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5/20/2008: One hundred years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, on this day, May 20, 1962, the Homestead Act Commemorative 4-cent stamp was released. The stamp featured John and Marget Bakken standing in front of their sod house in Walsh County, North Dakota.

5/21/2008: Golf is generally a sport associated with the urban areas of the United State and, with its rural background, North Dakota hardly seems to be place with much in the way of a recorded history of golf. In the 1920's Bobby Jones, who was winning tournaments as an amateur, excited the world of sports and golf courses sprang up all over, including North Dakota. Most of the golf courses found in the state today have their beginnings in the mid 1920's but the first golf links go back much earlier.

5/23/2008: On this day, May 23, 1975, Peggy Lee of Jamestown, North Dakota was presented with the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award for her work in the field of motion picture and popular music. Her list of achievements is spectacular; including 12 Grammy nominations as well as an Academy Award nomination for her performance in "Pete Kelly's Blues." But one of her most enduring legacies and a single showcase of her many talents were her contributions to Walt Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.”

5/26/2008: Antoine Amedee Marie Vincent Amat Manca de Vallombrosa, better know as simply the Marquis de Mores, along his wife Medora, are familiar characters in the history of North Dakota. Less familiar are their children. The oldest, Athenais, was just a few months old when she was first brought out to the family’s new home on the prairie in 1883. Louis was born in New York two years later, but like his sister, traveled to Dakota Territory as an infant. The family’s time in the Dakota Badlands was short-lived. In 1886, they returned to New York. Athenais was three years old; Louis, about one and a half.

5/27/2008: Following the creation of Dakota Territory in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed his personal physician and political friend William A. Jayne as the first Territorial Governor. He was inaugurated on this day, May 27, 1861. Ten months later, Governor Jayne delivered his first annual address to the Dakota Territorial Legislature in Yankton.

5/29/2008: Levon West, also known as Ivan Dmitri, grew up on the prairies of North Dakota. While studying business and economics at the University of Minnesota, a chance meeting with printmaker and illustrator Joseph Pennell in 1925 convinced Levon West to instead pursue a career in etching. With lots of ambition, but little money, he headed for New York. Setting up a studio in the fifteenth floor of the Waldorf hotel, West became acquainted with the hotel’s head waiter. Taking the budding young North Dakota artist under his wing, the head waiter occasionally provided Levon with the opportunity to sit in at banquet gatherings held at the Waldorf.

5/31/2008: Before his death on this day in 1983, Milton R. Young had represented the citizens of North Dakota in the United States Senate for nearly thirty-six years.

6/1/2008: The Trans-Mississippi Exposition opened in Omaha, Nebraska on this day in 1898. In commemoration, the US Post Office Department issued a set of nine stamps, including the 2-cent “Farming in the West” stamp.

6/2/2008: In 1883, the Dakota Territory Assembly voted to relocate the territorial capital from Yankton. They created a special commission with instructions to "select a suitable site for the seat of government of the Territory of Dakota, due regard being had to its accessibility from all portions of the Territory…”

6/3/2008: Since its opening in 1917, the Broadhurst Theatre has housed some of the most popular plays and musicals in New York. The theater’s namesake, George H. Broadhurst had proven himself a successful writer and director with works like ‘Mills of the Gods’ and ‘Man of the Hour,’ a play starring Douglas Fairbanks that ran for nearly 500 performances. The Schubert Brothers, who owned the largest theater company in the United States, built a theater for Broadhurst to feature his own productions. But the New York theater is not the only one that he helped establish. Half-way across the country stands the Metropolitan Opera House in Grand Forks, North Dakota.