Genealogy Blog 

Morace Park was footling around on eBay looking for antiques when he stumbled on an item that was listed casually as an "old film" – and even then he was really more interested in the tin it was in.

"It had a lovely look to it," said Park. But the contents of the battered container, which he bought for the princely sum of £3.20, have turned out to be a previously unknown film by Charlie Chaplin.

Park – who, when he is not buying and selling antiques as a hobby, runs a company that develops products with inventors – bought the film "from someone else who deals in bits and bobs". When his parcel arrived, he didn't even bother to open it for a while. But when he did, he unfurled a little of the film and saw the title: Charlie Chaplin in Zepped. "I Googled it," he said, "and then my interest was pricked. I couldn't find any sign of it on the internet."

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Phineas Gage was a railroad construction worker from New Hampshire and is known for his incredible survival after an explosives accident in 1848. The explosion propelled an iron rod (shown being held above) traveling at high speed to enter the side of Gage’s face, pass behind his left eye, and then exit at the top of his skull. The iron rod was recovered some 30 yards away, smeared with blood and brain. Gage recovered from the accident and retained full possession of his reason, but his wife and other people close to him soon began to notice dramatic changes in his personality. This is possibly the first recorded case suggesting that damage to specific regions of the brain might affect personality and behavior.

The photo was discovered in July 2009 and is the only known picture of Gage that exists.

10 Fascinating Recently Discovered Photographs

Precious artefacts given to a former Archbishop of Canterbury have been found apparently thrown into the River Wear at Durham, England.

Individual items, including gifts from Pope Paul VI and other religious leaders, could be worth up to £10,000.

The former Bishop of Durham Michael Ramsey lived in the city after retiring as Archbishop in 1974. He died in 1988.

The objects, some solid gold, were discovered by brothers Gary and Trevor Bankhead while diving in the river.

The first artefact - a silver trowel presented to the Archbishop for laying the foundation stone of an Indian church in 1961 - was found two years ago.

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If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it. As usual, Leonardo anticipated both of them.

First, concentrate on scientific gadgetry. After spotting what seemed to be a clue to Leonardo’s painting left by another 16th-century artist, Dr. Seracini led an international team of scientists in mapping every millimeter of the wall and surrounding room with lasers, radar, ultraviolet light and infrared cameras. Once they identified the likely hiding place, they developed devices to detect the painting by firing neutrons into the wall.

“Leonardo would love to see how much science is being used to look for his most celebrated masterpiece,” Dr. Seracini said, gazing up at the wall where he hopes the painting can be found, and then retrieved intact. “I can imagine him being fascinated with all this high-tech gear we’re going to set up.”

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A letter sent by a British soldier during World War II has arrived at its destination over 64 years late, after it was delivered by Royal Mail to an RAF base.

The letter, hand-written on American Red Cross paper, was posted by Serviceman Charles Fleming to a woman identified only as 'my dearest', on March 20 1945.

It was found by staff at the RAF Lakenheath near Brandon, in Suffolk inside a new envelope, after the original was damaged and lost, along with a note from Royal Mail with the words 'found loose in post please direct if possible.'

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An essay written by Sir Paul McCartney as a 10-year-old has been found after lying undiscovered in Liverpool's Central Library for more than 50 years.

Years before the Beatles received their MBEs, he beat hundreds of other school children to win a prize for his 1953 essay marking the Queen's coronation.

In neat handwriting, he refers to "the lovely young Queen Elizabeth".

In 2013, the library will display the essay - found in a scrapbook - to mark the 60th anniversary of the coronation.

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An old gun found on an Aberdeenshire nature reserve has been identified as a French rifle from the 1800s.

The remains of the ancient weapon were discovered last year in a sea cave on the St Cyrus National Nature Reserve.

Although experts have identified the rifle, it has remained a mystery how it got to the cave in the first place. The gun will now go on display at the St Cyrus Nature Reserve visitor centre, which is run by Scottish Natural Heritage.

Experts at the National War Museum, in Edinburgh, concluded the rifle was made in Saint Etienne, in south eastern France.

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A Spanish Civil War photo by Robert Capa that shows a Republican soldier at the apparent moment he was fatally hit in the back by a bullet was in fact staged, a Spanish newspaper claimed on Friday.

"Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting," wrote Barcelona-based newspaper El Periodico which carried out a study of the photograph taken in September 1936, the third month of the war.

The so-called "falling soldier" photo was not taken near Cerro Muriano in the southern Andalusia region, as has long been claimed, but about 50 kilometres (30 miles) away near the town of Espejo, the newspaper said.

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El Periodico: Las fotos expuestas en el MNAC desvelan que la imagen mítica de Robert Capa fue tomada lejos del frente de batalla (in Spanish)

For decades, it was a secret encased in brick and plaster, undetected by the thousands who passed by each year.

Then on June 4, a laborer working on construction of the new American Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts knocked a hole in a wall and saw an envelope sticking out of the rubble.

At first, Rick Brendemuehl thought it might be a stash of money. But instead he found a typewritten note from 1926, a letter to the future from a long-ago laborer who helped build the wall Brendemuehl was tearing down.

Thomas F. Crowley, who signed the letter, died in 1979, according to initial research, but the story of who he was has become a fascination for Maureen Melton, historian and director of the museum’s libraries and archives, who has enlisted the help of history buffs, genealogists, and archivists - as well as the power of the Internet - to piece together his story.

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