Kaiser's African Gunship Enjoys New Lease on Life

"Almost 100 years ago, the German Kaiser ordered a warship to be secretly constructed and carried in pieces over mountains to help hold on to Germany's prize African colony. The battered ship is now receiving help from an unlikely source -- the German state where it was first made.

It's really all his grandfather's fault. When Hermann-Josef Averdung was a boy, his grandfather would often tell him about the most wonderful ship he had ever helped build -- and about the great adventure it embarked upon.

Averdung is now 66 years old. His hair is white, and he is a councilman in the northern German city of Papenburg. But the years have not dimmed his memory of this story. The story, in fact, has brought him to where he is now: standing at dawn on a rusty pontoon on Lake Tanganyika, in the heart of Africa. As a large ship slowly glides up alongside the pier, Averdung goes weak in the knees, and tears well up in his eyes. Its name, Liemba, is still visible on the front of the hull..."

Centuries-old slipper found on Canna is preserved

"A shoe dating from the 17th Century found in a box under a bed on the island of Canna has been carefully preserved.

The National Trust for Scotland, which owns the isle off Skye, said the artefact was so rare a storage box has been specially made to conserve it..."

In Joseph Stalin's birthplace, tyrant is finally toppled

"For over half a century a forbidding statue of Joseph Stalin loomed over Gori, the Georgian town where the Soviet Union's most notorious tyrant was born. Nearby is the modest one-storey hut where the young Stalin grew up. There is also a museum, complete with Stalin's personal railway carriage, portraits and letters.

But in a secret operation early today Georgia's pro-western government ripped the monument down. The six-metre high bronze statue of Stalin kitted out in a full-length general's overcoat is to be moved into the museum courtyard..."

Who is down there?

A few weeks ago we located the grave plots of my Uncle Roderick and Great Grandmother at Witton Cemetery in Birmingham. What we asked the Cemetery to do though was to check the records and confirm who was in the plots. We thought both had 2 occupants.

It was confirmed that this plot contained my Great Grandmother Rose Ellen Grant and also George Henry Walter John Grant . Both passed away during World War 2.

The second plot details showed however how old hand written records can be troublesome. Uncle Roderick was listed as Robert Roderick (middle name first) and my Great Grandfather Stephen Morris was listed as being Stephanie!

Photography exhibition reveals life on the canals in the 1940s and 50s

"Robert Longden's evocative pictures of working life on Britain's inland waterways of the 1940s and 50s are being shown for the first time.

It seems fitting that the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry should be hosting an exhibition of Robert Longden's evocative pictures of working life on the inland waterways of the 1940s and 50s. Longden's employer was Sir Alfred Herbert, a local philanthropist who ran the biggest machine-tool company in the world from a factory that backed on to the Coventry canal. Both men died in 1957. Herbert bequeathed the gallery to the city and Longden's photographs are about to be shown there for the first time..."

Apostle images from 4th century found under street in Italy

"Archaeologists exploring a Christian catacomb under a residential Roman street have unearthed the earliest known images of the apostles Andrew and John.

Using a newly developed laser to burn away centuries of calcium deposits without damaging the paintings beneath, the team found the late 4th-century images in the richly decorated tomb of a Roman noblewoman..."

Saving "virtual worlds" from extinction

"Sometime this August, librarians at the University of Illinois will finish archiving over a dozen famous computer games, then step back to consider where to go next with their project. These programs go back over four decades, and include a 1993 version of Doom, various editions of Warcraft, and even MIT's Spacewar! circa 1962.

We wondered, given the gaming nature of most of the software being preserved, why the venture is calling itself the Preserving Virtual Worlds project. So we called up the project's coordinator, Jerome McDonough, Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, to ask him about the name..."

Hopefully they can preserve those hills in Pole Position, i got a stash in them tha hills.

Captain Scott's hut saved after restoration fundraising project

"The hut, which still contains boxes of stores belonging to Scott's party from 1917, was falling into disrepair after almost a century of being battered by the elements in Antarctica.

Sir David Attenborough spoke out about the need to save the hut, saying: "It is a monument to the great age of heroic exploration.

"It would be a scandal if Britain failed to provide the money to make sure that this astonishing place is protected for future generations."

After 1917 it remained untouched until 1956 when US expeditioners dug it out of the snow and ice..."

Ancient climate change 'link' to CO2

"A 'global pattern' of change in the Earth's climate began 2.7 million years ago, say scientists. 

Researchers found that, at this point, temperature patterns in the tropics slipped into step with patterns of Ice Ages in the Northern Hemisphere.

They report in the journal Science that atmospheric CO2 could be the "missing link" to explain this global pattern..."

A new blog look

I thought it was high time this blog had a bit of a face-lift (and i wanted to play around with the upgraded Blogger template tools too). Let me know if you have any problems with the new look. I'm also going to try and post more frequently.

Taking back the family origins a lot further

Previous family history investigation has been along my grandmother's mother's line delving into the Morrises and Genners which of course took the family history trail to India. As recounted in the comments to this post the trail goes cold in the early 19th century. Next step is to investigate my grandmother's father's line, the Grants. Luckily some other family members have already been investigating this.

My uncle has given me a copy of a family tree taking the Grants back to the mid-17th century at least. The family seems to have come from around Eynsham in Oxfordshire (the earliest known ancestor appearing to be a Francis Evans born in 1654 who married a John Grant). The Genner/Morris line come from Gloucestershire so that firmly puts my roots in the south midlands anyway.

A wizard's words finally set free

"To hear an ailing 82-year-old Thomas Edison speak, with the great inventor's voice, wheezy and high-pitched, growing husky and choked as he praised his good friend Henry Ford who stood alongside President Herbert Hoover on a stage on Oct. 21, 1929 is catching lightning in a bottle.

Earlier that night, the crowd heard Albert Einstein offering words of praise for Edison in German from Berlin.

It is contained in one of the world's oldest surviving radio broadcasts, recorded on an obscure machine that General Electric developed in 1922 and called a pallophotophone -- which means 'shaking light sound' in Greek..."

Scientists use plants to date Egypt's pharaohs

"Scientists have established for the first time clear dates for the ruling dynasties of ancient Egypt after carbon dating plant remains, according to research published Thursday.

The results will force historians to revise their records for the two millennia when ancient Egypt dominated the Mediterranean world and hopefully end debate once and for all between rival Egyptologists..."

(End a debate between historians, yeah right!)

The mystery of Caravaggio's death solved at last – painting killed him

"He killed a man, brawled constantly, rowed with patrons and fled justice while revolutionising painting with his chiaroscuro style. Now, as if to underline how dramatic Caravaggio's short life was, researchers say he may have quite literally died for his art.

Scientists seeking to shed light on the mysterious death of the Italian artist in 1610 said they are "85% sure" they have found his bones thanks to carbon dating and DNA checks on remains excavated in Tuscany.

Caravaggio's suspected bones come complete with levels of lead high enough to have driven the painter mad and helped finish him off..."

German cathedral bones 'are Saxon queen Eadgyth'

"Scientists are to announce that bones found in a German cathedral are those of one of the earliest members of the English royal family.

The remains of Queen Eadgyth, who died in 946, were excavated in Magdeburg Cathedral in 2008..."

Lost John Ford movie unearthed in New Zealand

"An extraordinary collection of 75 early American films, including several that had been considered lost to history, have been discovered in New Zealand and are being returned to the US.

The cache includes the only copy believed to exist of a late silent movie by one of the giants of American film-making, John Ford, as well as several works produced between 1910 and 1920 starring important female actors such as Clara Bow and Mabel Normand..."

Talking of movies recent family history research by my Uncle indicates that i could be related to Cary Grant. Personally i am sceptical but it would be nice if it was true!

Bring on the history revolution in schools

Geoffery Alderman writes : "Overshadowed by other events both national and international, the announcement at the Guardian Hay festival by education secretary Michael Gove that there is to be a review of the school history curriculum deserves widespread applause.

It is a long time since my own children were at secondary school, and since I served as a GCE A-level history examiner – and indeed as a chief examiner, setting the questions as well as overseeing the grades. But I have deliberately maintained a watching brief on developments in the school history curriculum, not least because I teach university students who have followed this curriculum prior to starting a degree programme..."

Scars from lion bite suggest headless Romans found in York were gladiators

"The haunting mystery of Britain's headless Romans may have been solved at last, thanks to scars from a lion's bite and hammer marks on decapitated skulls.

The results of forensic work, announced today, on more than 80 skeletons of well-built young men, gradually exhumed from the gardens of a York terrace over a decade, suggests that the world's best-preserved gladiator graveyard has been found..."

Locating the graves of ancestors

Today i went to Witton Cemetery in Birmingham to help my Mum and Uncle find a couple of graves. One was of their oldest brother Roderick Grant who died in 1935 while still a child and the other that of one of their grandmothers.

They had not visited the site for decades and had no idea where the graves were but thankfully the staff at the cemetery were able to quickly tell us roughly where the graves were located. It was still not the easiest thing in the world though to find the graves. Although every grave plot is numbered the number is only displayed in a headstone and not all headstones have a visible number. A lot of graves are not marked by any headstone including that of Roderick's. Luckily the grave next to Roderick's was numbered so we could find were he was. In the photo below he is under on the right.

We think my great-grandfather Stephen Morris was buried here too though will need to get the cemetery staff to look up for us, they said there was someone else buried in the plot. The next grave to look for was that of my great-grand mother Rose Eleanor Grant and that was much easier to find (once we knew what to look for). Like Roderick's her grave is unmarked.

I also managed to get my hands on a family tree for the Grants which will very useful for continuing family research (well just on loan but i will get it copied).