GRAND FORKS, N.D. — Within minutes after the elephants and horses, lions and a rhinoceros were locked safely into their stalls, as the trapeze artists and sword swallowers took a chair to rest following the Forepaugh-Sells circus parade in June 1905, darkness, like some sudden Biblical phenomenon, fell onto the town.

It was midday. A cyclone-like roar accompanied coal-black clouds. Meadowlarks and sparrows fled, seeking shelter.

Thousands of residents — eager for the upcoming circus attraction — lined the city’s downtown streets. Those watching the parade from inside rushed to their windows as the “most terrific hail storm that ever visited North Dakota” broke, hurling hail the size of fists, according to the Grand Forks Herald.

“The fact that the storm did not occur during the parade

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