A nearly 50-year-old cold case in Colorado Springs has been solved, thanks to innovations in DNA testing and genealogy research. Authorities were looking into the killing of 14-year-old Maria Loraine Honzell, who was stabbed to death in 1977. Despite an investigation, the Colorado Springs Police Department could not identify a person of interest.

According to an account from CSPD, the department received a call for a possible suicide. Officers arrived to find Honzell dead from multiple stab wounds. An autopsy concluded the death was instead a murder. In their investigation, CSPD found that the victim was babysitting for a neighbor.

A suspect was identified only after extensive research, including DNA analysis and traditional genealogy means, according to CSPD. This, after the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was able to eventually determine that the suspect was male.

A lab used a public genetic genealogy database to identify potential relatives. The genetic matches then were used in traditional research, including utilizing public family trees, newspaper archives and public records.

You can read more in an article by Andrea Chalfin published in the cpr.org web site at: https://www.cpr.org/2024/05/09/47-year-old-cold-case-in-colorado-springs-solved/.

For Dr. Shantal Monroe-Knight, Minister of Culture in the office of Barbados Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, the strong ties between Liberia and Barbados bear significant historical importance that should never be allowed to fizzle.

“Unless we are careful guardians of our own stories, the past can never be repeated,” Dr. Monroe-Knight told visiting Liberian pilgrims at the Archives Genealogy Marketplace Wednesday.

The event showcased Barbados culture and heritage; genealogical research done on families  that migrated  to Liberia in 1865.

Her comment come in the midst of a firestorm in the US States state of Florida where 72% of the books have been pulled from the nation’s schools.

“I don’t know if you all can remember fundamentally, that in these contemporary times, there are already efforts to reframe the narrative of slavery and its impact. Across the United States there are already places in which they are rewriting textbooks, in which they are putting aside certain  texts and creating a narrative that not only were slaves complacent but that they benefited and were satisfied. So, if we are not careful, if we don’t pass on those stories, if we don’t pass on the legacy of resilience, for our children, we have to be careful, least it is repeated.”

The roots of slavery were heavily entrenched in not just Africa but the Caribbean as well. Between 1820 and 1864, only 11,000 African Americans emigrated to Liberia. This includes 4,000 free Black people and 7,000 former slaves who gained freedom by agreeing to emigrate to Liberia. The significance here is not in numbers but in the meaning that Liberia held for African Americans in the 1800s. Similarly, Barbados, the birthplace of British slave society and the most ruthlessly colonized by Britain’s ruling elites. They made their fortunes from sugar produced by an enslaved, “disposable” workforce, and this great wealth secured Britain’s place as an imperial superpower and cause untold suffering.

At the time, the inhumane legacy of plantation society helped shaped modern Barbados.

For Dr Monroe-Knight, this is a part of the journey that three and four generations have passed, illustrating that it means that the current generation has fundamental responsibility from the ongoing pilgrimage that must be true to that mantle.

You can read more in an article by Rodney D. Sieh published in the frontpageafricaonline web site at: https://bit.ly/3UEs6SY.

A 300-year-old mansion in Midlothian has been “saved from collapse” after receiving a multi-million-pound restoration grant.

Campaigners have been fighting to save the Category A listed Mavisbank House near Loanhead since it was severely damaged by a fire 50 years ago. Last week, the National Heritage Memorial Fund announced that a £5.3 million grant would be given to the Landmark Trust to restore the building and "save it from collapse".

Midlothian Council said they would be seeking to implement a compulsory purchase order to allow them to take over the site once the funding is in place. The building has been derelict since it was gutted by a fire in 1973, with the ownership rights uncertain following the death of Mrs Willis Stevenson, who bought the property in the 1950s.

It was built by Scottish architect William Adam in 1723 as a summer residence for John Clerk of Penicuik – a well-known figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. It was also used as a hospital for those living with mental illnesses during the 19th century before ultimately falling into disrepair.

In the 1980s Midlothian Council ordered for the building to be demolished. However, volunteers maintained a vigil on the property until the decision was reversed.

You can read more in an article by Ross Hunter published in thenational.scot web site at: https://bit.ly/3wAUmha.

Stephen King and his wife, fellow novelist Tabitha King, have donated $1.25 million to the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

The Kings made the gift through their foundation.

The Boston-based organization is the nation's oldest and largest genealogical society. It says it will use the gift announced Tuesday to develop educational programming and fund a curriculum in family history for public school students.

It will also help the organization expand its headquarters.

Brenton Simons is president and CEO of the society. He says the money will have "far-reaching benefits."

The society says the Kings have deep personal interest in family and local history and their importance in education.

I have used this new feature briefly and I have already fallen in love with it!

From the MyHeritage Blog:

New: Multi-Photo Scanner on the MyHeritage Mobile App

There’s nothing like indulging that sweet sense of nostalgia when you look at old photos. We’re delighted to announce that we’ve made it even easier to scan family photos using the MyHeritage mobile app. We recently added a powerful, state-of-the art Photo Scanner that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to capture entire album pages in one tap. The new Photo Scanner uses the same technology that we use in Reimagine, our standalone app for preserving and improving your family photos that we released last year. Users were excited to efficiently scan their cherished photos and have them sync with their MyHeritage family site. We’re excited to bring the same powerful technology to the MyHeritage mobile app, so you can preserve your family photos and improve them with our suite of photo features! 

The MyHeritage mobile app is available on iOS and Android. If you aren’t using the MyHeritage app already, download it for free from the App Store or Google Play today.

How it works

Photo Scanner is a state-of-the-art feature developed by MyHeritage’s AI team. It enables quick and easy scanning of entire album pages or multiple loose photos in a single tap. The scanner then uses cutting-edge, cloud-based AI technology to automatically detect the individual photos and crop them, saving hours of work traditionally required with other scanners. Scanned photos are saved in a dedicated album on your MyHeritage family site.

Accessing Photo Scanner

Open the MyHeritage mobile app on your device. A banner appears with a quick shortcut to start scanning your photos. You can tap “Scan photos” on the banner to start scanning, or you can access Photo Scanner by tapping “Photos” on the home screen.

You can read much more about this new feature in the  MyHeritage Blog at: https://bit.ly/4bngkUc.

Here is an article that is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it describes the changing technology around us, a topic often of interest to genealogists. It also has to do with history, which IS a topic often described in this newsletter. Besides, I found it interesting and decided to share it.

2011 saw the last floppy disk produced. There are still individuals and organisations who use floppy disks even though new supplies haven't been available for more than ten years. Everybody has a different explanation for why they use technology that is basically from the 1970s.

Selling "new," that is, unopened, floppy disks for years, US businessman Tom Persky continues to make great profit from the business. He is the owner of Floppydisk.com, which sells disks for around US$1 (£0.80) each, however certain larger capacity models can cost up to US$10 (£8). Customers of Persky are found all over the world, and you could divide them about 50/50 between industrial users and hobbyists and enthusiasts such as Espen Kraft. The latter group includes those who utilize floppy disk-requiring PCs at work. They are basically stuck with a format that most of the rest of the world has since forgotten.

Still, Persky continues, "I sell thousands of floppy disks to the airline industry." He won't elaborate. Companies are unhappy when I discuss them. It is commonly known, though, that some Boeing 747s, for instance, load vital software upgrades into their avionics and navigation computers using floppy disks. Persky suggests that although these older planes may not be as common in the US or Europe these days, you might discover one in a developing nation. Other government systems, industrial equipment, and even animatronic figures still use floppy disks.

And the 1980-launched Muni Metro light train in San Francisco won't start up every morning unless the responsible personnel pick up a floppy disk and insert it into the computer that runs the Automatic Train Control System, or ATCS. "Every day the computer needs to be told what it's supposed to do," a San Francisco Municipal Transport Agency (SFMTA) spokeswoman said. "There is nowhere to permanently install software without a hard drive."

This computer has to be restarted in such a way repeatedly, he adds — it can't simply be left on, for fear of its memory degrading.

Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Gokhan Yazgi announced that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has read nearly 2,000 Hittite tablets – thousands of years old historical documents.  

The first phase of the project, which was initiated to read, scan and digitize Hittite cuneiform tablets in the inventory of the Ankara Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul Archaeological Museums and Corum Museum using artificial intelligence, was completed in recent months.

Within the framework of the project carried out in cooperation with Ankara University and the General Directorate of Museums with Cultural Assets of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, thousands of years-old tablets found in the Hittite capital Hattusa were photographed in high resolution and scanned in 3D.

Hittite tablets and digital library

The project's first stage involved learning 500 cuneiform Hittite tablets with artificial intelligence, which achieved 75.66% success. So far, artificial intelligence has read 2,000 tablets. The data obtained from the readings will be shared with the scientific world, and a study will be conducted by Hittitologists.

Hittite tablets containing historical documents will be opened to the world with the digital library established.

At the “On the Trail of the Hittites: New Information and Perspectives” symposium in Corum, Yazgi stated that they are making a great effort to use technology to understand the Hittite civilization better.

Yazgi added that the data obtained from the tablets will be shared with the public through a scientific study by Ankara University and the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

From the collection of over 5,000 historic photographs kept in the Campbell Room of local history, Salina Public Library has opened an online Digital Archive that provides the public with virtual access to images from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Visit salinapubliclibrary.org/local-history to view these photos in an online digital archive. More people can be better bonded to the history and culture of Salina/Saline County if these photos are preserved and made more easily accessible.

This project came to pass when Salina Public Library received a $3,800 Kansas Digital Access to Historic Records (KDAHR) grant from the Kansas State Historical Records Advisory Board (KSHRAB) to acquire a photo scanner. About 500 photos in the library's collection taken before 1900 were digitized using the scanner.

"It gives us great pleasure to introduce this initiative that will increase awareness of Salina's past." information services head Stefanie Knopp said.

Working with groups all around Kansas, the KSHRAB preserves and makes historical records more accessible to audiences now and in the future. The Board launched the KDAHR award program to enable groups to improve community involvement with local history and online accessibility to historical documents.

For the first time in the history of the Internet, all issues of the former Jewish magazine ‘Soviet Heimland’ have begun to be digitized.

See https://bit.ly/3UH695L for all the details.

NOTE: The article at https://bit.ly/3UH695L is published in Yiddish. You can use Google Translate or another online translation service to translate it to other languages, including to English.

The following is from Geneanet.org:

On May 24-26, 2024, take pictures of graves in a nearby cemetery.

Since cemeteries are among the most important resources for genealogists, Geneanet has launched the ‘Save our Graves’ project to capture headstones before they are lost.

On May 24-26, 2024, we will need you to photograph as many graves as possible worldwide with the Geneanet mobile app or with your camera.

If you can’t take pictures in a cemetery, you can help to index existing pictures in the Geneanet collaborative database.

How to participate?

1. You have a mobile or tablet

• Install the GeneaGraves app for Android or iOS,

 

• Go to a nearby cemetery, launch the app, select a project or create a new one, then take as many pictures as you wish,
• Once you’re back home, upload the pictures to your Geneanet account via a Wi-Fi access point. These pictures will be free for every Geneanet member.

2. You don’t have a mobile or tablet

• Go to a nearby cemetery and take pictures of graves with a camera,
• Once you’re back home, upload the pictures to your personal computer, then go to en.geneanet.org/cemetery/upload.

Please click here to see if your nearby cemetery is not already listed on Geneanet.