If you have Canadian roots, you’ll want to know about a rich new resource now at Findmypast.com. It’s the Canadian Books collection, with 71,000 pages of keyword-searchable histories, vital records, directories, published genealogies and more.
“Dating back to the 1600s, the Canadian Books boast 71,000 pages of items such as military, religious, occupational and immigration records, business directories, published genealogies and BMDs [births, marriages and deaths],” states a Findmypast.com press release. “The books feature a sizeable amount of military records with various nominal rolls and rolls of honour relating mostly to the First World War, such as The Royal Montreal Regiment, 14th Battalion, University of Toronto Roll of Service buy heartworm medication online canada 1914-1918 and 31st Canadian Infantry CEF 1914-1919.”
Though the core content is Canada, the reach of this 200-volume collection extends outside Canada’s boundaries. “With titles such as Sketches of Irish soldiers, The Scotch-Irish of California, and German-Canadian Folklore, the collection is valuable for people with Canadian ancestry and those who can trace their origins back to the UK or Europe.”
This collection comes from the Archive CD Books Canada Project, which has gathered, renovated and reproduced Canadian historical books, documents and maps for over a decade. The 200 volumes are searchable through all Findmypast international sites with a World Subscription and in the U.S. and Canada resources at Findmypast.com.
Exactly one hundred years ago on April 22, a time capsule was buried in the basement of the First English Lutheran Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.A. During a ceremony this April 22, a crowd that included the governor oversaw the opening of the “Century Chest.”
The entire ceremony was captured on video. Skip ahead to the good part, where they start opening the packages in the enormous box, at about 1 hour and 10 minutes into the video. You’ll see a prize-winning plate from the state fair, an old desk telephone with its bright green cord still wrapped around it, an Edison phonograph machine, artwork, photos, newspaper articles, clothing, a pen used by U.S. President McKinley to sign the Free Homes Bill and more!
My question for you: what would YOU put in a 100-year time capsule? Leave your comments.
When I started podcasting back in early 2007, it was still sort of the Wild West of podcasting. The medium had only been invented and gone public in 2005. It has been exciting to be part of a new frontier of sound and to reach people around the world interested in genealogy through mp3 files online. And the podcast has been far reaching, having recently celebrated 1,000,000 downloads!
Back in 1878 Thomas Edison was experiencing the first “Wild West” of sound when he created the first recording of the human voice with his phonograph invention. Today, historians are working diligently to meticulously capture and preserve those earliest recordings as this short video explains.
If you have teens in your family then chances are you have heard the phrase OMG which stands for oh my God. But have you ever wondered who started it? You may have thought it was Alicia Silverstone in the 1995 movie Clueless, but actually you have to dig much further back in history to find its origins. All the way back to 1917 in fact.
George Mason’s University’s History News Network website says that the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary discovered a use of “OMG” from 1917. It comes in a letter by British Admiral John”Jacky” Fisher, who wrote and I quote:
“I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis—O.M.G. (Oh! My God!)—Shower it on the Admiralty!”
According to the site “Fisher was famous for being the driving force behind the creation of the HMS Dreadnought, an advanced capital ship which, when it was launched in 1906, seemed revolutionary. This, the world navies agreed, made all other capital ships obsolete, but, distressingly to the British, destroyed their long-standing lead in naval power, if temporarily. The result was an enormously expensive Anglo-German naval race, which did much to bring on World War I.”
The letter was published in his book Memories, published in 1919 (below in Google Books. Enter OMG into the search box to see it for yourself)
If you have Canadian roots, you’ll want to know about a rich new resource now at Findmypast.com. It’s the Canadian Books collection, with 71,000 pages of keyword-searchable histories, vital records, directories, published genealogies and more.
