Free Republic

A Bismarck man, George Demarrias, pulled a gun on a customer at McDonald’s after the customer refused to buy him a Big Mac and Happy Meal on Saturday. According to the arresting affidavit, the customer was going to the Burnt Boat Drive McDonald’s in Bismarck for lunch around 12:48 p.m. on September 30, when Demarrias approached him asking if the customer could buy him a Big Mac and a Happy Meal. The customer then told Demarrias to “go get a job” and walked into the restaurant. Demarrias followed the customer into the store (which was filled with innocent bystanders, some...

In May 1941, the new German battleship Bismarck was a huge, state-of-the-art warship, equipped with the latest long-range heavy cannon, new stereoscopic range-finders that promised unprecedented accuracy, new ship-based radar, and an intricate system of armor-plating and honey-combed water-tight compartments that rendered her virtually unsinkable. If Bismarck broke out into the vast, indefensible shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, it could wreak catastrophic havoc with the war-sustaining convoys coming across the ocean [from the U.S.] In 1941 England, it was believed that this single weapon might determine the very course of the war in Europe. Where the entire Luftwaffe had...

BISMARCK, N.D. — Reuben Panchol was forced to leave war-torn Sudan decades ago as a child, embarking on an odyssey that eventually brought him to the American Midwest and left him eternally grateful to the country that took him in. “I am an American citizen, a North Dakotan,” said Panchol, a 38-year-old father of four. “And without North Dakota, I couldn’t have made it.”

It all came crashing down one morning in April 2015, when April Lund was 32. The evening before, she had stayed out late drinking, and she woke up alone in her apartment in Bismarck, North Dakota, with no idea of how she got there. “I blacked out completely,” she told Runner’s World. “That’s when I knew I had to change my life.” At the time, Lund was overweight and had been struggling with an alcohol addiction for about eight years. She had just moved to Bismarck from St. Louis, Missouri, where she said her social life centered around drinking. While...

Swordfish pilot Jock Moffat – credited with launching the torpedo which crippled the Bismarck in 1941 – has died at the age of 97. The Scotsman, who always played down his role in the attack, was a lifelong champion of naval aviation and friend of the Fleet Air Arm. 2016 ends for Naval aviation as it began – with the loss of one of its greatest heroes. After the passing of legendary test pilot Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown early in the year, the Fleet Air Arm community now mourns for Lt Cdr John ‘Jock’ Moffat – the man credited with crippling...

Nearly 7,400 are expected to pack the Events Center downtown, where Trump will address the Energy Conference there. This evening, those who both support and those who loathe Trump, got ready.

Donald Trump has announced plans to hold a victory news conference in just over an hour in Bismarck, North Dakota (it’s the capital), where Guardian politics reporter Ben Jacobs is laying in wait. DT Jr celebrates victory: — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 26, 2016 1237 ✔️

Thursday, May 26, 2016: Live stream of Donald Trump’s remarks at The Williston Basin Petroleum Conference in Bismarck, ND at the Bismarck Event Center beginning at 1:00 PM CDT. Bismarck Event Center beginning at 1:00 PM CDT. Thursday, May 26, 2016: Live stream of the Donald Trump for President rally in Billings, MT at Rimrock Auto Arena at MetraPark. The event will begin at 4:00 PM MDT. Rimrock Auto Arena at MetraPark

The bell from HMS Hood has been unveiled by the Princess Royal to mark the 75th anniversary of the Royal Navy's largest loss of life from a single vessel. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen - who funded the expedition to retrieve the bell from the seabed of the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland - attended the event at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard where the bell has gone on display. Anne struck eight bells at midday during the ceremony, held with HMS Victory as a backdrop, watched by descendants of some of the 1,415 sailors who died when the battleship was hit...

THE Bismarck, the German battleship which sank with the loss of more than 2,000 sailors, was scuttled by her own crew, according to a news docu-mentary to be screened this weekend. The Second World War flagship, the pride of Hitler’s naval fleet, sank so quickly that it must have been deliberately aimed at the ocean floor by desperate commanders, according to the programme, made by the Titanic film director, James Cameron. Semi-crippled after an aircraft-launched torpedo knocked out her rudder, the Bismarck was hounded across the Atlantic by a chasing British naval pack. Then, on 27 May, 1941, in what...

...[T]he Boy Scouts of America voted to admit openly gay adults into the organization to hold leadership positions. While there are indications that the BSA has a religious organization exception, which each local troop could invoke, that will provide no protection for any of our parishes and/or schools, which sponsor troops. Thus, effective immediately, the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Bismarck and each and every one of its parishes, schools and other institutions, is formally disaffiliated with and from the Boy Scouts of America. If your parish sponsors a troop, your priest has been asked to inform those persons...

President Barack Obama, who in his political dotage is enthusiastically getting in touch with his inner Otto von Bismarck to such an extent that we half expect him to start sporting a walrus mustache and a pickelhaube, on Saturday treated the ailing republic to another lecture on the theme of “economic patriotism,” by which he means an arrangement under which companies adopt tax strategies that maximize the amount of money they send to President Obama and his colleagues to dispose of as they see fit. He demanded that companies “embrace an economic patriotism,” presumably one defined by Barack Obama, rather...

... You never know when you might become the next YouTube sensation, the way A.J. Clemente did Sunday. Clemente was leading off his first newscast as the weekend anchor at KFYR, an NBC station in Bismarck, North Dakota, when he let loose ...

Aerial view of the Missouri River from a North Dakota National Guard Black Hawk helicopter in the vicinity of Bismarck and Mandan, N.D., on May 29, 2011. When these photos were taken, the river was at about 15.74 feet with a garrison release flow of 80,000 cubic feet per second.

BISMARCK A Life By Jonathan Steinberg Illustrated. 577 pp. Oxford University Press. $34.95 In the summer of 1862, Otto von Bismarck was appointed minister-president of Prussia. His highest previous rank had been ambassador to Russia. He had never held an administrative position. Yet with a few brusque strokes, the novice minister solved the riddle that had stymied European diplomacy for two generations: how to unify Germany and reorganize Central Europe. He had to overcome the obstacle that Germany comprised 39 sovereign states grouped in the so-called German Confederation. All the while, Central European trends were warily observed by the two...

Catholics and Catholic organizations should not endorse organizations with “morally objectionable” missions, North Dakota’s bishops said, citing Amnesty International, the March of Dimes and Susan G. Komen for the Cure because of their links to abortion or unethical research. Bishops Paul A. Zipfel of Bismarck and Samuel J. Aquila of Fargo in a March 10 statement called upon pastors, clergy and the lay faithful to be prudent and just in making their charitable decisions, particularly on issues related to human life and marriage.  “All human life is sacred and must be protected,” the bishops said. “This is why we should...

Vin Suprynowic, writing in the Las Vegas Review Journal, writes: "The modern Prussian police state was built by Bismarck and others in the 19th century on a Spartan model, giving the central government vastly greater control over the individual than had ever been considered possible before. Bismarck’s program centered squarely on insurance programs designed to increase support for the ever larger and more powerful government. The program included health insurance, workman’s compensation, disability insurance and old-age retirement pensions, all innovations at the time. Starting with the model of Prussian compulsory schooling, American “educators,” starting with John Dewey and Edward Thorndike...

The Forest Service says it's trying to protect resources by ordering a 30 percent reduction in cattle grazing on grasslands in southwestern North Dakota. Some ranchers were surprised by the order. Doug Pope is the president of the Little Missouri Grazing Association. He says the Medora District has had more than 4 inches of rain this spring. He says a lot of people thought Forest Service letter ordering the cuts was unwarranted. The Forest Service manages grazing on about 1 million public acres on the National Grasslands. Ron Jablonski is the Forest Service ranger for the Medora District. He says...

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of...

Back to Story - Help German aristocrat Bismarck dead at 44 By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer 42 minutes ago Count Gottfried von Bismarck, the stylish and troubled scion of one of Germany's most famous families, has died at the age of 44, police said Wednesday.The Metropolitan Police said Bismarck, great-great-grandson of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who unified Germany, was found dead at his apartment in London's tony Chelsea district on Monday.A post-mortem examination was due to be held Wednesday. ------------ snip -------------------- As an undergraduate, he was known for his lavish parties and extravagant appearance, which at...