'Pirates of the Caribbean' actor Orlando Bloom has revealed that he and his wife Miranda Kerr named their son Flynn after his grandmother. The star, who became a father for the first time earlier this year, said that the name was inspired by his grandmother, who passed away when the baby was conceived.Speaking on 'Live with Regis and Kelly', Bloom said: "I was convinced we were going to have a girl. Because my grandmother actually passed when Flynn was conceived and she was really dear to my heart."
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Each year, archives, libraries, museums, and historic preservation organizations set aside May 1 to participate in MayDay, an initiative to protect the nation's cultural heritage. MayDay reminds us to be proactive about emergencies that affect our holdings. Simple steps to prepare can make a big difference.
In all, 30,000 manuscripts from the NE region have been digitised and micro-filmed by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA). The IGNCA has also digitally photo-documented both the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) protected and non-protected monuments in the NE States of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland.
Julie Hunt knew her great-uncle was killed in World War I and that his body had never been found. But what she could never have imagined was that her grandfather’s brother Matthew Hepple finally would be formally identified through DNA testing.
A heritage consultant who was trying to establish if Kate Middleton had Scottish roots has found an ancestral link to Prince William instead. Gordon Casely, who is based in Aberdeen, said he found Prince William was a direct descendant of a "hard-drinking" 17th century Middleton from Aberdeenshire.
A team of researchers in Italy has begun a search for the tomb of a woman who may have been the model for Leonardo Da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa. The team is using a special radar device at the convent in the city of Florence where it thinks the body of the woman, Lisa Gherardini, is buried.
Little is known of the ancestry of Africans pulled into the trans-Atlantic slave trade. A new website, launched at Emory University this week, aims to change that. The African-Origins (
A recently unearthed collection of rare WWI photographs has shed new light on Brunswick’s wartime history. The 750 glass plate and glass negative collection features several telling images of the era including rare photographs of local soldiers on the eve of their departure and on their return to the suburb.
Five days after the passenger ship the Titanic sank, the crew of the rescue ship Mackay-Bennett pulled the body of a fair-haired, roughly 2-year-old boy out of the Atlantic Ocean on April 21, 1912. Along with many other victims, his body went to a cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the crew of the Mackay-Bennett had a headstone dedicated to the "unknown child" placed over his grave.
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A collection of rare photographs from the first photography commission for a Royal trip abroad has been purchased by Birmingham Library and Archive Services. Taken by the pioneering British photographer Francis Bedford (1816-1894), they chronicle the ‘Tour in the East’ made in 1862 by the Prince of Wales, (the late Edward VII).
A commemoration committee is asking thousands of Amsterdam homeowners to mark their houses if a former Jewish resident was arrested or deported to Nazi death camps during World War II.
When German historian Sönke Neitzel ran across a bundle of documents in Britain's National Archives in 2001, he could hardly believe his eyes: He had found transcripts of conversations between German soldiers secretly recorded while they were being held as prisoners of war during World War II. These were private conversations between soldiers who didn't know that a third party was listening to and transcribing their every word.
The remains of Australian war dead are being uncovered by farmers in France and Belgium and immediately reburied to avoid red tape and delays - and there is nothing authorities can do about it.
Gov. Bev Perdue requested a Disaster Declaration for 18 North Carolina counties touched by fierce thunderstorms this past weekend, and 10 have been declared disaster areas by the federal government. This is a time for all citizens to get their emergency plans and supply kits ready for the summer storm season.
The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday declassified six World War I-era documents -- the oldest classified documents held by the spy agency -- containing the ingredients used to create invisible ink.
A coat of arms has been granted to Kate Middleton's family ahead of the royal wedding. How do you acquire such a design? Her parents may have been an ex-flight dispatcher and a former air stewardess descended from a miner, but an absence of noble blood has not prevented the family of Kate Middleton having a coat of arms drawn up for them.
A postcard lost by a World War I soldier being treated in a village hall hospital has been returned to relatives. Carpenters Alan Payne and Jason Grant found Private Edward Wolstencroft's card in December while working in the hall at Shepreth, Cambridgeshire.
The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) has been digitizing materials the society has collected since its formation in 1890. The material is now available on its website at 
John Lennon and Paul McCartney made history with their many famous records.Now their ancestors are to have their moment in the spotlight, when their baptism and marriage records go online for the first time.
The 80-year-old World War One Memorial at Shrewsbury's Beal Elementary School, named in honor of Maj. Howard W. Beal, (a Shrewsbury resident who practiced medicine in Worcester and was killed in action on the Western Front in July 1918) has deteriorated beyond repair due to the ravages of time and weather.
A Bible found on a battlefield during World War I has been returned to the family of its former owner. British soldier Herbert Hodgson found the book when he was fighting in Flanders, Belgium, in 1918. He kept it until he died in 1974.
A new online map launched by the National Archives of Australia shows the home towns of World War I diggers and allows people to view individual service records, build tributes, or attach memories to an online scrapbook.
“Dead men tell no tales but their tombstones do,” wrote Tom Weil in “The Cemetery Book.” Asked why she describes herself as a “cemetery junkie,” Rommy Lopat, of Lake Forest, said, “The history, landscaping, architecture, sculpture, genealogy — all of the above.
GeneaNet is a collaborative genealogy website so you may want to introduce yourself and let other members know who you are: email address, picture, some words about your family tree, etc.
The world's certified oldest man, whose advice to others included the observation "you're born to die", has passed away aged 114 in the US.Walter Breuning was old enough to remember his grandfather recounting his part in the slaughter of the American Civil War, during the 1860s.
The Missouri State Archives has made documents from four Civil War-era governors available for viewing online. The documents come from governors Claiborne Fox Jackson, Hamilton Rowan Gamble, Willard Preble Hall and Thomas Clement Fletcher. The four headed Missouri's government at different points from 1861 through 1865.
A Massachusetts pilot will receive a funeral with full military honours this weekend - 68 years after his plane went missing over the South Pacific during World War Two. U.S. Army Air Force Second Lieutenant Martin Murray, then 21, disappeared without trace on October 27, 1943 along with 11 crew after the B-24D Liberator failed to land on the island of New Guinea.
A Shawnee, Oklahoma, woman is trying to figure out what to do with a tombstone that was found under her home. It was quite a shock when the new owners of this home crawled beneath to do some plumbing work, and instead of finding a leak, found a headstone.
"Dead men tell no tales but their tombstones do," wrote Tom Weil in "The Cemetery Book." Asked why she describes herself as a "cemetery junkie," Rommy Lopat, of Lake Forest, said, "The history, landscaping, architecture, sculpture, genealogy — all of the above.
France Thursday sent back a shipment of ancient Korean royal books, 145 years after its troops looted them during a retaliatory raid on an island west of Seoul.
Rare footage of Australian soldiers at the 1916 Battle of Pozieres, filmed for what is believed to have been Australia's earliest attempt at a war documentary, has been made available online.
A murderer whose skeleton was found hanging in a university laboratory was laid to rest today - exactly 190 years after he was executed. John Horwood was just 18 when he became the first person to be executed at the New Bristol Gaol in 1821.
Kenneth Price, a Whitman expert from the University of Nebraska, realized he had unearthed a trove of documents in the famous American poet’s handwriting, filed away in the National Archives and virtually forgotten until now.
The Netherlands' national archive said Tuesday it has gathered new information about the arrests and deportations of some 9,000 Dutch Jews during World War II.The information, from a sealed archive on wartime collaborators, will reveal to some Dutch Jews the names of those who arrested their relatives and other precious facts about their final days as they were deported to Nazi concentration camps during the German occupation of the Netherlands from 1940 to 1945.
For Brandon Liljenquist, a tintype photograph of an American Civil War drummer boy turned out to be such an image. Liljenquist says a portrait of a young Civil War drummer boy "reached across time to challenge his beliefs about what makes an army great, leading him on a journey of discovery."
The Philadelphia Tribune announced that it is digitally archiving their entire photo collection, which includes more than 250,000 photos and spans 125 years. The photographs, which were previously unpublished, showcase African-American life in and around Philadelphia from 1884, when the newspaper was founded.
An announcement by Dragonfly TV: Do you think your family tree might have British roots? Would you like to travel to Great Britain to discover your living relatives? Dragonfly Film and TV in the UK is making an exciting new game show featuring families and long-lost relatives. And we're searching for people from all over the world, who think they might have British ancestry who they've never made contact with.
We've all seen photographs of the Civil War: black-and-white images of bearded Union generals or mustachioed Confederate colonels posing to one side of the camera, dead bodies stacked on the battlefield or common soldiers around a camp tent.
In a country where written history is lean and almost non-existent, the government made a good effort and set up a National Archives to cater for the few historic documents accumulated during and after the colonial era.
New research has revealed that First Lady Michelle Obama, like her husband President Barack Obama, has Irish roots. Megan Smolenyak, the same genealogist who discovered that President Obama’s Irish roots go back to Moneygall in County Offaly, has discovered that Michelle Obama's family tree has a large Irish branch.
A massive haul of bones discovered in a medieval graveyard has given an insight into the medical capabilities of people 1,500 years ago. The skeletons, found in central Italy, show that many soldiers buried close to one another survived after suffering blows to the head with maces and battle axes.
The Girl Scouts have never been what you'd call an underground movement. But the world's largest display of their memorabilia is tucked into the basement of one home in Denver.
Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of skeletons at a 16th Century burial ground in the heart of the city that once served London's most notorious psychiatric hospital, the original "Bedlam." The bones are expected to yield valuable information about mortality, diet and disease in the period.
Previously unseen 3D footage of World War II, showing a German anti-aircraft crew in 1943, is to be shown on TV. Footage including a 2D Nazi film explaining how to use 3D technology will also feature on the hour-long show, to be aired on Sky 3D on 26 May.
A further 14 World War I Australian soldiers killed in the 1916 Battle of Fromelles have been identified. Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon said the diggers, originally from NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, were among 250 Australian and British soldiers recovered from mass graves in Pheasant Wood, France, in 2009.
Looking for an image to illustrate Victorian design, the Second World War, or another historical event? The National Archives has updated their 
How does an archivist understand the relationship among billions of documents or search for a single record in a sea of data? With the proliferation of digital records, the task of the archivist has grown more complex. This problem is especially acute for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the government agency responsible for managing and preserving the nation's historical records.
Once a month, Sean Kelleher sets up a makeshift office inside Saratoga Town Hall in front of a 10-inch computer screen and an image scanner. A bulky stack of blank discs sit at his side, waiting to be filled.
Skyscrapers create an impressive skyline for modern-day Seoul. It’s hard to imagine the city without the present landscape. What did Seoul look like back in the 1930s or in the 50s-60s when the nation was savaged by the Japanese colonial government (1910-45) and the Korean War (1950-53)?
The old home adjacent to Shirl Marks' house in Stamping Ground stood untouched for about 10 years after it was acquired by her family. "Trees were growing through it," Marks said. "Possums lived in it." When her son played at a nearby basketball goal, "the critters would be looking out the window," she said, laughing.
Bumbling Nazi secret agents slipped into the U.S. through Long Island to sabotage the American war effort, declassified British documents revealed Monday. The spies were tasked with committing "small acts of terrorism" with "incendiary bombs in suitcases left in luggage depots and in Jewish-owned shops," the report said.
The Registrar General for Scotland has announced that the 1911 census will be released on Tuesday 5 April 2011. This census details information collected from more than 4.7 million Scots – marking a century since the data was first gathered.
The days of Australians being able to seize the property of Germans to repay the debts of World War I are finally over. Almost 83 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front, the battle opened by then prime minister Billy Hughes against the German empire has been concluded by a bunch of bureaucrats cleaning up Australia's legislative wasteland.
Search the GeneaNet database for collaborative genealogy data, archival records, collaborative and genealogy society indexes, old postcards, family pictures, rolls of arms, bibliographies, genealogy works, magazines, almanachs, etc.
The government intends to press ahead with the publication of the 1926 census although it would be in breach of the 100-year rule which governs all such information, Minister for Heritage Jimmy Deenihan has said. He said publishing the census would need a change of legislation but he had received “widespread approval” for this.
The Rural Municipality of Rosser will be part of the first phase of a University of Manitoba-led project aimed at making historical research of rural Manitoba easier. A book on Rosser’s history, The First Hundred Years: 1893-1993, will be included in the historical digitization project, which is being spearheaded by the U of M’s archives and special collections, the Manitoba Historical Society, the Manitoba Libraries Association and the Manitoba Legislative Library.
Robert M. Edsel, President of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art and author of The Monuments Men, announced today the discovery of an audio recording of a speech given by General Dwight D. Eisenhower about the importance of art and its protection during war.
Officials from the Ministry of Education have joined with library leaders to announce funding for the Saskatchewan Multitype Digitization Initiative. This initiative will lead to the digitization of historical and cultural materials from across the province and ensure they are easily accessible for students, researchers and the general public.