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  • Perspectives on the Greatest Generation with Garrett Graff

    1 Jul 2025 9:36 AM | Anonymous

    The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

    Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library 

    1000 Beal Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48109

    Tuesday, September 2, 2025 - 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. EDT

    Register for the program here 
    Watch the program live here

    The author of two major oral histories about the turning points of World War II — the D-Day invasion of Europe as well as the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of Japan — Graff will discuss the legacy of the Greatest Generation, how World War II changed the world, and the first-person realities of fighting in the greatest conflict humanity has ever known.

    Following the talk there will be a sale and signing of two of his books, “When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day” and “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.”

    “Refer

  • Judge OKs sale of 23andMe — and Its Trove of DNA Data — to a Nonprofit Led by its Founder

    1 Jul 2025 9:32 AM | Anonymous

    A bankruptcy judge has approved the sale of the insolvent genetics firm 23andMe to a nonprofit run by one of the company's co-founders. The deal effectively avoids the controversial transfer of DNA data to a third party.

    The prospect of 23andMe's trove of genetic information on millions of people passing to the highest bidder had sparked outcry when it was announced in May that New York-based Regeneron Pharmaceuticals had won an auction to acquire the firm for $256 million.

    Details may be found at: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/30/nx-s1-5451398/23andme-sale-approved-dna-data 

  • It is the First Day of the Month: Back Up Your Genealogy Files

    1 Jul 2025 9:12 AM | Anonymous

    Today is the first day of the month. That is a good time to back up your genealogy files. Then test your backups!

    Your backups aren't worth much unless you make a quick test by restoring a small file or two after the backup is completed.

    Actually, you can make backups at any time. However, it is easier and safer if you have a specific schedule. The first day of the month is easy to remember, so I would suggest you back up your genealogy files at least on the first day of every month, if not more often. (My computers automatically make off-site backups of all new files every few minutes.)

    Given the events of the past few months with genealogy websites laying off employees and cutting back on services, you now need backup copies of everything more than ever. What happens if the company that holds your online data either goes off line or simply deletes the service where your data is held? If you have copies of everything stored either in your own computer, what happens if you have a hard drive crash or other disaster? If you have one or more recent backup copies, such a loss would be inconvenient but not a disaster.

    Of course, you might want to back up more than your genealogy files. Family photographs, your checkbook register, all sorts of word processing documents, email messages, and much more need to be backed up regularly. Why not do that on the first day of each month? or even more often?

  • National Archives News

    30 Jun 2025 1:24 PM | Anonymous

    The following is a press release issued by the (U.S.) National Archives and Records Administration:

  • Georgia Public Library Service Expands Digitized Collections and Historical Newspaper Access

    30 Jun 2025 10:36 AM | Anonymous

    The following is a press release issued by the Georgia Public Library Service:

    June 25, 2025

    CONTACT: Deborah Hakes, Georgia Public Library Service, dhakes@georgialibraries.org

    ATLANTA, GA – The Georgia Public Library Service is pleased to announce the addition of new content to the Digital Library of Georgia and the Georgia Historic Newspaper Project, making more of Georgia’s rich history accessible to the public from anywhere with an internet connection.

    “Our library staff has thoroughly enjoyed being able to go online and open this time capsule showing businesses, places, and events from the early to mid-1900s in Hall County,” said Ronda Sanders, genealogy and local history librarian at Hall County Library System. “We look forward to the wonderful stories and recollections that our patrons will share with us as the ‘old timers’ fondly reminisce about their childhood memories.”

    The newly digitized collections include historical materials from public libraries across the state:

    In addition to these unique collections, several new newspaper titles have been digitized, adding thousands of pages of historical news. These titles fill in gaps in the historical record for counties that did not have materials in the Georgia Historic Newspaper Project:

    “These newly digitized newspapers provide rich resources for genealogical and local history research and ensure that more Georgians can access their communities’ history,” said Josh Kitchens, director of Archival Services and Digital Initiatives at GPLS.

    The public can freely access these digitized materials through the Digital Library of Georgia website and the Georgia Historic Newspapers website.

    ​​This digitization project is part of a larger effort to provide access to a more comprehensive selection of Georgia’s historical and cultural newspapers. Since 2006, Georgia’s public libraries have funded over 1.1 million of the 2.4 million pages of digitized content in the Georgia Historic Newspapers portal.


  • Augusta Genealogical Society July 2025 Virtual Program

    30 Jun 2025 10:20 AM | Anonymous

    The following is a press release issued by the Augusta (Georgia) Genealogical Society:

    Augusta Genealogical Society 

    Augusta, Georgia 

    July 19, 2025 Virtual Genealogical Program

                                        Finding Females:   Ledgers are a Unique
    Looking Glass into Women’s Live    s
     
    Presented by Diane Richard

    Inline image

    Surviving small business ledgers document everyday business transactions that involved our ancestors, including our female ancestors—usually underrepresented in governmental records. Almost every kind of ledger examined mentions women transacting business, regardless of station in life and ethnicity. This webinar focuses on the many kinds of ledgers used by small businesses and discoverable by researchers. We will explore ledgers of general stores, cotton/tobacco pickers and midwives, just to name a few. In addition to placing individuals and families in space and time, relationship information is sometimes noted. Life events are sometimes indicated, including family members of an employer/employee, entries for free people of color (FPOC), the enslaved, and so much more!!!

    Diane L Richard, MEng & MBA, Mosaic Research and Project Management (MosaicRPM), has been doing genealogy research since 1987 and in 2024, celebrated her 20th anniversary of professionally researching client ancestors while also channeling the “inner teacher” in her by sharing her knowledge via the written and spoken word. 

    She regularly contributed to Internet Genealogy (2006-2023) as an author, writing a regular Net Notescolumn and authoring over 500 articles. From 2010-2017, Diane edited Upfront with NGS, the National Genealogical Society’s blog, and published over 2000 posts. She spent a decade as editor of Wake Treasures, the journal of the Wake County Genealogical Society, and since 2016, she has been the editor of the North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) journal.

    When:  Saturday, July 19, 2025

    Time:  11:00 am - 12:00 pm  EST 

    Where:  Online 

    Price:   FREE to AGS members and $10 for nonmembers

    The registration deadline is Thursday, July 17.

    AGS July Program

    Click above link to register

    Limited seating is available to view the virtual presentation at the Adamson Library.  ​To reserve a seat, please call (706) 722-4073.

    JOIN AGS NOW and enjoy the benefits of programs that are free to members.  

  • The Father of 50 Children with More Being Discovered Weekly

    29 Jun 2025 10:45 AM | Anonymous

    Nico Kuyt sits in the garden of his house in the Dutch seaside village of Katwijk aan Zee. He glances at his phone between sips of coffee as spots of rain blow past.One of the groups is called “The Kids”, with dozens of participants. Odd, because Kuyt decided never to marry or have a family.

    He is one of 85 men in the Netherlands to find in recent years that sperm donations they made to private clinics were sold at home and abroad, leading to alarmingly high numbers of children from the same donors in violation of medical guidelines.It has shocked the nation as story after story has broken about clinics and in some cases individual doctors seemingly profiteering off donated sperm without the knowledge of the men who provided the samples.

    Kuyt, a former IT worker who at 63 lives alone, discovered that he had 50 children: “One for every year of my productive life.”

    The full extent of his situation was something he only uncovered slowly over the course of a decade. In 2004, he was invited in by the clinic to which he had first donated his sperm in 1998, the Kinderwens Medical Centre (MCK) fertility clinic in Leiderdorp, and told to his shock that he had about 30 children. Dutch guidelines had at the time outlined 25 as an upper limit.

    There would be more surprises. When news of growing scandals around fertility doctor malpractice first appeared a decade ago, Kuyt was concerned that more may be out there and demanded answers from MCK. This time it told him he had 25 children in the Netherlands and 25 abroad.

    “It is theft of something very intimate,” he said, reflecting on his profound disappointment with the clinic. “It is playing with life. That is absolutely forbidden. You must respect life at all costs.” 

    When they reach 15 years old, the children can choose to contact him. Recently, he has found that each week can bring a new letter, a new video call, a new face from anywhere in the world.

    “The last one I had was last week, an Italian, who is 19,” he said. “I write in Dutch and use Google Translate, because I’m not that good at Italian, and he sends back in Italian because his English isn’t the best. It is a bit of a tower of Babel for him.”

    He said he made a short video, which he now uses to introduce himself to his children when they get in touch. Sometimes, he said, his past is not welcome. “In the video portrait I tell the history of my family [in the resistance], about the war with Germany, and I have the feeling that one of my German daughters found that so difficult that she didn’t want to have any more contact … But I am open and honest, because it is just the history of our family.”

    Kuyt was in his late thirties between 1998 and 2000 when he decided to donate sperm to the fertility clinic. He had no idea that two decades later he would have fathered half a street. He knows, has called and has even met about 20 children from the Netherlands, Italy and Germany — he names Kiara, Carlotta, David, Raffaele, and has files of photos on his laptop.

    A total of 4,684 Dutch donors like Kuyt gave sperm to help other families at a time when there were shortages and a growing demand from infertile couples. Although he did not want to marry or have a family, he donated about 50 times and also contributed for scientific research and embryo donation.

    “Of course, I’m very Christian, and we don’t destroy lives,” he said. “So I donated it all. But it was all very quiet because the parents didn’t want it to be known and wanted to bring up children as their own … I didn’t hear anything, but they were very pleased with me, so I just did it.

    “I don’t have any genetic problems. It has all gone well with the children, they really were wanted. And I am happy to have them.” 

    He did not tell his brother and sister that he had so many children until after his parents died, but now there is no secret. He often video-called his children during the pandemic. “Look, it wasn’t the intention, and I do find it a bit much — it’s a lot of work,” he said. “And a lot more will come, of course, when they are old enough to find out.”

    Since 1991, the UK has had a legal limit of ten families per sperm donor. The Netherlands, however, has since 1992 had only a medical guideline limit of 25.There was no law. From 2004, when anonymous donations were banned, Dutch clinics were supposed to hold to this maximum, which was lowered to 12 families in 2018. That figure became a legally enforceable maximum only in April this year.

    But there have been growing concerns around the practices at some Dutch fertility clinics. First to come to light was the fertility doctor Jan Karbaat, from Barendrecht near Rotterdam: his clinic was shut by inspectors in 2009 and his family were taken to court in 2017, months after his death, by donor children who suspected they were related and wanted DNA testing. He himself was the donor, and is thought to have fathered as many as 200 children.

    The names of other mass donors have emerged and in late April, after pressure from MPs, the Dutch government revealed almost one in 50 donors — 85 men in total — have more than 25 children. Six men have between 40 and 50 offspring.Five have up to 75. And one has between 100 and 125 children.

    How could it have gone so wrong? Michiel Aten, 64, a former preacher and donor father to 21 children, started the Priamos support group for men who are victims of the misuse of their sperm donations. “Think about cattle, where there was a watertight system that functioned for 30 years and a farmer who didn’t register a calf got an immediate €100 fine,” he said.

    “But they completely broke the rules … The desire for children is so great, people are prepared to pay a lot of money. And young men can be extremely fertile, as I was myself: I had a gift from nature and others could profit from it, so I gave it away and I hoped that other people could be happy.”

    At a time of deregulation, he believes, too much trust was placed in individual companies. “The fact that a clinic went so recklessly over the boundaries — I can’t explain it any other way than that they wanted to make money,” he said.

    In a country of just over 18 million people, the consequences can be dramatic. Ties van der Meer, chairman of the Stichting Donorkind foundation for donor-conceived children, knows of cases where half-brothers and sisters unknowingly had a physical sexual encounter. “This is not a pleasant thing to realise after you have just spent half a morning in bed,” he said.

    “If you think about it, people with the same biological father will often have the same talents and interests, the same education potential, living in the same regional bubble of the same sports club, the same chess club, the same academic courses. You see that people meet each other. The risk is bigger than you think.” 

    A spokeswoman for the Dutch health and youth care inspectorate confirmed it was investigating reports about the MCK clinic, including its working methods and whether donors gave informed consent.

    A spokesman for the company that now owns the clinic, TFP Fertility, said: “We are aware of the historic situation involving sperm donor limits in the Netherlands and that there are some affected families and donors at the Kinderwens Medical Centre (MCK) which occurred prior to the clinic becoming part of TFP Fertility in 2019.While this happened prior to our ownership, we of course accept responsibility for actions of the previous owners and are currently liaising with those families and donors who may have been impacted, providing counsel and support to all where needed.”

    Mark de Hek, a lawyer from Sap Letselschade Advocaten, who has been contacted by the donor fathers, wants a full-scale independent investigation into potential unlawful acts. “I have the impression that lawmakers totally failed to realise how important this is,” he said.

    “You are creating new life, and that is a dramatic thing to do as a doctor. It has a huge impact on someone’s lives and the lives of their family. Every week you are at a birthday — it’s almost comic.”

    The political pressure is growing for an independent inquiry and MPs including Wieke Paulusma, health spokeswoman for the socially liberal Democrats 66 party, also wants the men to receive an apology.

    At the nearby beach, Kuyt looks out to sea like generations of other Dutchmen, not knowing what the tide might wash up on the shore. “It’s sunshine and rain,” he said. “But, of course, the rain brings life.”

  • Selfies Could One Day be Stored on DNA Strands

    29 Jun 2025 10:26 AM | Anonymous

    When it comes to storing images, DNA strands could be a sustainable, stable alternative to hard drives. Researchers at EPFL are developing a new image compression standard designed specifically for this emerging technology.

    Within a few years, we'll collectively be taking more than 2 trillion pictures each year. Some of the images will remain on our smartphones, but many of them will be stored in the cloud, filling up data centers' magnetic tapes and hard drives. Yet these systems have limits in terms of how much data they can store and for how long—not to mention their environmental impact.

    One alternative could be to store images on DNA. "We estimate that a single gram of DNA could hold around 215 million gigabytes of data," says Touradj Ebrahimi, an image processing expert and head of EPFL's Multimedia Signal Processing Group. "That's the equivalent of 860,000 external hard drives with a capacity of 250 Gb—or enough to store around 50,000 pictures—each."

    Thousands of years of data storage

    DNA contains all the information that organisms need to live, grow and reproduce. And it can store this information for a very long time. In 2022, scientists discovered DNA in the Greenland ice sheet that was 2 million years old.

    Today, scientists are able to read and write this "code of life" thanks to advances in DNA sequencing and synthesis. DNA strands encode genetic information through specific sequences of four nucleotides: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G).

    When DNA is used for data storage, the first step is to convert the binary format (0, 1) into DNA sequences (A, T, C, G). These sequences are then synthesized into DNA strands and kept in suitable environments. When it comes time to read the data, the DNA strands are decoded by going through the same process in reverse.

    JPEG DNA, the next-generation standard

    This approach holds vast potential for long-term archiving, but several hurdles remain. One is the high cost; another is the considerable amount of time needed to both archive and recover the data. Yet DNA offers major advantages in terms of its high storage density, long lifespan and low power requirement. This technology is being explored by researchers worldwide—including those in Ebrahimi's lab.

    As the head of the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) committee, a position he's held since 2014, Ebrahimi is helping to anchor the JPEG format as the main image-storage standard by adapting it to new technology and societal shifts.

    His most recent project is JPEG DNA, carried out in association with the International Electrotechnical Commission, Takushoku University in Japan and other organizations. The project aims to develop an image-compression standard for use with synthetic DNA. "It's a real challenge to recreate images accurately after they've been encoded, synthesized, stored, amplified and then sequenced," says Ebrahimi. "But with a widely adopted standard to draw on, engineers will be able to develop effective coding and image-compression methods."

    As part of this project, Ebrahimi's research group designed a coding procedure that can be used to evaluate different DNA-based storage methods. The procedure includes a set of predefined images for running tests, criteria for comparing different methods, error correction mechanisms, and techniques for handling biochemical constraints such as the frequency and order of the DNA symbols produced by the image, which can destabilize the DNA strands.

    Coding for DNA

    To handle particularly large multimedia files, the research team developed a novel image-compression algorithm that can efficiently encode binary data into DNA sequences. Images provided in .jpg format don't need to be decoded beforehand. Their new algorithm is not only fast and reliable, but it also produces less synthetic DNA, requires less processing power and delivers better image quality.

    The EPFL engineers worked with the JPEG committee to incorporate both source code (for image compression) and noisy-channel coding (to make the program more robust to errors and adapted to the biochemical constraints of DNA) into the JPEG DNA standard.

    Thanks to recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we should be able to refine the JPEG DNA standard by improving the encoding and error correction mechanisms while keeping them compatible with the standard's syntax and source decoding procedure," says Ebrahimi.

  • Nearly 500 Ukrainian Cultural Sites Damaged by Russia

    29 Jun 2025 10:15 AM | Anonymous

    More than 500 cultural heritage sites have been damaged in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, EU Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport Glenn Micallef said at a press briefing in Brussels.

    According to him, citing UNESCO, Russian attacks have already damaged 485 cultural sites in total.

    “Estimates for recovery and reconstruction needs in the culture and tourism sectors alone have already exceeded nine billion euros,” the Commissioner added.

    In addition, according to him, the attacks are not limited to Ukraine’s tangible cultural heritage.

    “Ukraine’s intangible cultural heritage is being subjected to organised disinformation campaigns on an ongoing basis. It is a barbaric attack on Ukrainian sovereignty. It is a conscious decision to destroy the identity, unity, and morale of Ukraine and its people,” Micallef said.

    In turn, Ukraine’s Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine Mykola Tochytskyi said Russia had damaged or completely destroyed 2,333 cultural infrastructure facilities.

    He said 1,482 cultural heritage sites have been destroyed in Ukraine in total, including historical monuments, churches, theaters, museums, libraries.

    “Many of them are of national or even global significance, including UNESCO cultural heritage sites such as Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the historic center of Odesa, which was damaged yet again just two days ago. And of course the Derzhprom building in Kharkiv, which has been targeted multiple times over these three and a half years of war,” Tochytskyi noted.

    The officials said they have established the Ukraine Heritage Response Fund — a coordination mechanism aimed at ensuring long-term assistance in preserving and restoring Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

    The official presentation of the Fund is scheduled to be held at the Ukraine Recovery Conference on July 10–11, 2025 in Rome.

    Russia is destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage 

    Several years ago, Russian missiles hit the historic center of Odesa. In particular, the Transfiguration Cathedral was partially destroyed.

    At that time, UNESCO strongly condemned the Russian attack on cultural sites in central Odesa, where the World Heritage Site “Historic Center of Odesa” is located.

    In addition, as Tochytskyi said earlier, around 2 million cultural valuables are under occupation.

    Earlier this year, Ukraine’s parliament released a report on what is stopping it from fully protecting its cultural heritage sites.

  • Man's Remains Found in Colorado Identified After 25 years with the Help of Modern Technology

    28 Jun 2025 9:06 AM | Anonymous

    A nearly 25-year-old case is one step closer to being solved.

    According to the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office, detectives have identified the remains of a man found north of the Pueblo City Limits in 2000. The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office says the remains of the man found in 2000 have been identified as Marvin Majors of Oklahoma.

    Majors was 34 years old at the time of his suspected death. The Sheriff’s Office reports that Majors’ body was found in 2000 when a woman walking her dog north of the Walking Stick development.

    Officers with the Sheriff’s Office attempted, without success, to identify Majors from the skeletal remains after they were found. A sculptor with the University of Colorado was called in the following year to make a clay sculpture to help with identification.

    The sculpture brought forth a lead from a rancher who said the man in the clay sculpture was someone he had encountered camping on his property in August 2000. At the time, the rancher told the sheriff’s office that the man he believed was Marvin Majors, had told him that he was traveling from New Mexico to Denver.

    In 2021, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case after being notified that the FBI had completed a DNA profile from Majors’ remains.

    That DNA profile, along with a DNA sample from items of evidence found at the campsite in the area where Majors’ remains were found, was sent to the CBI and a new sample was submitted to a genetic genealogy database in 2023.

    In November 2024, that sample came back, and a sample in the data set from a distant family member of Majors matched. DNA was collected from a suspect sibling of Majors and came back just last week as a positive match. A Forensic Investigative Genetic Genealogist then verified the match.

    Detectives with the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office then moved forward with a strong indication that the man found was Marvin Majors.

    Sheriff’s Office staff contacted distant family members of Majors who said he was from Los Angeles, CA, and had lived a transient lifestyle. Distant family members of Majors said they had not heard from or seen Majors since 1998 or 1999 and were unsure as to his whereabouts after that time.

    “Through modern science and teamwork, our detectives were able to get the breakthrough they needed to identify this person,” said Lucero. “The years of dedication, diligence and perseverance by our detectives demonstrate that no matter how old a case is, they are committed to solving it. This was somebody’s family member, and our team went above and beyond to identify him and to bring some closure to his family.”

    Majors’ family was appreciative of the work put in by the sheriff’s office over the past 25 years, and were glad that this case has finally been solved. The cause of death for Majors was never determined, but the sheriff’s office said foul play was not suspected.
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