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12/16/2012: The ownership of mineral resources in western North Dakota is of major interest these days, but title searches may have been a little lax in the 1950s.

12/20/2012: In 1943, the hills of Minot, both the North Hill and the South Hill, came alive with the sounds of music, thanks to a visit from the Von Trapp Family Singers, who presented a concert at Minot State Teachers College to a capacity audience.

12/22/2012: Under the Homestead Act, the lure of free land brought thousands of people from Europe to North Dakota, including many from Holland. But not all those who came obtained homesteads.

12/24/2012: Christmas was simple but memorable at Calvin, North Dakota in the era of World War One. In his book, I Remember, Russell Duncan relates how he and his father, on their way home from hauling grain to town shortly before Christmas, stopped near a clump of trees.

12/25/2012: During the decade of the 1920s, the people of North Dakota watched as farm prices declined and the hot, dry winds of summer began to devastate the landscape. 1930 rolled around, and shortly after Christmas that year, more bad news, as the symbol of power in North Dakota, the State Capitol Building, lay in ashes.

12/29/2012: In December 1921, Martin Gunseth drove to Napoleon North Dakota with a team of horses. On returning to where he had left the wagon, he caught Mrs. Christ Schock unharnessing the horses. "Well, she was trying to unhitch mine team, and I couldn't stop her," Gunseth said, and with no other recourse he kicked Mrs. Schock in the shins.

1/1/2013: On January 1, 1937, a man lay dying in St. Alexius Hospital in Bismarck. John Gresham Machen had never been to North Dakota until he stepped off a train into 20-below-zero temperatures a few days earlier. On Christmas break from teaching seminary courses, he was there to speak on his favorite topic, reforming the Presbyterian Church.

1/10/2013: Thirteen trucks carrying Canadian cattle were forced to detour around North Dakota and cross into the U.S. through Minnesota on this date in 1978. North Dakota farmers, members of the American Agricultural Movement, were blockading the border in an effort to keep Canadian livestock out of the country and raise American farm prices. After prosperity in the early 1970s, by 1976 plummeting farm prices were forcing American farmers to take drastic measures.

1/12/2013: A fire on this date in 1887 in Medora, North Dakota served as the final straw for many of the town’s residents. The stretch of bad luck began with the “Winter of the Blue Snow” – the brutal winter of 1886, one of the state’s worst on record.

1/14/2013: Minot became a major player in the defense of the continental United States in the Cold war era. When Russia built atomic bombs in 1949, U.S. military leaders prepared to defend against an atomic bomber attack. The first idea was to establish radar stations as a basic foundation of air defense.