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7/11/2010: On this date in 1951, a breath of history entered the city of Fargo in the person of pioneer O.A. Vangsness. Vangsness lived in Milwaukee then, but he once served as the mail carrier in Kindred.

7/13/2010: The 1930s were hard on North Dakota farmers. About the only thing that survived the dust storms and grasshoppers were Russian thistles. Cattle starved or fell dead with bellies full of dirt, and farm foreclosures became more and more frequent. An elevator man in Sanish thought the price of wheat hit rock bottom at 56 cents a bushel and wrote on his market chalkboard, "Don't faint when you read these prices." Little did anyone realize that within the next several years, wheat would go as low as 17 cents in Montrail County.

7/19/2010: One hundred years ago, airplanes were called "aeroplanes," and pilots were known as "aviators;" or as "birdmen" because they were flying like a bird. Powered flight, once just a dream, had become a reality.

7/20/2010: But for a North Dakotan and a lucky hand of poker, World War Two may have had a different ending.

7/23/2010: In the early decades of the twentieth century, harvesting grain was labor intensive, more than what the local farmers could handle on their own. And so it was on this date in 1922 that Governor R. A. Nestos announced that almost 25,000 additional hands would be required for harvesting a bumper crop, including an estimated 94 million bushels of wheat, 24 million bushels of rye, 20 million bushels of potatoes as well as record crops of oats and barley.

8/2/2010: On this date in 1932, Ann Marie Low spent the evening picking chokecherries. She watched the ducks along the river and the changing colors of the hills and fields, calling it her country. By the end of the decade though, the farm where she grew up would no longer feel like home.

1/3/2011: North Dakota had not one, but two governors on this date in 1985. Two different men, George Sinner and Allen Olson, both claimed the state’s governorship. Olson, the incumbent elected in 1980, asserted that his four-year term began the date that he was sworn in, January 6, 1981. Therefore, he did not plan to vacate his office until January 6, 1985, securing his term of exactly four years.

1/7/2011: Thomas Moodie, the nineteenth governor of North Dakota, took office on this date in 1935. Moodie is best known as the state’s shortest-serving governor, serving only five weeks before being removed from office by the state’s Supreme Court.

1/15/2011: The Dakota Malting and Brewing Company announced on this date in 1961 that they would build a brewery in Bismarck.

1/17/2011: The Bismarck Auditorium, today known as the Belle Mehus, has been around since the early part of the 20th Century when it was built by local architect Arthur Van Horn.