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5/18/2012: Harvey Carignan, also known as Harvey the Hammer or the Want-Ad Killer, was born on this date in 1927 in Fargo, North Dakota. Definitely one of North Dakota’s less publicized and celebrated sons, Carignan would go on to kill and brutalize at least five, and possibly as many as eighteen, victims.

5/21/2012: Durum wheat is used for making macaroni and other pastas, and North Dakota produces two-thirds of the durum grown in the U.S.A. Charles Hitchcock, who became known in the history of North Dakota as the “Father of durum or macaroni wheat,” died on this dated in 1909.

6/6/2012: As part of his dream for settlement of the western United States, President Abraham Lincoln knew that the steam locomotive and railroad lines could play a critical role. His 1864 Transcontinental Railroad Act put the power of the government behind the railroad’s potential.

6/7/2012: In 1939, the Crown Prince to the Norwegian throne, Olav, and his wife Martha, toured America – including a few memorable days as they crossed North Dakota. A

6/9/2012: An incredible thunderstorm struck Bismarck on this date in 2001, causing millions of dollars in damage and leaving up to six feet of hail piled up in some areas. Afterward, the fresh hail resembled blankets of snow, clogging storm drains and underpasses, which led to flooding.

1/26/2012: North Dakota’s second post office was established on this date in 1855 at St. Joseph by Indian trader Charles Grant. The first post office, at Pembina, was founded five years earlier. St. Joseph was an off-shoot of the Pembina settlement. Since the end of the eighteenth century, Pembina had served as “…the home base for the Metis bison hunters and freemen who challenged the trading monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company.”

1/30/2012: The Fargo Forum reported a novel solution for rural school transportation on this date in 1955. After the closure of their rural school southwest of Fargo, four sisters were ferried to school and home again in a yellow checkered taxi-cab.

1/31/2012: United States Senator from North Dakota Fountain L. Thompson resigned from his position on this date in 1910. Thompson had been appointed to fill the seat vacated by the death of Martin Johnson, but served less than three months before his resignation.

2/3/2012: At the end of January in 1922, a band of heavy snow from Richmond to Baltimore immobilized that stretch of the East Coast. The weight of the snow caused the roof of the Knickerbocker Theater in Washington, DC, to collapse, crushing 100 people to death.

2/6/2012: At the end of January in 1929, a rather unusual marriage for two residents of Tappen took place in Steele. The reports circulated around the state: Gertrude Murdoch, the 27-year-old principal and music teacher of the local high school, married Gordon Bell, a 17-year-old sophomore in her school and a student in one of her classes.