In March of 2018, MyHeritage launched a pro bono initiative called DNA Quest to help reunite adoptees with their biological families. During the course of this initiative, we donated around 20,000 MyHeritage DNA kits to people seeking answers about where they came from. It’s impossible to know exactly how many of these donated kits facilitated reunions, but in the 4 years since the initiative began, the stories have been constantly rolling in. (Have a story yourself? Please share it with us!)

We received the following email from Ashleigh Brown, a DNA Quest beneficiary from Canada who found her sister as a result of her MyHeritage DNA test.

Ashleigh’s story

Your kit helped me find my biological family… and a whole lot more!

I always knew I was adopted… both my adopted brother and me. We grew up with Caucasian parents, so my mom just always told us. She had told me that she knew I had an older sister and that my biological mother had a few more children before me.  

I have wanted to know my biological family my entire life, especially my sister. I tried asking on adoption sites and randomly looking for the name on my birth certificate… all in vain. 

Then I saw the MyHeritage pro bono adoption program, DNA Quest, and wanted to give it a shot. So, I sat down and wrote my story to you. 

You can read the full, story at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/07/dna-quest-helped-me-find-my-birth-family-and-a-whole-lot-more/.

You may enjoy seeing pictures of life in Scotland many years ago, especially if some of your ancestors came from Scotland.

From snapshots of a gnarled fishing crew standing over a landed shark in Berwick upon Tweed in 1897, to a joyous portrait of fishwives living it up on holiday in post-war Paris, they form part of a vital archive charting changing social and political currents.

Now, thousands of images of generations of Scottish workers who made their living from the sea have been gathered online by the Scottish Fisheries Museum.

For the first time, the museum’s vast collection of photographs have been digitised and catalogued, allowing anyone to delve into its rich history.

The collection, recognised as a resource of national significance, provides a unique insight into how technological advancements have left old working practices behind.

In all, the new online resource is home to over 16,000 images, with photographs from the rest of the UK and the wider world, as well as Scotland.

You can read more in an article by Martyn McLaughlin published in the MSN News web site at: https://bit.ly/3IXxM46.

You can view the photographs at: https://photosearch.scotfishmuseum.org/home?WINID=1658446339310.

This post was written by Nathan Yarasavage, a Digital Projects Specialist in the Library’s Serial and Government Publications Division and originally posted to the Headlines and Heroes blog, which highlights amazing stories in the Library’s collections of newspapers and comic books.

Chronicling America* users can now browse the collection’s thousands of digitized historical newspapers using an interactive map and timeline recently launched by the Library of Congress. The new “Exploring Chronicling America Newspapers” application dynamically maps publication locations of over 3,000 digitized newspapers currently available in the Chronicling America online collection. Users can also interact with a timeline of publication dates for digitized newspapers available in Chronicling America, currently covering years between 1777-1963. Powered by the Esri ArcGIS Instant Apps platform, the map and timeline are updated weekly to include the latest additions to the collection. Users can also download the currently updated dataset underlying the new features to create their own custom data visualizations or analyses.

Background

Chronicling America provides access to millions of historic American newspaper pages digitized through the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Program partners select and contribute digitized newspapers published in their states or territories, creating the national collection. All of the newspapers are in the public domain and have no known copyright restrictions. To facilitate a wide range of potential uses of the newspaper data, in addition to providing the ability to search and browse historic newspaper pages on the web, Chronicling America offers a well-documented application programming interface (API). For over a decade, researchers and scholars have used the API to interface with Chronicling America data leading to a variety of projects based on digitized historical newspapers. In 2019, the NDNP team at the Library of Congress released their first set of interactive data visualizations, designed to better inform researchers of the scope and coverage of the newspapers available in Chronicling America. These included several different types of data visualizations describing the newspapers’ locations, dates, subjects, languages, and quantities. In addition, since 2018, under a program spearheaded by the Geography and Map Division, collection specialists from across the Library of Congress have produced Story Maps about the hidden and not-so-hidden collections of the Library. Also created within the Esri Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based software platform, Story Maps combines text, images, multimedia, and interactive maps featuring Library collections to create immersive online experiences, placing the collections in context around a central theme. The Library is continuing to explore new ArcGIS tools, such as Instant Apps and Dashboards, to publish and visualize its massive collections.

Using the Map and Timeline

You can read the rest of the article at: https://bit.ly/3RSSKVH

I suspect that many genealogists will be interested in interviewing older relatives and others. If so, you may be interested in this press release issued by StoryCorps:

New App with Expanded & Enhanced Features Allows Users to Record StoryCorps Interviews & Seamlessly Explore, Curate & Share StoryCorps Content on Social Media

Brooklyn, NY—Monday, July 18, 2022—StoryCorps, the nonprofit organization dedicated to recording, preserving, and sharing humanity’s stories, today launches a new free mobile app, available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. From one device, the StoryCorps App allows anyone, anywhere, to conveniently prepare for and record a high-quality interview for preservation in the online StoryCorps archive and eventually at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The app also seamlessly enables users to explore StoryCorps’ rich content, curate personalized interview collections, and share StoryCorps stories to social media. 

Founded in 2003, StoryCorps has given Americans across all 50 states the chance to record interviews about their lives and amplify the story of America through the voices of everyday people. The new StoryCorps App builds on the platform and reliability of the first app, which was launched in 2015 with the $1 million TED Prize awarded to Dave Isay. The App made it possible for the public to record, archive, and access StoryCorps interviews beyond the S​toryCorps MobileBooth that crisscrosses the country or in a permanent StoryBooth. T​he app has contributed to significant growth of the StoryCorps Archive, which currently comprises interviews featuring more than 600,000 participants. 

The new app provides access to StoryCorps’ content, including its full online archive of interviews; all episodes of the StoryCorps podcast; the StoryCorps “Story of the Week” series; and the full collection of StoryCorps animations. The app also allows users to customize their profile, curate personalized interview collections, and easily share StoryCorps’ content and their own recordings via their social media channels. In addition, users now have access to StoryCorps Communities, enabling them to add their interview to a community they’ve joined, as well as see content from other community members. StoryCorps Communities is often used by teachers and students, as well as by individual community groups. 

App users can select one of three privacy settings for the interviews they record:

• • -Public: which makes the recording available to anyone through the StoryCorps Archive and app, and searchable on the web.

• • -StoryCorps Community: which makes the recording available to anyone logged into the StoryCorps Archive or App, but not findable by search engines.

• • -Private: which makes the recording visible and shareable with friends and family, using a private link on the StoryCorps Archive website.

To download the new app, visit the App Store and  Google Play. For more information about the app, visit storycorps.org/app.

Dave Isay, Founder and President of StoryCorps, said, “In its nearly 20 years of existence, StoryCorps has recorded people of all backgrounds and beliefs, giving them the opportunity to honor someone with the act of listening, share their stories, and preserve their voices for future generations. The recordings remind us of our common humanity, and of the beauty, grace, and poetry of the lives being lived all around us. The new StoryCorps app makes the recording, preserving, and sharing StoryCorps interviews much more accessible, moving us closer to StoryCorps’ goal to become an enduring institution that touches the life of every American.”

Funding Credits

Major support for the StoryCorps App is made possible by Jane Phillips Donaldson & William H. Donaldson.

About StoryCorps

Founded in 2003, StoryCorps has given 600,000 people, in all 50 states, the chance to record interviews about their lives. The award-winning organization preserves the recordings in its archive at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the largest single collection of human voices ever gathered, and shares select stories with the public through StoryCorps’ podcast, NPR broadcasts, animated shorts, digital platforms, and best-selling books. These powerful human stories reflect the vast range of American experiences, engender empathy and connection, and remind us how much more we have in common than what divides us. StoryCorps is especially committed to capturing and amplifying voices least heard in the media. The StoryCorps MobileBooth, an Airstream trailer that has been transformed into a traveling recording booth, crisscrosses the country year-round gathering the stories of people nationwide. Learn more at storycorps.org.

"I read it on Facebook so it must be true."

Not necessarily.

An article by Marguerite Reardon states, “Democrats on Capitol Hill are crafting legislation that could restore net neutrality and the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to regulate broadband, according to a report published Monday by The Washington Post.”

Read at https://cnet.co/3RNcn1x and beware. Those are just some of the lies being spread on Facebook (recently renamed Meta).

Are you planning to make a presentation at a genealogy (or other) meeting? Or are you are planning to hold a webinar?

An article by Syed Hammad Mahmood and published in the Make Use Of web site will tell you where to find tools to make the process easier:

"Whether you’re speaking in a live session or recording a video, it makes little sense to memorize your script. Especially when several teleprompter tools are available online that work perfectly within your browser. Using these tools, you can keep eye contact with the camera without having to memorize your lines. So, here are the eight online teleprompter tools for seamless reading and recording.""

You can find 8 Web-Based Teleprompter Tools for Seamless Reading at https://www.makeuseof.com/web-teleprompter-tools/.

Suggestion: Perhaps the simplest and most hassle-free tool on the list is the Free Online Teleprompter by Gecko Tribe.

Sad news. One of the more valuable genealogy services is closing down. The following was written by senior managers at Avotaynu Inc.:

After 37 years, Avotaynu Inc, publisher of works for Jewish genealogy, is closing its doors. The Winter issue of its journal, AVOTAYNU, which is currently being distributed, will be the last edition. The final edition of “Nu? What’s New” was published some weeks ago. Book selling will continue to exist. In anticipation of this day, Avotaynu, Inc sold its book selling business to a company in Massachusetts more than a year ago, and it is operating in a normal manner. Books ordered through the Avotaynu.com site are processed by this company.

During its 37-year tenure, Avotaynu Inc produced 145 issues of its journal AVOTAYNU, more than 500 editions of its ezine, “Nu? What’s Nu?” and more than 80 books. Five of its books received awards and in 2004, the company received the “Body of Work” Award of the Association of Jewish Libraries.

Avotaynu’s doors may reopen in the future. We are looking into various methods of advancing Jewish genealogy using the internet.

You can learn more about Avotaynu Inc. at: https://www.avotaynu.com/

(That web page might not remain online for much longer.)

Genetic Genealogy and the analysis of DNA samples are happening almost everywhere but here is an application of DNA analysis that I never thought of before:

A burglar broke into an apartment, cooked a meal and then stayed the night

Police found dead mosquitoes and blood marks on the wall enabling them to trace the thief using his DNA

Two mosquitoes have helped police in China catch a burglar after they bit and drank his blood which was then used in DNA testing to find him.

On June 11, in Fuzhou, Fujian province, southeastern China, a thief broke into a residential compound at around 1pm. The thief stole several valuable items, according to a report released by Fuzhou Public Security on its WeChat account.

After breaking in, the burglar cooked eggs and noodles before spending the night. He used a blanket in the owner’s bedroom and lit mosquito coils. Police found two dead mosquitoes and blood smears on the living room wall.

The police quickly came to the conclusion that the two blood stains had been left by the suspect as the property was freshly painted, and reasoned that if they were left by the occupants, they would have cleaned the walls.

Blood samples were then taken off the wall by police, who subsequently sent it for DNA testing against their records.

The DNA sample matched exactly that of a known criminal, surnamed Chai, who was later detained on June 30.

After being questioned, Chai confessed to the break-in and four other burglaries.

Analysis of the DNA in a single strand of rootless hair from a 1982 crime scene helped lead the authorities to arrest Robert J. Lanoue, a 70-year-old registered sex offender, officials said.

On a rainy Thursday in January 1982, Anne Pham was getting ready for kindergarten at her family’s home in Seaside, Calif. Having developed an independent streak as one of 10 siblings, the 5-year-old successfully pleaded with her mother and an older brother to let her walk the two blocks to school by herself.

But nobody at a busy grocery store along her route saw Anne. Nobody saw her at school, either.

Not until dinnertime did her large family notice her absence. For two days, there was no sign of her. Then, in some bushes by a road less than two miles away, her body was discovered by accident. She had been sodomized and smothered to death.

The Seaside Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation never developed a suspect or even a lead — until this year.

With a recent resolve to examine unsolved cases, a mysterious strand of hair and the help of genetic genealogy — which has been used to crack unsolved cases across the country in recent years — the authorities in Monterey County were able to identify Robert J. Lanoue, 70, of Reno, Nev., as a suspect and charge him with first-degree murder in Anne’s killing.

You can read the full story in an article by Alex Traub and published in the New York Times at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/11/us/anne-pham-cold-case-arrest.html.