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5/14/2013: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, or TB, was once the leading cause of death in the United States, and it still causes death today. The germs, spread from person to person through the air, usually affect the lungs, but TB can also affect other parts of the body, such as the brain, the kidneys, or the spine.

5/17/2013: In 1922, two young Logan County farmers learned the hard way that a life of crime doesn’t pay. The 21-year-old men, Myron Haines and Irwin Sparks, decided to try their hand at armed robbery, but after both a car and foot chase, they ended up nursing their wounds behind bars.

5/20/2013: What’s in a name? As Shakespeare asked, “Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” Certainly a name can alter one’s expectations of a thing, or even a person. Good Roads Woman, an early 20th century Siouan woman living in western North Dakota, proved in 1904 that you can’t judge a book by its cover, or more accurately, its name. With the mysterious death of her fourth husband in 1904, Good Roads Woman may have actually been a black widow of sorts.

5/26/2013: With an unusually long winter and an even colder spring, 2013 had many North Dakotans wondering if warmer weather would ever arrive. As tough as the weather has been so far, however, the spring of 1970 might have been worse.

5/29/2013: 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.

6/1/2013: Charles Whitteron, a farmer near Bottineau, North Dakota, was recuperating after an animal attack on this date in 1922.

6/4/2013: North Dakotans suffered greatly in the drought season of 1936, as a dry springtime turned into a frightfully hot summer – the hottest summer ever experienced in the state. On this date in 1936, Governor Walter Welford embarked upon a “talking tour” to examine crop conditions in the dry zones. He gave a speech in Crosby at 2:00 in the afternoon and another talk in Williston that evening. What he saw was unprecedented – a drought so severe as to become legendary. Normal spring rains had not fallen, and the parched soil panted for moisture.

6/8/2013: Poor roads and unreliable transportation made it hard for country doctors to reach their patients … especially back in 1917. On this date that year, the Bismarck Tribune reported one doctor had set an unofficial record on a rainy June day.

6/12/2013: The history of ordinary, everyday items, like sidewalks, almost always takes a back seat to more exciting topics – like murders or revolutions or accidents or lefse recipes. But something as simple as the history of a concrete sidewalk may allow a modern-day person to appreciate mundane items underfoot. On this date in 1907, partway down page seven, the Bismarck Tribune printed a small story entitled “New Walk To Capitol.”

6/15/2013: The Bismarck Tribune published a report on the death of a boy near Bloom, North Dakota, on this date in 1922, stating that blame placed on a Northern Pacific train for the death of the boy was in fact misplaced, and that the teenager’s skull was fractured from a single blow.