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4/23/2013: North Dakota was poised to play a game of chance and change on this date in 1977. “Bingo – It’s legal in North Dakota” read the lead sentence of The Forum in Fargo. As Saturday began at the stroke of 12 AM, legal charity gambling began for the first time in North Dakota’s history.

4/29/2013: The town of Sentinel Butte was named after two nearby buttes located to the south and southeast. A butte is an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top, and Native Americans long ago called them “Two Buttes That Stand Facing Each Other,” which became “The Sentinel Buttes,” in English.

5/6/2013: The LZ 129 Hindenburg airship caught fire, exploded, and crumpled from the sky on this date in 1937. The German airship disaster made headlines around the world, not only due to the horrific nature of its destruction, but also because of the spectacular newsreel coverage and the mystery surrounding the cause of the fiery crash.

5/27/2013: To attain the rank of gold, whether it is a gold medal in the Olympics or a gold star in school, means that you have accomplished the highest level of achievement. But for a Gold Star Mother of the First World War, it was a mark of extreme sacrifice – her son had lost his life on the battlefields of Europe.

6/2/2013: Transporting the enormous crops of the bonanza farms to market was a expensive and critical part of farming in the late 1800s. On this date in 1893, the bonanza farmers of The Amenia and Sharon Land Company incorporated the Red River Valley and Western Railroad to replace their slow horse-drawn wagons. 12 miles of track were built to connect Addison and Chafee, North Dakota.

6/11/2013: By the turn of the century, in 1900, North Dakota had about 150 Congregational churches; and the church leaders saw a need for building a Christian academy to educate their young people. One-room rural schoolhouses have been idealized, but those schools usually provided an education only through eighth-grade. To provide high school training, the Congregationalists decided to build a new school, choosing New Rockford as the location.

6/13/2013: On June 8, 1896 Richard Omand was digging a culvert on his rented land near Bloomer, Minnesota. A few feet below the surface, he struck something hard. Supposing the barrier to be a large rock, he began removing the tough clay from around it. Lo and behold, it was no rock, but a fossilized human being!

6/24/2013: Long-time Killdeer Mountains Round-up Rodeo supporter, Robert “Bob” Sand, died on tomorrow’s date three years ago. Bob was active with the rodeo in many capacities over the years, and he and his wife, Edna, served as Grand Marshals for the 2008 rodeo.

6/28/2013: When the New Deal began in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt experimented with social planning and with programs to move people out of drought areas. The main program, the Resettlement Administration, created 160 new communities in the U.S. for those whose livelihoods had been crushed by the Depression. On this date in 1936, New Deal officials released information about how the resettlement program was planning to purchase 1.2 million acres of submarginal land and spend $3.3 million dollars for moving the farmers.

7/6/2013: Bob Rindt was born in early July of 1910. He graduated from Drake High School and become a school administrator, but he was also a rodeo entertainer.