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12/22/2004: Vernon Huseby grew up five miles southwest of Nome during the Great Depression. His parents, Ole and Nora, were born in Norway, and Vernon described his Ransom County neighbors as “predominantly Scandinavian, with a little American mixed in.”

12/25/2004: In 1974, Walsh County resident Kenneth Johnson began a tradition of ringing Trinity Lutheran’s bells each Christmas. The 114-year-old prairie church had closed its doors in 1953, but the congregation continues to take good care of the building.

12/28/2004: At about 6:30 on the morning of June 7th, 1921, William Gummer, a 22-year-old clerk at Fargo’s Prescott Hotel, told his boss, “Something’s wrong in room 30.” Marie Wick, a pretty 18-year-old brunette from northern MN was brutally assaulted and killed in that room sometime during the night. Grey hairs were found clutched in her hand.

1/26/2005: On January 14th, we brought you a story about John Tyler, a popular black rancher in Slope County in the late 1800s. Tyler was a friend of Teddy Roosevelt and was also a favorite of Madam Medora de Moores. He was known for his sense of humor and loved to tell stories of how scared he was when he came to Dakota Territory from Washington DC as a teenager.

1/31/2005:

2/17/2005: One of the state’s most heinous crimes took place in Emmons County on this date in 1897. In 1959, William Fischer, editor of the Emmons County Record, explained: “When North Dakota became a state, its constitution outlawed the saloon, but many saloon operators continued their ‘underground’ operation – and their places of business were known as ‘blind pigs’.”

2/20/2005: On this date in 1913, the North Dakota State Legislature passed a law making bootlegging a crime, with first time offenses punishable by 6 months to a year in the Bismarck Pen.

2/24/2005: About this time in 1939, Bismarck radio station KFYR was debuting a new show called Cuckoo Quiz, described by the Bismarck Tribune as a ‘radio fanfare,’ studio gossip and information program. The new show was following a trend KFYR had discovered during the previous two years – a trend that’s still popular today.

7/23/2004: In the spring of 1890, William Regcraft found some bones while digging a ditch on his uncle’s farm, one mile from Highgate, Ontario. A hardware merchant named William Hillhouse bought the bones, and he and his uncle, John Jelly, also bought the right to continue excavating. What they found was almost an entire skeleton of an Ice-Age mastodon, relative of the modern elephant.

7/24/2004: Clarence Crum, from Hannah, received at least two patents for his inventions. On July 4th, 1913, the Hansboro Pioneer reported that Crum received a patent for “an invention of his, which will be a great convenience to motor drivers. The device will cause the lights on an automobile to follow curves or turns in the road automatically. It will work on any kind of car and will be a splendid rig to take the danger spots out of a crooked road on a dark night. Clarence has had several inquiries from auto firms to secure a right to the use of the device.”