Researchers believe they have discovered the origins of the Black Death, more than 600 years after it killed tens of millions in Europe, Asia and north Africa.

The mid-14th Century health catastrophe is one of the most significant disease episodes in human history. But despite years of research, scientists had been unable to pinpoint where the bubonic plague began. Now analysis suggests it was in Kyrgyzstan, central Asia, in the 1330s.

Details may be found in an article written by Malu Cursino and published in the BBC News web site at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61820604.

Haggis is a well-known dish all throughout Scotland. I have been to Scotland several times and had heard of haggis previously but had never tried it primarily because I couldn't find it available anywhere near my home. On my first trip to Scotland, I decided to try it for myself.

According to Wikipedia.org at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haggis:

Haggis (Scottish Gaelic: taigeis) is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal's stomach though now an artificial casing is often used instead. According to the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique: "Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour".

Yum!

From its reputation, I had assumed I would not like the taste of haggis. After trying a few bites, I found it was rather pleasant. I’m not going to eat haggis every day but I am willing to try it again someday. In fact, I have tried it again on each of my later trips to Scotland.

NOTE: I have since learned that haggis is available in the USA (and elsewhere) from Amazon at https://amzn.to/3aX9lGZ. In fact, Amazon also sells Haggis and Cracked Pepper Potato Crisps at the same address.

Later, I was shocked… yes, SHOCKED… to learn that haggis was not invented by the Scots. In fact, it first appeared in a cookbook published in England! Well, there goes another belief I held.

Historian Catherine Brown says a recipe for haggis was published in an English book almost two hundred years before any evidence of the dish was found in Scotland.

Catherine Brown said she found references to the dish inside a 1615 book called The English Hus-Wife. The title would pre-date by at least 171 years Robert Burns’ poem “To A Haggis,” which brought fame to the delicacy. The first mention she could find of Scottish haggis was in 1747.

NOTE: The English Hus-Wife may be found at: https://archive.org/details/b30333143

Ms. Brown reports, “It was popular in England until the middle of the 18th Century. Whatever happened in that period, the English decided they didn’t like it and the Scots decided they did.” That probably is because the ingredients of haggis were readily available to common folks in Scotland. Haggis has a reputation of being commonly-eaten by lower-class citizens of Scotland, not so much by the moneyed gentry.

You can read more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8180791.stm.

Now somebody is going to tell me that kilts also were invented by the English. Oh, wait a minute… they were! See https://skilt.co.uk/2011/01/25/the-modern-kilt-was-invented-by-an-englishman/.

A federal judge won’t stop a class of Californians from going after PeopleConnect for using their yearbook photos without permission.

PeopleConnect, a Washington based company that runs the social networking site Classmates.com, had urged U.S. District Judge Edward Chen to issue a judgment in its favor following the dismissal of a similar class action against genealogy giant Ancestry.com by U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler.

Beeler found Ancestry immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act because while it used the decades-old photos to attract subscribers, it did not create the content on its site.

The same lead plaintiffs Meredith Callahan and Lawrence Abraham also went after PeopleConnect for doing the same thing, but PeopleConnect argued that Chen should nix the action in light of Beeler’s ruling.

While Chen tossed the plaintiffs’ claim that the company intruded on private information, he advanced the bulk of the lawsuit last year, concluding that it should proceed because the plaintiffs were never paid for the use of their yearbook photos and because those pictures seem to have some advertising value for PeopleConnect.

You can read the full story at: https://bit.ly/3zHOTEn

If you like to "improve" digital photographs, such as old family photos, you will be interested in this announcement from Adobe:

Adobe has started testing a free-to-use version of Photoshop on the web and plans to open the service up to everyone as a way to introduce more users to the app.

The company is now testing the free version in Canada, where users are able to access Photoshop on the web through a free Adobe account. Adobe describes the service as "freemium" and eventually plans to gate off some features that will be exclusive to paying subscribers. Enough tools will be freely available to perform what Adobe considers to be Photoshop's core functions.

"We want to make [Photoshop] more accessible and easier for more people to try it out and experience the product," says Maria Yap, Adobe's VP of digital imaging.

The US military has begun disinterring the remains of eight Native American children in a small cemetery on the grounds of the US Army War College in Pennsylvania to return them to their families.

The disinterment process, which began during the weekend, is the fifth at Carlisle, Pennsylvania since 2017. More than 20 sets of Native remains were transferred to family members in earlier rounds.

The children had lived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where thousands of Native children were taken from their families and forced to assimilate into white society as a matter of US policy – their hair cut and their clothing, language and culture stripped.

More than 10,000 children from more than 140 tribes passed through the school between 1879 and 1918, including famous Olympian Jim Thorpe.

On a rainy spring afternoon, Denise Diggs visited the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. She was in search of a family artifact.

Wearing jeans and a blue windbreaker, she blended in with other Washington tourists, until she descended into a dimly lit exhibition area. There, Diggs began weaving in and out of visitors engrossed by the remnants of a slave ship, a wrought-iron slave collar and a six-foot statue of Thomas Jefferson standing in front of a wall of stacked bricks memorializing the hundreds of humans he owned.

Diggs was on a mission — to find a Bible once owned by her family’s patriarch.

A few steps down the hall, she discovered it, amid relics highlighting the experiences of enslaved people and the role faith played on the plantation. The 62-year-old grew teary as she stared at the Bible; it was opened to the first chapter of the Book of Exodus, which recounts the Hebrews being placed in bondage in Egypt. This was the first time she had seen the Bible on display, protected behind thick glass.

Diggs turned and noticed a tourist wearing glasses was staring at her.

“It belonged to my great-grandfather,” Diggs said, dabbing away tears as she pointed to the book.

“Oh, my goodness,” the tourist replied. “Incredible.”

You can read much more about this historical artifact in an article by Erin B. Logan published in the Los Angeles Times web site at: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-06-13/black-history-bible-smithsonian.

My thanks to newsletter reader Jackie Feldman for telling me about this article.

The following announcement was written by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG):

When Colleen Snyder researched her family history during the Covid-19 pandemic, she did not expect to discover a connection to the legend of Irish giants. Colleen, from Virginia in the United States, suffers from a rare genetic condition called acromegaly or gigantism.

NOTE: According to the UK's NHS at: https://bit.ly/3aQQgpY:

"Acromegaly is a rare condition where the body produces too much growth hormone, causing body tissues and bones to grow more quickly. Over time, this leads to abnormally large hands and feet, and a wide range of other symptoms.

"Acromegaly is usually diagnosed in adults aged 30 to 50, but it can affect people of any age.""

The gene caused Charles Byrne, born in 1761 near Cookstown and known as the "Irish giant", to grow more than 7ft 6in (2.3m) tall.

Medical researchers have previously identified Mid Ulster as a "hotspot" where one in 150 people have the genetic mutation, compared to one in 1,000 in Belfast and one in 2,000 in the rest of the UK.

Colleen first developed symptoms when she was eight, but the condition was not diagnosed until she was 20. Doctors in the USA told her it was rare to develop acromegaly at such a young age.

"Through the years I kept trying to find somebody that had the same condition, get more information about it and I couldn't."

That was until she began to research her family history during the lockdown. When she looked at her family tree she realised her ancestral home was in fact Clonoe, near Coalisland in County Tyrone, the centre of the giant gene "hotspot".

You can read more in an article by Julian Fowler published in the BBC News web site at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-61726811.

Are you planning a visit to the FamilySearch genealogical library in Salt Lake City in the near future? If so, you might want to first read this article published today in the Yahoo News web site at: https://yhoo.it/3xMVGeP:

 If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store:

The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.

Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, windstorms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.

“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,” said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.

As climate change continues to cause record-breaking drought, there are no easy solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require letting more snowmelt from the mountains flow to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. That would threaten the region’s breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture — something state leaders seem reluctant to do.

Utah’s dilemma raises a core question as the country heats up: How quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even as those effects become urgent, obvious, and potentially catastrophic?

You can read more at: https://yhoo.it/3xMVGeP.

The following announcement was written by Syracuse University Libraries:

WASHINGTON —Syracuse University Libraries expands its Preservation Steward agreement with the U. S. Government Publishing Office (GPO). Under this agreement, libraries pledge to permanently preserve print collections of historical Government publications produced by GPO. Syracuse University Libraries is the first Preservation Steward to agree to preserve new volumes as they are published, as well as the historical volumes.

Under this agreement, Syracuse University Libraries will preserve the following.

• • United States Code from Volume 1 of the 1940 edition through all new volumes as they become available
  • Statutes at Large from Volume 1 (first through fifth Congresses) through all the new volumes as they become available

“GPO congratulates Syracuse University Libraries on being trailblazers in Government information and becoming the first library to preserve new volumes of Government information as they are published,” said Superintendent of Documents Laurie Hall. “This is a big step forward in providing access to Government information today and into the future and realizing GPO’s vision of an America Informed.”

“Syracuse University Libraries has been part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) for more than 140 years, nearly as long as the University’s founding. We were designated as an FDLP on February 7, 1878 by U.S. Congressional Representative Frank Hiscock. Our Government documents collection includes all types of publications in all formats, and we select 70% of all available documents,” said David Seaman, Dean of Syracuse University Libraries and University Librarian.

“This is a tremendous resource both to our campus scholars as well as the greater Central New York community. Extending the program to include new volumes of Government information as they are published provides the most timely resources to our faculty, students and community members,” said John Olson, Librarian for Government and Geo-Information at Syracuse University.

Through the FDLP, GPO works with approximately 1,100 libraries nationwide to provide public access to authentic, published information from all three branches of the Federal Government in print and electronic formats. The program's antecedents can be traced back to the act of Congress dated December 27, 1813 (3 Stat. 140). The act provided that one copy of the journals and documents of the Senate and House be sent to each university and college and each historical society in each state. GPO has operated the FDLP since 1895.

GPO is the Federal Government’s resource for publishing trusted information for the Federal Government to the American people. The GPO is responsible for the production and distribution of information products and services for all three branches of the Federal Government, including U.S. passports for the Department of State as well as the official publications of Congress, the White House, and other Federal agencies in digital and print formats. GPO provides for permanent public access to Federal Government information at no charge through www.govinfo.gov and partnerships with approximately 1,100 libraries nationwide participating in the Federal Depository Library Initiative. For more information, please visit www.gpo.gov.