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7/12/2011: Barnstorming baseball teams crisscrossed across North Dakota from corner to corner from the 1890s to the 1950s. A bewildering variety of ball clubs, including black teams and major leaguers, followed the railway lines, entertaining townspeople who wanted to see if the local baseball team could defeat a talented traveling team.

8/8/2011: 1920 was a crucial year for women’s rights in America. The struggle for equality certainly wasn’t over, but when women were finally granted the right to cast their vote as equal citizens, it was the result of decades of strenuous effort. In August of 1920, a lot of North Dakotans were talking about the future for female kind.

8/9/2011: On August 7, 1930, at 2:30 in the afternoon, The Dakota National Bank and Trust Company in Bismarck was robbed by four unmasked men. Authorities estimated that the men escaped with twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars in silver and currency—a lot even now, and a fortune then, on the cusp of the dirty thirties.

8/10/2011: Nobody likes to think about their garbage. But the fact is, each year Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times. So, there are a lot of stories, many of them untold, about land once part of a vast wilderness that now serves instead as a place for our junk.

8/19/2011: August is the golden month in North Dakota. Wheat stalks turn from green to gold in late July and into August; and the golden wheat brings prosperity. Yet wheat growing is fraught with anxiety for the Dakota wheat farmer, for storm or wind or hail or grasshopper or blight can obliterate the crop in a moment or an hour or a night.

8/25/2011: The late summer of 1906 was a busy time for President Theodore Roosevelt. The one-time North Dakotan faced pressing issues both at home and abroad. T

8/29/2011: The way Bobby Vee, singer from Fargo, found his path to fame is by now a well-known tale. His journey began on February 3, 1959 as a tragic airplane crash robbed the world of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper, all of whom were scheduled to perform in Moorhead as part of a tour across the Midwest.

9/7/2011: Citizen delegates from Dakota Territory held the first Constitutional Convention in Sioux Falls on this date in 1883. The purpose of the convention was to frame a state constitution that would justify Dakota’s admittance as a state, or two. As it turned out, whether or not Dakota Territory should be divided into two separate states became the focus of debate during the convention.

9/18/2011: There’s nothing like harvest to bring out some healthy rivalry. In 1909, Wells County farmer Pete Kunanz grew a cucumber 10.5 inches in diameter and 13.75 inches long. The Harvey Herald called for farmers with a larger vegetable to “get after Pete’s bacon and make him go some for the premium” at the Harvey Fair.

9/19/2011: Moses Kimball Armstrong, a Dakota Territory delegate to the U.S. Congress, was born on this date in 1832. Although a successful land surveyor by practice, Armstrong is best known today for his diverse and shining political career in the western territories.