On April 26, 2015, Betty White received a lifetime achievement award at the 42nd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards. The 93-year-old actress has a career

Next month I will have written 75 “Historic Happenings” for the Entertainment Guide, since February of 2007. So it seems appropriate to honor some of

No, I wasn’t there, but I can imagine “Thwack!” was the sound of ball hitting bat in 19th century “base ball” (two words) which

The year 2016 marks the 125th anniversary of St. Olaf College’s first music organization, a group once led by F. Melius Christiansen. No, it

In 1855, at the age of 40,  John Wesley North was ready for new challenges. A New Yorker by birth, he had moved to St.

“Old Bill” Schilling would have loved this August Historic Happenings column. That is because I am going to tell you a lot about his contributions to

“Robbery & Murder!” screamed the headline of the Rice County Journal of Sept. 7, 1876. “Desperate Attempt to Rob the Bank! J.L. Heywood Shot Dead at

Need a suggestion for a stocking stuffer? Well, here it is: a compilation of kids’ letters to Santa from the Northfield News from 1902 to 1945. Dear

With a menacing stare and a big ax, Smoke Shop proprietor Stanley “Tiny” Johnson stood beside two men locked into the “Jesse James Days

“It’s here!” This note, with a big smiley face drawn on it, was in my mailbox at St. Olaf late in the first term

The upset victory of tiny Appalachian State over mighty Michigan in football this season has reminded me of two David and Goliath-type games played

Researching historic happenings can be time-consuming. It can also be as easy as “googling” a  topic on a computer. Occasionally, it is a matter of

  Some people look at cut-down trees and think “Firewood.” Curtis Ingvoldstad of Nerstrand, a wood sculptor/chainsaw artist, looks at the trunks that are

When I heard that Paul Niemisto was retiring this year, I have to admit I could not believe it. Would this month’s 10th anniversary

Let’s get this out of the way from the start. You can’t pay me enough to watch the 40 or more mostly mediocre (and

I have two David Allen paintings in my two-bedroom condo. Both are winter scenes showing Northfield’s Bridge Square from different angles. In one, the

The last thing I expected during the Defeat of Jesse James Days in September of 2005 was to be singing karaoke with a descendant

The Northfield Raiders won their one and only state football championship at the Metrodome on Nov. 22, 1997, by defeating Detroit Lakes 28-0. But

Last month Carleton College published A Beacon So Bright: The Life of Laurence McKinley Gould, a long-awaited biography of Carleton’s fourth president by Carleton archivist

Northfielders reading Reed Whittemore’s memoir Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet (Dryad Press, 2007) may have an irresistible urge to start with Chapter

Way back in the historic mid-1960s, when I was attending St. Olaf, my friends and I would head down to Sayles-Hill Gym at Carleton

Originally Published in the June 2014 Entertainment Guide The late Dan Freeman (known as “Mr. Northfield”) had treasured memories from the times Doc Evans

After the devastating fire ravaged Northfield’s Archer House in Northfield last year on November 12-13, a television reporter asked me as a Northfield historian

The name Thomas Scott Buckham is most likely associated today with the library bearing his name at 11 Division St. E in Faribault. But