The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:

Appointment Concludes Six-Month Global Search

Interim CEO Howard Hochhauser to Return to Role as CFO and COO

LEHI, Utah and SAN FRANCISCO — April 19, 2018 — Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Margo Georgiadis as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors.

National DNA Day commemorates the successful completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 and the discovery of DNA’s double helix in 1953. The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) began celebrating DNA Day annually on April 25th after the 108th Congress passed concurrent resolutions designating it as DNA Day. The goal of National DNA Day is to offer students, teachers and the public an opportunity to learn about and celebrate the latest advances in genomic research and explore how those advances might impact their lives.

Det finnes flere eksempler på store kjendisfamilier, men her er noen kanskje ukjente familierelasjoner.

Her til lands er det kanskje Skavlan-familien som har flest profilerte medlemmer......

Guri Schanke (56) og Elisabeth «Bettan» Andreassen (60) har i mange år vært gode venninner og kolleger i showbiz-verdenen.

Men det som er langt mindre kjent enn deres gode vennskap, er at Bettan er Guris tante.......

Isdalskvinnen er betegnelsen på en uidentifisert kvinne som ble funnet død i Isdalen i Bergen i 1970.

Kvinnen ble funnet i en del av Isdalen kalt Dødsdalen, som ligger i retning opp mot Ulriken. Rundt bålet ble det blant annet funnet et utbrent pass. Obduksjonen viste at kvinnen hadde fått et slag i halsregionen og hadde inntatt flere sovetabletter før døden inntraff.

Politiet sporet kvinnen til to kofferter som ble funnet på NSB jernbanestasjon i Bergen. På alle klesplaggene var merkelappene systematisk fjernet og fingeravtrykkene fant man bare fragmenter av. Det ble også funnet en fuktighetskrem som man måtte ha resept på. Legens navn og dato var imidlertid fjernet. I foret på den ene kofferten ble det funnet ca. 500 tyske mark. Det ble funnet fragmenter av ett fingeravtrykk på et par knuste brilleglass. Avtrykket var imidlertid ikke godt nok til å kunne identifiseres, men analysen styrket politiets teori om at det tilhørte den avdøde kvinnen. Politiet fikk laget en fantomtegning utfra vitnebeskrivelser og analyser gjort av liket, og tegningene ble publisert i mediene og kvinnen ble etterlyst via Interpol i en rekke land.

NRK og BBC lager nå en internasjonal podkastserie om saken.

Kripos har også nylig sendt ut en ny internasjonal etterlysning der de ber om ekstra oppmerksomhet fra de områdene av Europa der hun kan ha vokst opp.

– At hun kan ha brødre, søstre eller foreldre her i Tyskland er veldig interessant. Det kan kanskje hende noen husker henne, sier Kaffanke som laget tv-reportasjen for ARD.

Kilder: Wikipedia, NRK

 

Les mer og hør podkasten «Death in Ice Valley» på NRK Radioi

Har du noen gang lett etter en grav på en kirkegård som du vet er den rette, men graven etter din slektning viser seg å være slettet for flere år siden? I de tilfellene er det kjekt å kunne kontakte kirkekontoret som sitter på oversikt over hvem som ligger begravd hvor, uansett om gravstøtten står der eller ikke. 

For over a century and a half shame and silence were the most common Irish responses to the calamity of the Great Hunger. A million dead, a million fled was the old saying, but concern over igniting further strife in the present (a particular concern during the Troubles) kept a lid on most discussions of it. But now a new roadshow coming to the USA and Canada plans to give voice to the descendants of famine era Irish immigrants, many for the first time.

An article in the Cowley (Kansas) CourierTimes highlights a frequent question: Who owns a cemetery?

Actually, in many parts of the U.S., most cemeteries have clearly identified owners. Municipal cemeteries are owned by the town or city. The local Catholic cemetery is obviously owned by the Catholic Church and other cemeteries may be owned by other religious organizations, fraternal organizations, while some others are owned by corporations or by non-profit cemetery associations.

The following announcement was written by the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy:

The Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG) continues to reach out to advanced, experienced teaching professionals in the genealogical community for new course content, presentation, and publication proposals.

The following Calls for Proposals are now open:

SLIG 2020 Course Proposals: SLIG offers courses on local, state, regional, and international topics taught at an intermediate level or above; specific record types, skills, methodology, and related technologies or strategies are preferred at a high-intermediate to advanced level.

Ancestry has added a collection of more than 380,000 Service Records (1914-1920) for men who served in the New Zealand Defence Forces during World War 1. It holds 3,900 records of men born in Ireland.

Some of the Personnel Files are extensive and contain superb family history information with parents names and birthplaces, occupation, level of education, current address, physical descriptions, marital status (plus name/address of wife) and dependents and brief details of any prior military service.

This is an excellent chance to save on a DNA test for yourself… or give two or three of them to others.

Click here to learn more.

Last month, MyHeritage launched the DNA Quest, a new pro bono initiative to help adoptees and their birth families reunite through genetic testing. The initiative, initially launched in the USA only, received an amazing response. More than 10,000 applications were submitted so far to receive free DNA kits, from the quota of 15,000 free DNA kits pledged by MyHeritage, worth more than one million dollars.

Wikipedia defines crowdsourcing as “… a sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods and services, including ideas and finances, from a large, relatively open and often rapidly-evolving group of internet users; it divides work between participants to achieve a cumulative result.”

Crowdsourcing seems to be a great tool for genealogists to work together for the benefit of all. I have written often about the use of crowdsourcing in genealogy.

Vi har dem i slektstrærne alle sammen, de slektningene som vi ikke finner ut av. Hvor ble de av? Hvem var egentlig faren til din oldefar? Hvorfor er ikke tippoldemor oppført i samme kirkebok som sine eldre og yngre søsken?

Every now and then, something happens which creates a lasting memory. There are historic events that everyone remembers, along with exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about them. These are called flashbulb memories, because they are events that are so powerful and impactful that the effect is as though a flashbulb went off in your mind, fixing a mental image like a photograph that you will forever associate with that historic event.

The Historic Graves project tweeted yesterday that its community-based surveying groups have now surveyed a quarter of all graveyards in the Republic of Ireland.

This means the survey results of some 800 of ROI's 3,600 historic burial grounds are now held on the project's interactive website – HistoricGraves.com. All counties except Donegal and Louth are represented. I don't know the exact total number of graves surveyed, but (based on some stats produced by the project team back in 2012), I'd estimate it's in the region of 68,000.

The Congregational Library and Archives’ “Hidden History” project is locating and digitizing New England church records from 1630 to 1800 and putting them online for free.

According to the project’s web site, “Congregational church records are an unparalleled source of information about the religious activities of the early colonists, and about many other aspects of early American life. The Congregational Library and Archives, in partnership with the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale is currently preserving these records and making them available to the public.

Flash drives have been around for 15 years or more. Sometimes called “thumb drives” or “jump drives” or “memory sticks,” these tiny devices have become one of the most useful devices a computer user can own.

A flash drive is a data storage device about the size of a tube of lipstick that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable, and much smaller than a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM disk.

Monday 16 April:NLI Reading Room and Manuscript Room closed. Venue: National Library of Ireland, Kildare St, Dublin 2. On-going Monday closures to facilitate extensive redevelopment of the premises. All other services/exhibitons/cafe, incl. Genealogy Advisory Service, operating as normal.

Tuesday 17 April:Family Finder 3, with Martin McDowell, a course over 3 consecutive Tuesday evenings (being repeated due to demand). Host: North of Ireland Family History Society. Venue: Honneyman Room, NIFHS Research Centre, Unit C4, Valley Business Centre, 67 Church Road, Newtownabbey, Co.

Förra månaden lanserade vi DNA Quest, ett nytt pro bono-initiativ för att hjälpa adoptivbarn och deras biologiska familjer att återförenas genom genetisk testning.

Initiativet, som ursprungligen lanserades i USA, fick ett fantastiskt gensvar. Mer än 10,000 ansökningar har hittills lämnats in, för att erhålla ett gratis DNA-kit, utifrån kvoten på 15,000 gratis DNA-kits som MyHeritage har utlovat, värt mer än en miljon dollar.

The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

I recently read an article in which the author claimed to describe data preservation techniques. He correctly pointed out that floppy disks, CD-ROM disks, magnetic media, flash drives, and other forms of digital storage all have limited lifespans. He then concluded by claiming that the only method of storing data for long-term preservation was to print everything on paper.