Search results for

7/22/2015: James Vranna was born on April 4th 1921. He graduated from High School in Taylor, North Dakota and attended collage for 2 years. Jim joined the Army Air Force in 1942, trained as a pilot and ended up getting his wings as a 2nd Lieutenant, flying the B-17 Flying Fortress.

7/27/2015: On April 4, 1917, Congress granted President Wilson’s request for a declaration of war. 14,000 American troops arrived in Europe by June of that year. In July, the Dickinson Press was full of war news.

7/28/2015: Another page was written in the story of Generals Sully and Sibley's Dakota expeditions on this date in 1863. In the wake of the battles of Big Mound and Dead Buffalo Lake, General Henry Hastings Sibley and his men were forced to camp in Burleigh County with exhausted animals on July 27.

7/31/2015: Trapshooting is one of three sports that involve shooting clay targets. The sport can be traced back to 1750 in England. The first American competition was documented in 1831. Trapshooting was developed to provide practice for bird hunters. Originally, live pigeons were used. The sport is called trapshooting because the live birds were released from traps. The pigeons were replaced by glass balls and eventually by the clay targets, which are also called clay pigeons.

8/7/2015: The North Dakota State Mill was established in 1922, and it’s still going strong today. Around this time each year, the mill reports on its fiscal year, and in 2011 it reported a record profit – 22 percent higher than the record set the year before, and 705 percent more than the mill’s goal of a $2 million. And in 2014, state officials approved an expansion that would make it the largest single milling operation in the country.

8/12/2015: Sam Crabbe was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1869. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin as a civil engineer. He worked for the city of Eau Claire, and later for a railway company. In 1891 he arrived in Fargo. He took charge of the first paving work in the city. That was done on Broadway with wooden blocks. Some of the paving remained in place until it was replaced by bricks in the 1920s. Crabbe was named as city engineer, and served in that capacity for sixteen years.

8/13/2015: Twenty-two years ago the Red River Water Resources Council met on this date in Fargo to, in part, discuss the flood status of Devils Lake. North Dakota's largest natural lake started to swell after heavy rains in spring 1993, and was already up two and a half feet.

8/28/2015: The government of Wells County, North Dakota was organized on this date in 1884. The county was created 11 years earlier by the legislative session and named after fur trader Antoine Blanc Gingras. In 1881, Gingras County was renamed Wells County after Jamestown banker and legislator Edward Payson Wells.

9/3/2015: The history of North Dakota includes characters of plucky fortitude as well as individuals of notoriety...and sometimes, these people's lives intersect.

9/7/2015: In 1999, Ford's Model T was voted Car of the Century. It won out over the Mini of Britain, which took runner up, followed by the Citroen DS, the Volkswagen Beetle, and the Porsche. The pick was made by a board consisting of 126 auto experts from 32 different countries, calling themselves the Global Automotive Elections Foundation, and they also included a public vote online. It was a close race, though as the New York Times reported, the decision was the logical choice, because the Model T “did, after all, find 15 million buyers; put the motorcar within reach of the common man; made America a mobile society; set the stage for modern assembly-line manufacturing; and cemented Detroit's place at the center of the auto universe."