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3/26/2008: Yesterday’s Dakota Datebook mentioned that in 1951, March was a turbulent month for North Dakota. Blizzards swept across the prairie until roads were impossible to find.

3/29/2008: Eli C. D. Shortridge, the third governor of North Dakota, was born on this day, March 29, 1830. Raised and educated in Missouri, at the age of 52, Shortridge moved his family to Larimore in Dakota Territory. Within ten years, he had secured the Populist gubernatorial nomination and successfully won the November 1892 election through an alliance of Populist farmers and Democrats.

3/31/2008: In June of 2007, General George Armstrong Custer’s personal battle flag was auctioned for nearly $900,000. The silk flag was handmade by his wife, Elizabeth or ‘Libbie’ Custer in the final year of the Civil War. Measuring 68 inches by 36 inches, the swallow-tailed cavalry flag was easily recognizable by the crossed sabers centered over red and blue bars. Her initials were embroidered on one of the swallowtail points. Libby later recalled in her Civil War memoirs that the purpose of the “simple design [was so] that the leader might be seen and followed in the smoke and grime of the furious charge of the cavalry.”

4/2/2008: A Fargo police officer suffered an extremely close call on this day in 1917. The narrow scrape resulted during a scuffle between Fargo authorities and a group of men wanted by the Moorhead police department on charges of assault and robbery. Moorhead police had phoned Fargo’s Night Captain Morton Sydness that evening, asking for his assistance in the capture of the three wanted men.

4/7/2008: In anticipation of the upcoming Republican National Convention, President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a nine and a half week journey across the North American continent in April of 1903. Roosevelt wanted to personally talk to people and give an account of his previous term in office.

4/8/2008: On this day, April 8, 1935, the United States Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. The act provided President Franklin Roosevelt with funding for several new government employment programs including the Works Progress Administration; a program that offered work building bridges, roads, public parks and airports. It also addressed the employment needs of non-construction workers. The Federal Writers’ Project was one of several projects within the WPA that targeted people with skills in the arts.

4/13/2008: On this day, April 13, 1962, internationally renowned artist Ivan Dmitri became the third recipient of the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award.

6/18/2008: Governor Norman Brunsdale accepted ownership of the Soil Conservation Service Nursery at Fort Lincoln on this date in 1956. Previously, the tree nursery belonged to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, under the supervision of the Northern Great Plains Field Station in Mandan.

6/20/2008: Although his name is not often remembered today, Bjug (Bee-you-g) Harstad was one of North Dakota’s most prolific church and school planters of the nineteenth century.

6/22/2008: Scouting is a great experience for young men but on this date in 1914 two young Boy Scouts had a little more excitement than normal at a camp-out on Sibley Island near Bismarck.