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2/1/2010: It was this date in 1937 that the State Historical Society of North Dakota acquired the Menoken Indian Village. Located a few miles east of Bismarck, the village was home to roughly 200 people and consisted of approximately 30 oval-shaped earth lodges as well as an elaborate fortification system.

2/4/2010: In the 1930s, dust storms filled the horizon and rain was sparse across the Plains. A prolonged drought had gripped the parched farmland including the ancestral homelands of the Gros Ventre, whose people suffered greatly through this period, even in the fertile Missouri River Valley. But the people on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation now had hope that the drought would finally come to an end as a sacred bundle, long missing from the tribe, was returned and a guardianship had been established. The Thunderbird, an ancient drought buster, had been returned and carefully laid away.

2/10/2010: Marshall H. Jewell was a name well-known throughout North Dakota, and especially in Bismarck.

2/12/2010: The lands of the abandoned Fort Stevenson Military Reservation were sold by public auction on this date in 1901. The majority of the 45,000 acres were purchased by Black and Associates, a group of eastern businessmen.

2/13/2010: Time and babies wait for no man, beast, or inclement weather, a fact that can be a trial in North Dakota's winters.

2/14/2010: A Fargo woman had a busy Valentine's Day in 1899, when she was divorced and remarried in order to avoid polyandry charges.

2/17/2010: When, in 1824, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri saw his newborn daughter for the first time, he was a bit disappointed. She wasn't the boy he was hoping for. However his disappointment soon abated. Dubbed Jessie, in honor of Benton's father, the two developed a special bond.

2/18/2010: In Italy, it is known as Barba di Frate. In Japan, it's a crop of some importance, and is known as okahijiki. The leaves and shoots of the Salsola genus can be used in sushi or in salads. But, regardless of culinary taste, North Dakotans think of this large flowering plant as nothing more than a pest. The Russian Thistle, or tumbleweed, has been causing havoc in our state for over 100 years.

2/22/2010: On this date in 1944, James and Esther Holm were blessed with the birth of a son. From an early age, Skip, as he was known, became increasingly interested in flying, whether a result of a small beanie with a propeller on top that he constantly wore or from watching the eagles and hawks soar noiselessly above the family homestead in southwestern Stark County.

2/24/2010: On one moonlit night in February of 1911, a young man by the name of Will Miller broke into the local drug store in Ambrose. As Miller crept through the store in search of valuable items, a marshal on patrol caught sight of his shadowy figure in the store window and arrested the burglar before he could get away with any stolen goods.