India's vaunted tech savvy is being put to the test this week as the country embarks on a daunting mission: assigning a unique 12-digit number to each of its 1.2 billion people.The project, which seeks to collect fingerprint and iris scans from all residents and store them in a massive central database of unique IDs, is considered by many specialists the most technologically and logistically complex national identification effort ever attempted. To pull it off, India has recruited tech gurus of Indian origin from around the world, including the co-founder of online photo service Snapfish and employees from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Intel Corp.
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Hundreds of South Koreans, separated from family members in North Korea for more than half a century, were reunited with their relatives on Saturday as a Red Cross gathering got under way at the Diamond Mountain resort in the North.
Around 3000 Nottingham residents can trace their roots back to a tiny village in Southern Italy. Their link comes from one man Salvatore Loscalzo, held prisoner in the city in WWII, who wrote home telling villagers of work in local factories.
There's a deep chill where the dead sleep, but Debbie Peevyhouse is fearless as she wanders between tombstones at Mission City Memorial Park, documenting lives lost in Santa Clara Valley.
Two Civil War-era dolls are giving up their secrets. They may have been used for drug smuggling. The dolls are called Nina and Lucy Ann. They were X-rayed Wednesday at the VCU Medical Center, in Richmond, Virginia. Experts say the dolls have hollow heads.
In 1692 nineteen people were put to death for being witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Rebecca Nurse was among those condemned by Reverend John Hale. Now centuries later a strange twist of fate brings them together.
Allied forces feared the Nazis were planning to fight a guerrilla campaign from a base under the Alps as the tide turned against Germany in World War II, archives released Thursday showed.
Newly released documents about World War II heroine Eileen Nearne reveal she was assessed as "scatter-brained" just two months before she was dropped behind enemy lines in Paris. Previously classified documents show she was not ready for the dangerous spy work she was sent to do.
The Israel Broadcasting Authority and Harvard University signed an agreement Tuesday to digitize 80,000 hours of recordings dating back to the pre-state period. It is the product of more than three years of talks between the two organizations.
Russia has returned the remains of 121 Italian soldiers who were killed in the Soviet Union during World War II. The remains were handed over Tuesday in a ceremony at the Chkalovsky military airfield just outside Moscow.
Crews accidentally uncovered human bones believed to date back to the 1850s-'70s at San Francisco's Fort Mason compound this week.
The Mass Digitization team at CDL is proud to announce that the 3,000,000th volume has been digitized from the collections of the University of California libraries! Reaching this milestone has involved the work of many dedicated people across the UC Libraries.
Fishermen have found a dozen bombs believed to be from World War II buried on the Galapagos Islands, a local government official said. The bombs were found on Bartolome Island, one of the Galapagos group about 960km off South America's north-western coast.
An audit prompted in part by the loss of the Wright Brothers' original patent and maps for the atomic bomb missions in Japan finds some of the nation's precious historical documents are in danger of being lost for good.
Daphne Hopson, clad in white gloves, slowly opened the document. It was amber with age and slightly lighter along the creases where transparent tape once kept it from tearing.
Christopher Columbus and his crew have long been blamed for syphilis back from the Americas to Europe after their historic first voyage. In 1493 they returned to Spain bringing news of lands across the Atlantic and the first cases of the potentially deadly disease thanks to their exploits abroad, it was believed.
Rock wildman Ozzy Osbourne has discovered how he managed to survive 40 years of drink and drug abuse - he's descended from Romans who lived through the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The former Black Sabbath frontman has undergone complicated DNA testing for research scientists to map out his entire genetic make-up.
A Taiwanese woman feels she is under pressure to get married, but hasn’t yet met a man she wants to spend the rest of her life with, so she decided she will marry herself.
Some new changes have been made in the GeneaNet menu and the pages 'Origin of your Surname' and 'GeneaMap' have merged.
Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes following the discovery of a series of bombs from the Second World War in the French city centre of Rennes.
The bloody history of the Catholic uprising of 1641 has been brought back to life on the internet. Testimonies from thousands of eye-witnesses to one of the most significant events in Irish history have been transcribed and made 
Historic documents containing centuries-old information on Kentish towns have been made 
A rare collection of Civil War books has been donated to the University of Mississippi. Dr. D.J. Canale, a retired neurosurgeon in Memphis, Tenn., and his wife Janet, have donated a collection of books, some of which are related to the topic of medical treatment of soldiers in the field.
No one in town seems to know of Ida Chase, the woman whose casket was opened after vandals broke into her family's 97-year-old mausoleum in Mount Pleasant Cemetery on South Street earlier this month.
Two mass graves that may hold the remains of up to 2000 Japanese soldiers have been discovered on the island of Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest and most iconic battle sites of World War II, a report and officials said on Friday.
Peterborough, Ontario recently celebrated the arrival of the first Irish immigrants – way back in 1825.
On a June night more than 65 years ago, Ralph Watts missed his high school graduation ceremony. At the time, he was more than 1,000 miles away in Texas, training in the Air Force, preparing to fight in the European theater of World War II.
It only took a couple of thousand years, but people the world over will soon be able to have a close-up look at one of the greatest archaeological finds of the last century. Earlier today Google and Israel's Antiquities Authority announced plans to collaborate on a project to make the Dead Sea Scrolls available both to scholars and the general public over the Internet.
With a click of the mouse, net surfers can now travel back in time to see Williamsburg before it became a tourist destination, the college when women joined the campus or for fun, comedian Patton Oswalt eating cold spaghetti.
No doubt, we need to protect those photographs. These are priceless because they are glimpses of our memories. If it is possible at all to make copies of photographs and store them at a distance and safe place, we need to do so. These are irreplaceable if destroyed or lost unless copies have been made and stored.
The Annals of the Chosun Dynasty, an official national treasure listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, were written over the course of 472 years from the reign of King Taejo in 1392 to King Cheoljong in 1863.
Major combat operations in the American Revolution ended 229 years ago on Oct. 19, at Yorktown. For that we can thank the fortitude of American forces under George Washington, the siegecraft of French troops of Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the count of Rochambeau - and the relentless bloodthirstiness of female Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes.
Unlock the Past with the support of the Society of Australian Genealogists announces the History & Genealogy Expo Sydney 2010. This will be a fascinating 2 day exhibition and conference on 22-23 October 2010 at Parramatta RSL, Corner Macquarie and O’Connell Streets, Parramatta, NSW.
A new online database lets Holocaust survivors and their relatives search details of more than 20,000 artworks stolen from Jews during World War II.
The new GeneaNet Online Family Tree software has launched!
A Sarah Palin ancestral family had two tragic Indian encounters. Benjamin Waite rescued his captured wife and children. Years later Indians killed him.
A search has been launched to find the descendants of a slave who escaped America and settled in Oldham. The remarkable life of James Johnson is the subject of a talk being given in the town to mark the country's first ever Anti-Slavery Day.
A 59-year-old man yesterday appeared in court in a “graves for sale” case in which he is accused of the theft and larceny of more than €20,000 in connection with the sale of burial plots in an east Clare graveyard.
A text on a pyrographically decorated gourd dated to 1793 explains that it contains a handkerchief dipped with the blood of Louis XVI, king of France, after his execution. Biochemical analyses confirmed that the material contained within the gourd was blood.
More than a million vertiginous aerial photos taken between the end of the First World War and 2006, including the largest set of overhead photographs of Britain taken before 1939, will be digitised for the public after the Lottery awarded £1.75 million to a four-year conservation programme.
Unlike many moms, Barbara Soper never gets her kids' birthdays confused. That's because her first was born on Aug, 8, 2008, her second on Sept. 9, 2009 and her most recent on Oct. 10, 2010.
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the grantmaking arm of the National Archives, is pleased to announce a cooperative agreement with The University of Virginia (UVA) Press to make freely available online the historical documents of the Founders of the United States of America.
Adelaide United players are among the first to be tested in a project to discover the ancestry of the city's residents. The genealogy project aims to find out where Adelaideans come from, going back over 2000 generations.
President Barack Obama has family ties to none other than Sarah Palin, according to the genealogists at Ancestry.com, a discovery the family history site made when looking for connections between political foes.
The Allen County Public Library has launched a new genealogy web site that will make it easier for people to find out about their family ancestry without actually visiting the library's Genealogy Center.
The body of Charles E. Hicks, who died in World War I in France, arrived in Gresham, Oregon, for burial 90 years ago. Hicks, a mechanic with an aero squadron, died at Pours on Feb. 14, 1919.
A dusty old painting stored behind a family sofa could be a Michelangelo worth up to $300 million (£190 million) and potentially one of the art finds of the century, according to an expert.
The remains of the Italian woman who was the model for Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa were dug up 30 years ago and now lie in a municipal rubbish tip, an Italian expert has claimed.
Have you ever wondered what English towns or cities looked like before the war, or whether their history stretches back as far as Domesday Book? Thanks to two new web features launched by The National Archives, it is easier than ever to find out.
Hundreds of books and journals which have been "gathering dust" in Gloucestershire's archives are to be sold. The county council said the items included mid-19th Century editions of Punch magazine and Archaeologia journals dating from 1803 to 1923.
The GeneaNet 'All Relatives' menus have been reorganized for improved access to pages and features.
Barack Obama is the first United States president known to have Mormon ancestry. President Obama is a great-great-grandson of Nancy Ann Childress Osburn Armour Turner, who was a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS).
French national library BNF has reached an agreement with Microsoft to improve access to the 1.25 million documents on the Gallica digital library via the Bing internet search engine, reports AFP. The deal was announced at a press conference by BNF president Bruno Racine and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
When the album that is life finally reaches the end wouldn't it be nice to keep that record spinning for eternity?
Eva Jacqueline Longoria was born on March 15, 1975, in Corpus Christi, Texas, one of four children born to Enrique Longoria, Jr., and Ella Eva Mireles. Her parents were both Mexican Americans. "My family really has a strong sense of where it came from," she said. "I always felt really connected to my culture, whether it was through language, through religion, through tradition.
The story of Edinburgh's contribution to World War I, including accounts of Girl Guides helping M15, has gone online.
Digitally remastered video highlights of the three-hour 1969 moonwalk have been revealed for the first time to a public audience. They include a clearer picture of Neil Armstrong's descent down the stairs of the lunar module, which was taken from the Parkes Radio Observatory and the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station outside Canberra on 21 July 1969 (Australian time).
A woman's account of escaping the sinking Titanic in 1912 has been published for the first time.
A lost flute concerto by the composer Vivaldi has been discovered at the National Archives of Scotland.
A Mississippi soldier is coming home more than 60 years after his death.
The laws signed by Adolf Hitler taking away the citizenship of German Jews before the Holocaust were placed on rare public display Wednesday at the National Archives (US).
A collection of early Italian printed books is to go online early next month after months of scanning work at the National Library in Florence, digitization company ProQuest said Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
A lecture presented this Saturday, October 9, 6:30 pm, at the Manuel Teixeira Gomes Library in Portimao in Portugal promoted by the Association Cristovao Colon and by the City Hall of Portimao will reveal solid proof of the historical lie of an "Italian Christopher Columbus”
The Northamptonshire Black History Association is helping African, Asian and Caribbean people trace their ancestry. They are holding a family research session to help people have a better understanding of where they came from.
From an 
Before the arrival of the Loyalists and British military settlers, the present-day Province of Ontario was an extension of the Province of Quebec.
The Israeli daughter of a Holocaust survivor who kept a diary in hiding during World War II wants it back from a Polish-Jewish archive, but officials refuse. It belongs to the nation, they say.
Some changes and improvements have been made to the GeneaNet Online Family Tree options.
For the children of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and social justice icon Marcus Garvey, DNA roots tracing has confirmed they have something genetically in common: Both their paternal ancestries trace to Europe; and both their maternal ancestries connect them directly to Africa.
Though his words now come in a hushed whisper, Frank Woodruff Buckles’ 109-year-old eyes still gleam with wisdom and experience. Buckles, who served in the Army as a corporal, is the last known surviving American veteran of World War I – making him a living piece of American history.
In advance of the deadline set by Prime Minister David Cameron to cut government carbon emissions by at least 10% in the next 12 months, The National Archives has received the Carbon Trust Standard for reducing energy consumption consistently over the last three years, including a 10% carbon reduction in 2009/10.
More than one million items previously stored in the bowels of the 
The 
American photographer and filmmaker Edward Serotta and two historians, Eszter Andor and Dora Sardi, started Centropa, a Jewish historical institute that spent eight years training young historians in 15 European countries to create a different sort of oral history project.