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1/13/2012: The UND Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on this date in 2010.

1/15/2012: An ad in UND’s Dakota Student newspaper stirred up quite the controversy on this date in 1969. The ad, inviting the public to the upcoming execution of Thomas White Hawk, was purchased by a UND freshman opposed to the death penalty, who wanted to bring the execution to the attention of UND students.

1/19/2012: Williston, along with the rest of western North Dakota, has been big in the news, lately, with the oil boom “Rockin’ the Bakkan.” News items every day show the toll it has taken on the city—the lack of housing, the need for more workers, and the anxious undercurrent that today’s oil rush will mirror the boom and bust of the 1950s.

1/21/2012: Lee Fahler of the Minot Police Department was shot and killed on this date in 1921.

1/24/2012: August of 1862 marked the beginning of the US-Dakota Conflict, resulting in the death of several hundred Minnesota settlers. When US troops moved against the American Indian forces, they pushed them west into Dakota Territory. The effect on the territory’s capital city, Yankton, was almost immediate, worsening the relationship between local Native Americans and the rapidly expanding white settlements.

2/2/2012: Today, we celebrate Groundhog Day! Will groundhogs across the country see their shadow? If so, six more weeks of bad weather are in the forecast. If not—spring is supposedly just around the corner.

2/4/2012: Between 1924 and 1951, twenty-three serious attempts were made to discover oil in the Williston Basin without success.

2/5/2012: North Dakota baseball player Dewey Williams was born on this date in 1916 in Durham, North Carolina.

2/7/2012: The Governor Arthur A. Link Fiddle Festival occurred at the Former Governor’s Mansion this past weekend. The festival promotes the lifelong love Governor Link had for music, especially the violin.

2/9/2012: When North Dakota became a state in November 1889, it entered as a dry state. Prohibition did not sit well with everyone, and less than two years later, the Bismarck Tribune reported during the 1891 legislative session that “Probably in no city in the state is the prohibition law being so rigidly observed as in Bismarck. The saloon-keepers propose to let the people … who have been in the habit of drinking one way and voting another have a taste of absolute prohibition.”