Search results for

2/27/2010: Two hundred members of the American Indian Movement took over the small village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on this date in 1973.

2/28/2010: Lambing can be a tricky business. Nearly 20 percent of lambs die before they are weaned, most within the first ten days. The climate can play a major role in these deaths, and although lambing can take place early in the year, it is more common in the warmer springtime.

3/15/2010: The winter of 2008-2009 is remembered as bitterly cold. Sub-zero temperatures with massive snowfall. In that kind of nasty wintery weather, North Dakotans are thankful for such inventions as polar fleece, Thinsulate, and engine block heaters. But back in the 1920s, those helpful inventions that keep us so toasty and safe were not around.

3/16/2010: With tomorrow being St. Patrick's Day, we bring you the story of one of North Dakota's better-known Irishman. He was a Civil War veteran, a frontiers-man, a friend of governors and of the men who made governors, but he was also an enemy of Native Americans. He was born in 1835, and yesterday was his birthday.

3/19/2010: On this date in 1865, North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Famer, James William Follis, was born on a ranch outside of Stevensville, Texas. The son of a retired Confederate Army cavalryman, Follis was well versed in horsemanship, and became an expert rancher at a young age. When he was just seven years old, Follis assisted his family in driving their cattle all the way to Trinidad, Colorado, where they eventually decided to settle. Despite his young age, some claimed that Follis "rode herd just as though he were a grown man."

3/26/2010: When Alexander Henry built a North West Company trading post near the Red River in 1801, he knew the competition would be stiff.

4/9/2010: Frances Densmore, born in 1867 in Red Wing, MN, was an amateur anthropologist who traveled around the United States, collecting Indian songs for the for the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. After she recorded these songs on her phonograph, she sent them on wax cylinders to the Smithsonian Institute, along with manuscripts of the songs.

4/17/2010: John L. Harvey and C.H. Olson of Cando travelled overseas to Europe in 1912 to procure horses for breeding. They obtained forty "fine specimens of horse flesh," Belgians and Percherons-draft horses that were a mix of hardiness and myth, each linked to medieval knights and war horses.

4/27/2010: The first Great Dakota Boom took place primarily during the 1880s, during which the population of what is now North Dakota increased roughly 1,000 percent. Around the state, towns sprang up almost overnight. If the railroad changed course, and a speculative town was bypassed, the building were mounted on sled-like skids and dragged to a town that was better placed.

5/6/2010: It was four years ago on this date that students, educators, curiosity seekers and the press flocked to far western North Dakota. The Badlands, with its rocky and uneven terrain, was chosen for its similarity to Mars, the Red Planet, for the unveiling of a Mars spacesuit prototype.