After finding documents revealing new family history, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer made a trip to Auschwitz on a journey of reflection and discovery. You can watch this documentary in a YouTube video at: https://cnn.it/3E80heW

A federal judge has thrown out a class action lawsuit against Ancestry.com before lawyers could get it to trial.

Chicago's Judge Virginia Kendall on Sept. 16 granted summary judgment to the company, which was accused of violating the Illinois Right of Publicity Act when it published old yearbook photos without permission to advertise its pay service.

Kendall had already thrown out claims under Illinois' Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act in late 2021.

Plaintiffs lawyers failed to work around what Kendall determined was the IRA's one-year statute of limitations by arguing each payment Ancestry made to a company that licenses yearbook names and images started the statute over.

"But Ancestry derives no financial benefit by paying another company; the licensing agreement is an expense incurred by the company, not a profit from the use of someone's image," she wrote.

"Ancestry never republished or reused (the plaintiff's) image in these transactions. These payments were simply a routine part of the company's business."

You can read more in an article by John O'Brien published in the Legal Newsline web site at: https://bit.ly/3dP9gXV.

From an article by Billy Kobin published in the Louisville Courier Journal

To ensure future generations can look back on defining moments in Louisville's history, The Courier Journal is donating its library of an estimated 3 million photographs and negatives to the University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections.

University of Louisville basketball team members and others on firetruck at airport, Louisville, Kentucky, 1956.

The Courier Journal, winner of 11 Pulitzer Prizes throughout its 154-year history, was joined by its parent company, Gannett, in donating the collection, which is being appraised and is expected to be worth tens of millions of dollars. This move will allow the public access to the collection, which chronicles history in Louisville as well as Kentucky and the nation.

The collection includes images from daily happenings and major events from approximately the mid-1930s to the early 2000s when digital photography began to replace the use of film to capture images. The collection might have dated back further, but Louisville’s Great Flood of 1937 destroyed much of The Courier Journal's photo and negative library.

If some of your ancestors emigrated from India, you may be interested in this article:

The United States Mission in India launched a website to celebrate the intangible cultural heritage of the indigenous tribes of Arunachal Pradesh as part of the celebrations of 75 years of bilateral relations between Washington and New Delhi.

The United States Mission in India joined representatives from the Ministry of Tourism’s Northeast Regional Office and UNESCO’s International Information and Network for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific (ICHCAP) at an event to celebrate the intangible cultural heritage of the indigenous tribes of Arunachal Pradesh through the launch of a new website, www.arunachallivingheritage.com.

The event also included films, performances, exhibitions, and demonstrations showcasing traditional Arunachal Pradesh culture.

In December 2021, the United States launched a program through the Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation to work with tribe members from 39 villages across the state to preserve and document their heritage through a series of short documentary films. One of these films, The Living Heritage of Arunachal: Beauty in Diversity, premiered during the event.

In remarks delivered at the event, US Acting Deputy Chief of Mission Brian Heath said, “As the United States and India celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations, it’s important also to highlight the wealth of stories and experiences that come together to make our societies what they are today. The United States is proud to support Arunachal Pradesh’s culture, ensuring preservation of its intangible heritage.”

You can read more at: https://bit.ly/3Chqzdk.

President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the National Archives, who came under GOP scrutiny after the FBI’s search for government records at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, deadlocked in a party-line committee vote Wednesday.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee voted 7-7 on the nomination of Colleen J. Shogan to be Archivist of the United States for the National Archives and Records Administration. That means it was not able to be favorably reported. A committee aide confirmed to CNN it was a party-line vote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will still be able to discharge the nomination from the committee, however, so Shogan should still be able to be confirmed on the Senate floor regardless of the committee vote. Committee chairman – Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan – said after the vote, “While I’m disappointed this nomination will not advance today, I’ll work with the Majority Leader to have Dr. Shogan’s nomination discharged from the committee for consideration to the full Senate.”

You can read more at: https://cnn.it/3SKMgbl.

This is a follow-up to my earlier article, "I May Be Off-line For a While" at https://eogn.com/page-18080/12933198 that I posted 3 days ago.

The hurricane has come and gone and it did not follow the track that the weather forecasters had predicted. (They included a disclaimer that hurricanes often change their tracks.)

I lost power about 10 PM last night as the wind and rain was steadily increasing. According to an online map on a local television station this morning, the eye of the hurricane passed through the town where I live around 2 AM. It is possible that the eye of the hurricane passed directly over my house but I don't know that for a fact as I was asleep at the time.

This morning, I am still in the midst of the hurricane although obviously on the backside of it. The wind is presently about 40 or 50 miles per hour and it is still raining, but lightly.

Best of all, the power came back on about 9 AM. I am back in business! (Admittedly, the power has briefly gone off and then back on a couple of times since then.)

A quick walk around the inside and outside of my home this morning shows no damage.

Think we had some wind during the night? Look what happened to the street light in front of my house:

There is a small pond across the street from my house and this is the first time I have ever seen white caps on that tiny pond! Yes, the wind is still blowing.

All in all, it's been an exciting couple of days but I don't need excitement like this.

We now return you to your normal programming...

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

The following is a press release written by WikiTree:

The National Archives faces a Tuesday deadline to update a congressional committee on a key question: Are there still documents from the Trump White House that are unaccounted for?

National Archives officials last month told staff for House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) that they aren’t sure whether all presidential records from the Trump administration are in its custody, as federal law dictates, prompting the committee to set Sept. 27 as a deadline for an update. The National Archives declined to comment.

The whereabouts of those White House documents—both presidential records from everyday business and classified material—have been in the spotlight since the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. That was the culmination of more than a year of negotiations between the archives and Mr. Trump’s representatives over the custody of White House records, including boxes of papers that were returned to the archives in January and those seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in August.

Under federal laws governing what happens to documents after a president leaves office and how classified materials should be handled, the National Archives and Records Administration, as it is officially known, is responsible for the documents’ safekeeping. The agency also manages presidential libraries.

You can read more in an article by Siobhan Hughes published in the Wall Street Journal , in MSN, and in other online news web sites. You may find the article at: https://bit.ly/3BTqWt7.

Clare, Ireland history lovers are encouraged to tune in online to Dublin Festival of History as the festival goes online for the first time in 2020. The festival, an initiative of Dublin City Council, will continued until Sunday, October 4th, with all events free to attend.

Now in its eighth year, the festival will take place largely online as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, but will still play host to an international and domestic line up of speakers and panels. The festival will shine a light and fresh perspective on topics such as the construction of the notion of race, Ireland’s last great pandemic and the history of Ireland’s partition.

All events are free, but booking is required. For the full programme of events, and to book, please visit: www.dublinfestivalofhistory.ie.