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7/6/2005: It was during this week in 1956 that the International High School Music Camp began, making this year their 50th anniversary! In fact, the camp has just registered its 110,000th participant.

7/15/2005: Among the more notorious women of western Dakota Territory were Mustache Maude and Calamity Jane. Another was Alice Ivers – or Poker Alice – who was born in 1853. Alice was born and educated in England and then moved with her family to Colorado. There, she eventually married her first love, a mining engineer named Frank Duffield. It was Duffield who taught Alice how to play poker, a game at which she proved particularly lucky.

7/16/2005: Folks in Lakota appear to have had an animal problem in the spring and summer of 1902.

7/17/2005: On this date in 1893, J. Morley Wyard reported two strange sightings while crossing Devils Lake on the Minnie H, a small steamer bound for Ft. Totten. The Park River Gazette Witness reported that 12 miles away, Wyard clearly saw the hull of a giant ship – the size of which didn’t exist on Devil’s Lake in 1893.

7/18/2005: In March we brought you the story of how the Fargo Civic Opera got its start. That segment ended with the following paragraph: “By 1951, the symphony had grown to 64 members: 29 college students, 16 teenagers, 9 music teachers, 5 housewives, 3 office workers, and 2 professional musicians. The youngest member was 14 year-old David George Schickele on violin. His 15-year-old, bassoon-playing brother, Peter, later became known as P.D.Q. Ba

3/31/2005: On this date in 1951, The Fargo Forum ran a big spread titled, “Orchestra Success Regarded by Outsiders as Astounding.” The story, written by Roy P. Johnson, celebrated the symphony’s upcoming 20th anniversary.

4/1/2005: One late summer night in 1877, Lady Dufferin was traveling the Red River to Winnipeg aboard the steamer Minnesota. Ahead, another steamboat approached from the opposite direction. “It looked beautiful in the dark,” she wrote in her diary, “with two great bull’s-eyes, green and red lamps and other lights on deck, creeping toward us; we stopped, and backed into the shore, that it might pass us. It came close and fired off a cannon, and we saw on the deck a large transparency with the words, ‘Welcome, Lord Dufferin’ on it, and two girls dressed in white with flags in their hands; then a voice sang, ‘Canada, Sweet Canada,’ and many more voices joined the chorus.”

4/8/2005: Tomorrow – and the next day, too – will be the birthdays of Calvin Andrist, who was born in Ada, MN, in 1888 – or maybe 1887. His son, John, says, “Dad always claimed two birth dates. After celebrating on April 10 for half a century, he had reason to request an official birth certificate. That showed his birth as April 9, 1887. He refused to give up April 10 and declared henceforth and forevermore he would have a two-day birthday celebration.”

4/10/2005: William Stern of Fargo and Warren Magnuson of Moorhead were good friends and were together in Asia when the supreme commander of the allied forces was relieved of his post during the Korean War. The official story says Gen. Douglas MacArthur learned of his dismissal while having lunch with visitors on April 11, 1951.

4/11/2005: Writer, photographer and historian Bill Shemorry passed away one year ago today; he was 89 and was described as “one of a kind.” He was a newspaperman in Williston for more than 70 years and was witness to a great deal of his city’s history.