I strongly suggest every computer user should use a VPN all the time on their computer(s) and cell phone(s). In fact, I am using a VPN right now as I write this article and I leave the VPN connected all the time. I also have a VPN installed on my cell phone that runs continuously. There are a number of excellent VPNs to choose from, except those that come from Russia.

NOTE: A virtual private network (VPN) enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks in a secure manner. In short, it locks out hackers, online thieves, credit card thieves, government agents, and other people who want to tap into your online conversations and activities in order to steal your private information.

You can learn more about VPNs in Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network as well as in dozens of other articles that can be found by starting at your favorite search engine and searching for "What is a vpn?."

The reason I do not recommend Russian VPNs is because Russia's telecommunications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, announced VPN bans in June 2021 and then again in December 2021. "The reason for banning VPNs in the country was because Russian VPN producers refused to connect their services to the FGIS database, which would apply government-imposed censorship in VPN connections, and would also make user traffic and identity subject to state scrutiny," according to BleepingComputer. 

In other words, Russia wants to limit VPN use in Russia and elsewhere to VPNs that provide the Russian government "back door" access that makes everything being sent and received visible to Russian government agents. In my mind, that defeats the entire purpose of using a VPN.

My suggestion: go to a search engine or online review of VPNs to find a suitable service for your use. With one exception, I would strongly recommend avoiding free VPNs as almost all free VPNs track your usage and then sell your personal information to anyone who will pay for it. (After all, how can anyone provide a FREE VPN service? They have to make money to pay the bills somehow!)

The one exception is Proton VPN. Proton sells both free and paid-for VPN services with the free service paid for by people who try the free version, like it, and then upgrade to the paid Proton VPN service. (The paid Proton VPN has several additional services not available in the free version.)

The paid version of Proton VPN is available for Macintosh, Windows, Android, Apple iPhones and iPads, and Linux.

Proton is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, allowing Proton's users to benefit from some of the world's strongest privacy laws. 

Proton  may be found at: https://protonvpn.com

NOTE: I am not being compensated by anyone for writing this article. While I use the paid version of Proton's VPN, neither Proton nor any other company will pay me any money or provide any other benefit for using that particular service. Yes, I pay Proton for using that company's services, just like all of Proton's other customers. I also know that a number of other VPN providers also offer high-quality VPN services.

The following is a press release from TheGenealogist:

Memorial Records of the First World War

As we prepare to remember our fallen heroes from the World Wars and other conflicts on Remembrance Day this weekend, TheGenealogist has released a collection of war memorials for soldiers that had served in the First World War. Comprising of details for men who had been born in Ireland as well as in England, Scotland and Wales with connections with the island of Ireland.

With almost 50,000 records that were originally compiled by the Committee of the Irish National War Memorial and published in 1923. Assembled at the time by Miss Eva C. Barnard, secretary to the Irish National War Memorial Committee and printed under the direction and personal supervision of George Roberts they are presented with attractive decorative borders designed by Harry Clarke.

This eight volume set of Ireland's memorial records, 1914-1918, was published in 1923 for the Committee of the Irish National War Memorial. Each entry gives name, regiment, rank, date and place of death, sometimes date of birth and next of kin.

Read TheGenealogist’s feature article: Remembering the Fallen: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/remembering-the-fallen-1633/ 

These records and many more are available to Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist.co.uk

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

It was a great idea, but it disappeared a few months after it was first introduced.

The flexi disc is, in effect, an audio time capsule preserving the state of speech digitization research in the early 1970s.

A slim square of vinyl, measuring 18 cm on a side, the record is what's known as a flexi disc, a lightweight alternative to traditional records that became popular after World War II. The technology had many precursors, including German “gramophone postcards” and Soviet “bone music”—jazz or rock recordings pressed on to discarded X-ray film to avoid government censorship. In the United States, the Eva-Tone Company of Deerfield, Illinois became the leading manufacturer of vinyl “sound sheets” (their preferred trademark) by the mid-1960s and promoted their use in “mailing pieces, financial reports, product instruction, sales training, and packaging inserts.”

Due to their low cost, thin form factor, and pliability, flexi discs became the medium of choice for magazine publishers who wished to supplement articles with audio content. Recordings were not limited to musical performances. For example, the December 1969 issue of National Geographic was dedicated to the Apollo 11 lunar landing and contained a sonic retrospective of the Space Race (“Sounds of the Space Age”) narrated by Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman.

You can read more about flexi discs in an article by Benjamin Gross  published in the IEEE Spectrum web site at: https://spectrum.ieee.org/history-of-digital-speech.

Taken on June 19 1921 after being delayed by two months due to industrial unrest, the 1921 Census saw over 38,000 enumerators dispatched to every corner of England and Wales to capture the details of more than 38 million people. This included over 8.5 million households as well as all manner of public and private institutions ranging from prisons and military bases to public schools and workhouses.

Offering more detail than any previous census, the not only asked individuals about their age, birthplace, occupation and residence (including the names of other household members and the number of rooms), but also their place of work, employer details, and gave 'divorced' as an option for marital status.

Now accessible for the first time, these valuable documents provide you with millions of unique opportunities to uncover the lives of your ancestors, the history of your home and communities and a fascinating snapshot of life during an era that resonates with where we find ourselves today. 

You can read a lot more about the 1921 Census of England & Wales at: https://www.findmypast.com/blog/family-records/1921-census.

You can also watch a video at: https://youtu.be/VAthaePLOGw.

You can read a lot more at: https://www.findmypast.com/blog/new/pow-audio-recordings 

From an article by Line Sidonie Talla Mafotsing published in the Atlas Obscura web site:

In 2019, Tsuru For Solidarity, a social justice organization led by Japanese Americans, wanted to organize a rally in Washington DC to protest the separation of migrant children from their families at the US-Mexico border. Because many in Tsuru for Solidarity had family members who were incarcerated at detention sites in the United States during World War II, they planned to chant the names of the people currently being held along with the names of those who were incarcerated during the war—but there was no list of the Japanese Americans imprisoned at the internment camps.

“I had somehow presumed that because the US government passed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, that there was a list,” says Duncan Ryuken Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California and a Buddhist priest who works with Tsuru for Solidarity. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was a federal law issuing a formal apology for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s February 1942 order establishing the detention camps and $20,000 checks to camp survivors. “They did end up issuing 81,000 checks, but nobody really knew how many people were incarcerated,” he says. Williams began accounting for every single person who had been incarcerated in approximately 75 camps that existed mostly along the West Coast with a few in the South.

With a core group of 12 researchers and 100 volunteers undertaking thousands of hours of work, the Ireichō was born: it is a massive book listing the names of the 125,284 Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. The book is currently on display at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo.

The Ireichō is more than 1,000 pages and weighs almost 30 pounds. “It’s a very hefty book and it’s quite a big procedure to open,” says Williams. The book is surrounded by ceramic tiles infused with soil retrieved from the incarceration sites, and people are encouraged to stamp a Japanese hanko seal—a carved stamp used in lieu of a hand-written signature—next to the names of their family members and next to those that have no descendants as a way of also keeping their memories alive.

There is much more in the article at: https://tinyurl.com/2v9bs6ur. Please note that the information is not (yet) available online.

From the MyHeritage Blog:

On April 1, 2022, the 1950 U.S. Federal Census images were released to the public, 72 years after the enumeration was initiated. Since then, we have been working tirelessly to get the entire 1950 U.S. census collection available to you as a searchable index with the census images, publishing several states each month. We are excited to announce our largest release for this collection, covering 30 million records from the states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. The 1950 U.S. Census collection now includes more than 150 million records from all of the U.S. states and territories and it is available for you to view, search, and add to your MyHeritage family tree for FREE! 

Search the 1950 U.S. Federal Census for free!

The census provides fascinating details about the lives of the entire population living in the U.S. and its territories in 1950. For all individuals, it includes names, ages, addresses, relationships, households, gender, birthplace, marital status, and other facts. If you had family living in the United States during this time period, you are likely to find important details about their lives in the 1950 U.S. Census collection.

The 1950 census collection searchable index contains all records from all 48 U.S. states and territories (Alaska and Hawaii were only added as states in 1959): Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Panama Canal Zone, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virgin Islands, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Texas. In addition, the collection includes the Indian Reservation Schedules, and four overseas islands of Canton, Johnston, Midway, and Wake.

There are still a few million records remaining that will be added over the next few months. These are records that couldn’t be scanned and indexed accurately through more automated means and require some additional manual handling. We will keep you posted once these are added.

Exclusive MyHeritage census resources

Last year we released the Census Helper a useful new feature that tells you who in your family tree is likely to appear in the 1950 U.S. Census and other censuses. Learn more about how to best utilize this free tool in Jump-start Your 1950 U.S. Census Research with the Census Helper

For more tips on searching the 1950 U.S. Census and all other censuses on MyHeritage, please visit our Census Content Hub and our dedicated 1950 U.S. Census page.

You can read a lot more at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/11/myheritage-publishes-the-1950-u-s-census-search-all-states-and-territories-for-free/ 

From an article by Jo Marchant and published in the Smithsonian Magazine:

Proteins left behind on historic artifacts are revealing centuries-old secrets

One rainy morning in May, a Romanian archivist named Tudor Arhire retrieved a brown envelope from a wooden filing cabinet, slid out a small, yellowed page and placed it carefully on the table. Arhire is the custodian of a government archive in Sibiu, Romania, a medieval city in the region of Transylvania. Inside the grand, historic building, elegant windows and parquet floors contrasted with yellowed lace curtains and battered upholstery; on a desk in the corner, a pile of books and parchments spanned hundreds of years. The document he produced was a letter, more than 500 years old. Despite the ancient creases and stains, its nine lines of flowing Latin script, translated long ago, were clearly legible. But nobody here was intending to read it. Instead, two visitors, a married couple named Gleb and Svetlana Zilberstein, waited eagerly with latex gloves and plastic tubes.

The letter is one of the archive’s most precious possessions. Dated August 4, 1475, it was written to the burghers of Sibiu by a man describing himself as “prince of the Transalpine regions.” He informed the townspeople that he would soon be taking up residence among them. He signed with a name sure to strike fear into their hearts: Vlad Dracula.

The Zilbersteins were interested not in the words on the page, however, but something else—physical remnants of the prince himself, including molecule fragments from his sweat, saliva and tears. Their work harnesses breathtaking advances in a field known as proteomics, which seeks to understand the interaction of proteins within living cells and organisms. Proteins have long been studied in the context of biology and medicine, but spectacularly sensitive analytical techniques now allow researchers to use protein traces to gather intimate information from materials that were once primarily the domain of historians and archaeologists, opening a new window onto the past. The project is part of a scientific revolution that is profoundly expanding the type of information that can be gleaned from historical texts and artifacts, from X-ray and CT scanning to carbon dating and genetic sequencing.

Already, DNA is used to identify individuals from biological remains and reveal large-scale relationships, from family trees to evolutionary timelines. But DNA remains constant throughout a person’s life, and it degrades badly over time. Which is why researchers are also interested in proteins, the molecules DNA encodes and that do most of the work inside our cells. If DNA keeps a static record of our ancestry, proteins, which metabolize our food, store and transport resources, and carry messages from one place to another, provide a running commentary on our health and habits. They leave evidence of our diets, our illnesses, the drugs we use, even our cause of death. And they are left behind on everything we touch.

I found this to be a fascinating article. You can read all of it at: https://tinyurl.com/s3hbzw2a.

Could this be used on documents left behind by one of our ancestors?

A searchable database of over 1,000 people from Co Donegal who died as a result of World War 1 has been launched by Donegal County Museum

The database was compiled as part of Donegal County Council's Decade of Centenaries Commemorative Programme and contains information on each known person from the county who died as a result of WW1.

Entries include the person's name, service number and place of birth, as well as additional information researched by Donegal County Museum staff.

Assistant Curator at the museum Caroline Carr said the database is a work in progress with further information, including more photographs, yet to be uploaded.

There are 1,148 names included so far, but Ms Carr said that the database is designed to be updated as new information is uncovered and she said they welcome anyone with new information to contact the museum in Letterkenny.

You can read more in an article written by Eileen Magnier and published in the RTÉ web site at: https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2022/1109/1335137-donegal-database/.

This is a follow-up to the message I posted yesterday: "I May Be Off-line For a While (Again)."

In case anyone is interested:

Hurricane Nicole arrived and has mostly departed this morning. It is still  raining lightly and the wind is gusting to perhaps 30 or 40 miles per hour. But the storm is winding down.

It was a rather wild night. I woke up a couple of times and checked on things. I think the storm was stronger than what the weather forecasters had predicted. The wind noise was rather intense. However, I walked outdoors around the house this morning and everything looks fine. No damage to my property.

The lights flickered a couple of times but otherwise the power remained on.

My next-door neighbor has a young tree that was blown over. It is a new tree, only planted 2 or 3 months ago.  I haven't yet walked around the neighborhood but I don't see any other damage when looking out my windows.

OK, now I plan to go back to normal and resume a normal life.