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7/13/2006: The day North Dakota entered statehood must have been a sober one considering it entered as a dry state. But, not everyone chose to obey North Dakota’s early prohibition laws. I

7/22/2006: Yesterday I told you the First North Dakota Infantry received orders to report to Mercedes, Texas for duty. The train departed Bismarck today, but their departure was not the only one in the news. After a jail break, the warden was worried escaped convicts might also be passengers on the train headed for Texas. The trains were wired to search for convicts, but none were found.

8/26/2006: On this day in 1927, the celebrated American aviator Charles Lindberg flew into Fargo in The Spirit of St. Louis. The visit was just three months after the historic solo flight from New York to Paris made him a super-hero.

8/30/2006: New tennis courts built in Minot the summer of 1904 gave area athletes an opportunity to better enjoy the sport. The old courts were made of dirt and only four or five people regularly used them. Now, however, the new courts drew in large crowds each evening.

9/8/2006: For a long time, prairie fires plagued farmers and ranchers in North Dakota, but the Jamestown Daily Alert reported today in 1891 that Stustman County was soon going to be ready to fight fire with fire. County commissioners had recently bought a “fire-break machine,” and would begin work within the county in a week.

9/14/2006: The noted Hunkpapa Lakota warrior, Rain-in-the-Face, died at his home on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota on this date in 1905.

9/2/2006: The Grand Forks Herald warned today in 1913 that man had better be careful what he wore today to avoid violating an unwritten North Dakota law, and, “making a ‘faux pas’ of the worst kind.” Today marked the first day of the year during which a straw hat should not be worn again until June 1.

9/9/2006: A bill was passed on March 13, 1972 to survey the northern boundary line and a commission for Great Britain and one for the United States met at Fort Pembina in September of that year to begin the survey of the Northwest boundary in Minnesota.

9/16/2006: A North Dakota World War II soldier missing in action for nearly three months was reported by the War Department to be alive and well on this day in 1944.

9/18/2006: When the Northern Pacific asked Jay Cooke’s banking company to be its financial agent in 1865, Cooke was leery of the offer. Northern Pacific needed help in funding construction and selling bonds, but this was a large undertaking, even for the Jay Cooke and Company, a firm that had financed the Union in the Civil War. The railroad was to be the largest enterprise in the country up to that time–larger even than the Erie Canal.