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5/7/2010: On this date in 1960, a U-2 spy plane crew ended a twenty-month long mission at Minot Air Force base. Five officers and thirty-two airmen had arrived in Minot in September, 1958, with one U-2 plane in what was called "Project Crowflight." Under the command of Major Richard W. Rauch, the men placed a statue of a large crow on the base dispensary roof as its trademark. The U-2 plane was painted as black as a crow.

5/14/2010: Max Bass was almost too good at what he did. His job was bringing new settlers to North Dakota. As the premier immigration agent for the Great Northern Railway, Max Bass convinced 27,000 Dunkards to move from Eastern states to farms near Cando.

5/19/2010: Today we continue our look at Historic Preservation in North Dakota. The railroads played an important part in the development of Dakota Territory both to transport the people to settle the land and secondly, to supply the tons of building materials, farming supplies, food and clothing to this new market.

5/26/2010: If you've ever seen a saddle, you probably realize a lot of work goes into making them. They've been around in one form or another for hundreds of years. In fact, in the first century AD, Pliny the Elder said that a Thessalonian first invented saddles and bridles, though this can't be strictly taken as fact. A couple hundred years before that, Xenophon, an Athenian soldier, mentioned saddle cloths in a book he wrote on horsemanship

6/1/2010: The Bismarck Diocese of the Catholic Church is celebrating its Centennial this month. In addition to the many planned festivities, the Diocese published three books to mark the occasion; a history book of the Catholic Church in western North Dakota; a necrology, that is an account of the lives of priests and bishops now deceased, and a two-volume cookbook.

6/2/2010: This month the Catholic Church is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the Diocese of Bismarck. In addition to centennial events planned for later in June, the Diocese published three books, (four, really if you count both volumes of the huge cookbook!). One of those books, titled "I Will Appoint You Shepherds," is a necrology...an account of the lives of the bishops and priests, now deceased, who served the Roman Catholic Church in western North Dakota.

6/4/2010: North Dakota's weather is brutal for street pavements. Freezing and thawing and heat waves combine with heavy traffic to crumble even the strongest tar or concrete streets or highways. As automobile traffic increased from 1900 to 1910, the city of Grand Forks experimented with various paving materials as motorists demanded better roads, trying "tar" and "bitumen" and "asphalt" and "granitoid" in 1910. The Granitoid pavement put in place in three paving districts in Grand Forks in 1910 (and 1911) still endures, one hundred years later. Most streets and highways last for twenty years, at most.

6/5/2010: Proudly positioned on the bluffs overlooking the Missouri River stands a solitary marker commemorating Fort Mandan—headquarters of the Lewis and Clark expedition during the winter of 1804-1805. While a beautiful reconstruction of the fort was built near Washburn in 1971, the original fortification sat alongside the Missouri some ten miles west.

6/6/2010: The term "product placement" really emerged in the 1980s, but it was used long before, as evidenced by an article printed by The Wilton News in 1912. On this date, a man named Peter Jonson was arraigned for hitting his mother-in-law. It seems he'd been smoking a cigar that stank terribly, aggravating her asthma, and the two ended up fighting.

6/14/2010: Baseball is America's game, but it has become the world's game. Today's major league baseball teams include players born in other lands - such as Justin Morneau from Canada; Francisco Liriano from the Dominican Republic; and Japan's Ichiro Suzuki.