Merry Helm

North Dakota musician Lawrence Welk said his first real break came in 1937 when his band was playing in Chaska, MN. Will Osborne’s band was playing in…

The news on this date in 1914 was that S. A. Burns was being charged with the murder of a McKenzie County homesteader who had been missing from his ranch…

It was during harvest in 1913 that Fingal Enger was caught in a downpour. He wouldn’t go inside until all the wagons were in and every horse was tended.…

In the spring of 1890, William Regcraft found some bones while digging a ditch near Highgate, Ontario. A merchant named William Hillhouse bought the…

Among the more notorious women of western Dakota Territory was Alice Ivers – or Poker Alice – who was born in 1853 in England. She moved with her family…

The Bismarck Tribune was founded on this date in 1873, but the first issue didn’t come out for another week, on July 14th. It hit the streets with a…

Today is the birthday of Frank Bennett Fiske, born in southern Dakota Territory in 1883. Frank was just a baby when his father, George, left the military…

The Dakota Zoo in Bismarck opened its gates for the first time on this date in 1961. The attraction grew out of a private business known as the…

In 1990, a pair of peregrine falcons, an endangered species, showed up near the top of the First Interstate Bank in Fargo. They appeared to be looking for…

After claims that the Spanish sunk the USS Maine off the coast of Cuba in 1898, no North Dakota newspaper called for a retaliatory strike. But once the…