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12/21/2011: The National Park Service announced a plan to reconstruct historic Fort Sisseton on this date in 1936. The government hoped to use the fort as temporary housing for homeless and unemployed. Across the nation, tent camps had sprung up to house these mostly-transient men created by the Great Depression.

12/26/2011: The largest mass execution in American history took place on this date in 1862 when thirty-eight Dakota Sioux prisoners who had taken part in the Dakota War of 1862 were hung in Mankato, Minnesota. “The mass hanging was the concluding scene in the opening chapter of a story of American-Sioux conflict that would not end until the Seventh Cavalry completed its massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota…” in 1890.

12/29/2011: A verdict on Fargo jay-walking was reported on this date in 1944 by the Minnesota Supreme Court. How the Minnesota Supreme Court came to rule on Fargo’s city ordinances came about after a Minnesota resident was hit by a Moorhead-owned vehicle in the streets of Fargo, leading to a string of court hearings and opinions regarding the letter of Fargo’s city laws.

12/31/2011: The cost of mailing a letter rose from ten to thirteen cents on this date in 1975. The three-cent increase came after the Postal Service reported losing 225 million dollars a month in 1975.

1/3/2012: The Dakota Territory was signed into existence by President James Buchanan in 1861. “Dakota,” means “allies” or “friends” in the language of the Dakota or Sioux Indians. This land area would later be divided into North Dakota and South Dakota, with portions also going to Montana and Wyoming. By 1863, the Montana and Wyoming portions split off, and by the late 1870s, Dakotans began to push for statehood for better representation in Congress.

1/5/2012: On this date in 1875, Andrew McHench, a visionary pioneer in the Red River Valley, introduced a bill to incorporate the City of Fargo. In addition to being one of the first landowners in Cass County, he produced one of the valley’s first wheat crops, introduced a reaper to the area for harvesting, created the first Cass County Fair, and was named first superintendent of Cass County schools, creating Fargo School District Number One and establishing Fargo’s first public school.

1/6/2012: North Dakota Governor Allen Olson took office on this date in 1981. The twenty-eighth Governor of the state, Olson unseated incumbent Governor Arthur Link to win the seat. Olson served two terms as the state’s Attorney General from 1972 until 1980 before deciding to run for governor.

1/7/2012: A news story on this date in 1982 involved a petition by a New Salem area farmer to fix what he called the North Dakota time zone problem.

1/8/2012: The Grand Forks Herald reported a remarkable case of premonition on this date in 1906. It was the story of Andrew McDonald, who took out an insurance policy for $3,000.

1/9/2012: The North Dakota Historical Society of Germans from Russia was founded in Bismarck on this date in 1971. The decision to base the society in Bismarck was a simple one: the city itself was named after Otto von Bismarck, the prime minister of Prussia and the original founder and first chancellor of the German Empire.