ago the National Historic Preservation Act was created to help preserve the diverse archaeological and architectural treasures of America.

1/2/2017: With the establishment of a post office, the town of Michigan City, North Dakota officially came into being on this date in 1883, and first train arrived in March.

1/18/2017: Thomas Leroy Narum was a foot soldier who served in Vietnam. Hailing from Amidon, North Dakota, he was only 21 when killed on this date by multiple fragmentation wounds. He is one of the 198 casualties North Dakota suffered in that war. Narum’s story is just one of many ways the Vietnam conflict affected the state.

1/24/2017: During a hunting trip in 1902, the guides caught a bear, tied it to a tree, and invited Teddy Roosevelt to shoot it. Roosevelt said that would be unsporting and refused to shoot. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman depicted the incident in one of his political cartoons, which inspired New York shopkeeper Morris Michtom and his wife Rose. They made a fabric stuffed bear and displayed it in the store window with a sign that named it “Teddy’s bear.” The bear drew so much attention that they began to make and sell the bears. A German toy company picked up on the idea and began marketing stuffed bears with jointed limbs, which became known as teddy bears.

1/25/2017: Despite the fact that the Dakota Territory had been blasted in the Eastern Press as a barely inhabitable, frozen wasteland, the lure of free land caught the interest of many Easterners. Lured on by claims made through the Northern Pacific Railway Company, those seeking a new life were offered their choice of at least 50,000 farms. In ads appearing in the newspapers across the county this week in 1880, James B. Power, head of the Northern Pacific Land Department, declared the properties to be the best wheat lands in the United States.

1/31/2017: For some people, political and personal lives occupy distinctly different spaces. However, for Ruth Meiers, the political and personal were as inseparable as the bread and butter. In 1985, she became the first woman to serve as Lieutenant Governor of North Dakota. Given her career as a social worker, as well as being a mother of four, it’s not surprising that her favorite duty was being the chair of the Governor’s Commission for Children and Adolescents at Risk (CAAR).

2/6/2017: On this date in 1914, citizens of Devils Lake were eagerly looking forward to the Mid-Winter Fair to be held the following week.

2/7/2017: Stalag Luft 3 was a German prisoner of war camp in use from March of ‘42 through January of 1945. This camp was operated by the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, for Allied flight officers shot down over German occupied Europe. Early in the war it housed primarily British personnel, but as the war went on, thousands of Americans were also interned there.

2/8/2017: Winter in North Dakota is not for the faint of heart, and its frosty air has sometimes been a discouragement for those who considered moving into the state.

2/9/2017: It might be somewhat surprising to learn that the first engine-powered farm tractor was introduced as early as 1868. It was a steam-powered machine, designed as a small “road locomotive” operated by one person.