Dakota Datebook

Severe winter weather is no big surprise in North Dakota. The state can typically expect 50 days per year with below zero temperatures. The record low, in 1936, was -60 degrees.

The city of Robinson, in Kidder County, experienced a news-making surprise in 1925. A public water well had begun to produce gasoline! The water had apparently turned bad for drinking a year earlier, but was still being used off-and-on for other purposes. A motorist who stopped to add water to his radiator, realized it was gasoline when he got it to burn.

The November 1888 Student, the University of North Dakota's monthly magazine from that era, reported: “[Professor Henry] Montgomery … during the past five years has devoted considerable time to the exploration of artificial mounds in Dakota. The greater portion of this work ... has been in the neighborhood of Devils' Lake, Fort Totten, and Inkster.”

According to the Bismarck Tribune on this date in 1987, Caspar Borggreve was adamant that he never wanted to be known as a dull man. He need not have worried. This Dutchman, who moved across Europe and the upper Midwest, eventually became a beloved restaurateur in Bismarck.

In this episode of Dakota Datebook, we'll hear Debbe Poitra, enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, share a bit about the importance of storytelling in the Michif culture and how those stories help to express important ideas, values, and the history of a people.

It was a cool, clear, crisp autumn day on this date at the University of North Dakota. The high temperature reached 44 degrees. It was a normal autumn day, but there were warning signs of possible trouble head.

North Dakota’s bare landscape isn’t known for its trees, but in the state’s centennial year of 1989, North Dakota provided two trees for Christmas in the nation’s capital.

1919 was a year of great upheaval. Across the country, the working class rebelled against corporate greed by walking off the job. World War I had been over for only a year, and the world was still reeling from the 1918 flu pandemic. The cost of living had almost doubled. Workers’ pre-war dollars were now worth only 45 cents. Industrialists that grew rich from the war now wanted to cut wages and take away gains made by labor. Countless numbers of American workers went on strike, and conservatives feared a revolution similar to the Bolsheviks’ takeover of Russia.

Alfred Howe Terry was born into a prosperous Connecticut family on this date in 1827. He graduated from Yale with a law degree and worked for a Connecticut Superior Court.

In this episode of Dakota Datebook's Teaching of our Elders series, we'll hear Gladys Hawk, elder and educator, who was an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, share a bit about the importance of reciprocity with the land as we use its natural resources.