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12/28/2007: Early in the morning on this date in 1930, the state capitol building in Bismarck burned down. Pieces of North Dakota’s political and architectural history however, did manage to survive the flames.

1/2/2008: In May of 1900, John Link bid farewell to his native home in Bohemia and set sail for America. Like many immigrants before him, John settled temporarily in the east where he was able to find work in a textile factory in Massachusetts. After many years of working, John had saved enough money to send for his childhood sweetheart, Anna. In 1906, John and Anna Link traveled west where they homesteaded in McKenzie County, North Dakota near the town of Alexander. Who would have known that this hardworking Bohemian homesteader would raise a son who would go on to become a North Dakota governor?

1/3/2008: On this day in 1933, North Dakota’s House of Representatives elected a speaker who was a little different from the average joe…especially since she was a jane. At age 49, Mrs. Minnie D. Craig of Esmond, North Dakota, became the first female Speaker in the United States.

1/5/2008: Sometimes, it’s “who you know.”

1/10/2008: In 2003 California Governor Gray Davis was forced out of office as a result of a recall election. He was replaced by the body-builder, turned-actor, turned-politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Governor Davis was the second person ever removed from government as the result of a recall election. The first was the 12th governor of North Dakota, Lynn Joseph Frazier, who passed away this week in 1947.

1/13/2008: On this date in 1950,the Fargo Forum found it possible to fit what seemed like every emotion on a single page.

1/15/2008: Names are very important. They establish a sense of pride, of who we are. So when it was reported that on this day, in 1908, the Postmaster of the town of Wilton received a curious request—a petition, to be precise—from the town of Milton, via postal authorities at Washington, asking that Wilton might change its name, “The Wiltonites naturally (did) not take very kindly to the prospective change.”

1/17/2008: General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines in 1944. By early January of 1945 the troops had begun the push to recapture the main Island of Luzon. Among the officers involved was Captain Carroll B. Jones who commanded Fleet Air Wing Seventeen in the Southwest Pacific. Jones was originally from Devils Lake and, moving east from the beachhead at Lingayen Gulf, among the heavy traffic, he spied an unusual sign on one of the jeeps. It read "Devils Lake to Tokyo". Captain Jones halted and turned around to give chase. But he failed to catch up to the jeep and, disappointed, he wondered what was the significance of the sign.

1/18/2008: Following the US-Dakota Conflict of 1862, many members of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Band of Dakota migrated out of Minnesota. In response, an Indian Reservation was created near Devils Lake by the US government in early 1867.

1/19/2008: In 1925, the Hope Pioneer boasted that “North Dakota (was) a good state to tie to.” They had proof, too, from a recent survey done on the growth of farms and farm value in North Dakota.