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4/5/2005: Award winning poet Mark Turcotte was born in Lansing, MI, on this date in 1958. Soon after, he moved with his Irish mother and Ojibway father to the Turtle Mountains. In 2002, the editor of Free Verse, Linda Aschbrenner, interviewed Mark about his book, Exploding Chippewas.

5/14/2005: On this date in 1872, a small community was staked out where the Northern Pacific Railroad met the Missouri River.

5/18/2005: In the early 1900s, a peculiar type of humorous story about “Poison Carrots and the Hired Man” was popular in the Red River Valley. These two characters would go off on ill-fated adventures reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin movies.

5/17/2005: 2005 is the one hundredth anniversary of Norway’s true independence, which is celebrated in a spring festival known as Syttende Mai (or 17th of May).

5/19/2005: The first recorded visit of a non-native person in what is now North Dakota was by Pierre de la Verendrye when George Washington was just six years old. While working at a trading post north of Lake Superior, local Indians told Verendrye about a westward flowing river that reached the Shining Mountains; and, beyond those mountains lay a great salty sea.

5/20/2005: Warren Magnuson died on this date in 1989; he was the adopted son of Emma Anderson, of the Fort Ransom area. Emma and her husband, Bill Magnuson, lived in Moorhead, where Emma ran a bootlegging business. One of her money-making strategies was to invite wealthy people to dinner, during which she served alcohol. If her guests didn’t leave a generous tip under their plates, they didn’t get invited back.

5/22/2005: Henry the Younger had the same name as his uncle, Henry Alexander, a trapper who gained fame for exploring the lands between Montreal and the Rocky Mountains

5/29/2005: John Grenz was born near Artas, SD, on this date in 1917.

6/1/2005: On this day in 1928, the ND Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the State’s 19th century Sabbath-breaking law, which forbade Sunday sales.

6/4/2005: Philippe Regis De Trobriand was born in France on this date in 1816.