North Dakota (ⁱ/ˌnɔrθ dəˈkoʊtə/) is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States, along the Canadian border. The state is bordered by Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the north, Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south and Montana to the west. North Dakota is the 19th most extensive, but the 3rd least populous and the 4th least densely populated of the 50 United States. North Dakota was created from the northern portion of the Dakota Territory and admitted to the Union on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with South Dakota.

The state capital is Bismarck and the largest city is Fargo. The primary public universities are located in Grand Forks and Fargo. The U.S. Air Force operates air bases at Minot AFB and Grand Forks AFB.

For more than a decade, the state has had a strong economy, with unemployment lower than the national average, job and population growth, and low housing vacancies. Much of the growth has been based on development of the Bakken oil shale fields in the western part of the state, but it has also had growth in the technology and service sectors. Flooding in June 2011 has caused extensive damage to Minot and threatened Bismarck, the capital city.

Sir Thomas North (1535 - 1604) was an English translator of Plutarch, second son of the 1st Baron North.

He is supposed to have been a student of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1557. In 1574 he accompanied his brother, Lord North, on a visit to the French court. He served as captain in the year of the Armada, and was knighted about three years later. His name is on the roll of justices of the peace for Cambridge in 1592 and again in 1597, and he received a small pension (£40 a year) from the queen in 1601.

He translated, in 1557, Guevara's Reloj de Principes (commonly known as Libro áureo), a compendium of moral counsels chiefly compiled from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, under the title of Diall of Princes. The English of this work is one of the earliest specimens of the ornate, copious and pointed style for which educated young Englishmen had acquired a taste in their Continental travels and studies.

North translated from a French copy of Guevara, but seems to have been well acquainted with the Spanish version. The book had already been translated by Lord Berners, but without reproducing the rhetorical artifices of the original. North's version, with its mannerisms and its constant use of antithesis, set the fashion which was to culminate in John Lyly's Euphues.