Search results for

12/13/2004: On December 12th, 1913, a Grand Forks story reported the last living member of the infamous Wild Bunch had just been in town. Frank Walness, 39, told the reporter he had just gotten out of a Utah prison after serving 21 years; he said he left home when he was only 16 but couldn’t say why. “Nor can I tell you how I began a career of crime with Butch Cassidy,” he said. “Poor old Butch! He got his in Alaska. He was killed just before we pulled the (Utah) train robbery that marked the beginning of the end of our game.”

12/19/2004: In 1913, North Dakota experienced a strange December, weather-wise. On this date, it was reported that the record for the Missouri River freezing over had been broken (as far as recent written history went). The latest date previously recorded for freeze-over was December 10th, 1899. Now, here on the 19th, the river was still running free with almost no ice.

12/20/2004: First Lieutenant Loren Harvey Torkelson was from Crosby and was a month shy of his 26th birthday when his plane was shot down over North Vietnam. He was in his second tour of duty as an Air Force F4 Phantom pilot with the 389th Tactical Fighter Squadron when it happened. It wasn’t until this day in 1990 that his missing co-pilot finally came home from the war.

12/23/2004: Some Christmases take on a completely different meaning than others. It was like that a year ago today outside a Mandan hospital.

12/26/2004: Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, which is observed from December 26th through January 1st. Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga developed this unique African-American celebration in 1966 following the Los Angeles Watts riots.

12/27/2004: Cooperstown and Hope were once in the same county – Griggs – which was established by the Territorial Legislature in 1881. But that wasn’t to last.

12/30/2004: Truth is stranger than fiction, as confirmed in today’s story, which appeared in the Bismarck Tribune on this date in 1878. “Not long ago,” the story read, a trance medium arrived in Bismarck, and the coterie of spiritualists of the city have been quietly conversing with the spirits of the departed, through the gifted medium, until they unhesitatingly declare that better mediumistic powers have never before been developed.”

1/6/2005: In the winter of 1922, the Fargo Forum reported, “Ruth Baughman...of Grand Forks...and well known throughout North Dakota as an amateur entertainer, startled United State officials with her story of conditions in Panama which has started both American and British governments on an investigation of what is rumored to be the most gigantic slavery plot ever unearthed.”

1/28/2005: By now, almost everybody is aware of how Boston broke Babe Ruth’s long-standing curse to win the World Series last summer. But you may not have ever heard of North Dakota’ LaBonte curse.

1/29/2005: It was exactly 148 years ago that an expedition of ten men reached what is now Wahpeton’s sister city, Breckenridge, MN. The land there was a hunting ground for the Dakota and the Ojibway, but an 1851 treaty opened it up for non-Native settlement. This particular site was chosen because it was the headwaters for the Red River, the longest north-flowing river in the country.