May 24, 2013

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100-Year Old Time Capsule Opens

May 9, 2013 By

Exactly one hundred years ago on April 22, a time capsule was buried in the basement of the First English Lutheran Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.A. During a ceremony this April 22, a crowd that included the governor oversaw the opening of the “Century Chest.”

The entire ceremony was captured on video. Skip ahead to the good part, where they start opening the packages in the enormous box, at about 1 hour and 10 minutes into the video. You’ll see a prize-winning plate from the state fair, an old desk telephone with its bright green cord still wrapped around it, an Edison phonograph machine, artwork, photos, newspaper articles, clothing, a pen used by U.S. President McKinley to sign the Free Homes Bill and more!

My question for you: what would YOU put in a 100-year time capsule? Leave your comments.

Filed Under: Get Inspired!, History, Memory Lane, What's New Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Wild West of Sound Today and in the 19th Century

December 29, 2012 By

When I started podcasting back in early 2007, it was still sort of the Wild West of podcasting. The medium had only been invented and gone public in 2005. It has been exciting to be part of a new frontier of sound and to reach people around the world interested in genealogy through mp3 files online.  And the podcast has been far reaching, having recently celebrated 1,000,000 downloads!

Back in 1878 Thomas Edison was experiencing the first “Wild West” of sound when he created the first recording of the human voice with his phonograph invention. Today, historians are working diligently to meticulously capture and preserve those earliest recordings as this short video explains.

Filed Under: History, What's New Tagged With:

Texting fave OMG! has Roots Back to World War I

August 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

If you have teens in your family then chances are you have heard the phrase OMG which stands for oh my God. But have you ever wondered who started it? You may have thought it was Alicia Silverstone in the 1995 movie Clueless, but actually you have to dig much further back in history to find its origins. All the way back to 1917 in fact.

George Mason’s University’s History News Network website says that the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary discovered a use of “OMG” from 1917. It comes in a letter by British Admiral John”Jacky” Fisher, who wrote and I quote:

“I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis—O.M.G. (Oh! My God!)—Shower it on the Admiralty!”

According to the site “Fisher was famous for being the driving force behind the creation of the HMS Dreadnought, an advanced capital ship which, when it was launched in 1906, seemed revolutionary. This, the world navies agreed, made all other capital ships obsolete, but, distressingly to the British, destroyed their long-standing lead in naval power, if temporarily. The result was an enormously expensive Anglo-German naval race, which did much to bring on World War I.”

The letter was published in his book  Memories, published in 1919 (below in Google Books. Enter OMG into the search box to see it for yourself)

Filed Under: Humor, Mobile, What's New Tagged With: , ,