The historic Mount Stromlo Observatory Director's Residence was gutted when the fire swept through the Brindabella mountains and into Canberra on January 18, 2003, destroying about 500 homes. Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics director Matthew Colless said visitors can again appreciate the historic significance of the building. For full story click here.
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High school students do oral history (USA)
Oxford University Press blog post about the positives and negatives of having high school students record oral histories. Read full story here.
Black leadership in USA
When Julian Bond and Phyllis Leffler began their oral history project on black leadership, many of the people they interviewed said, “Well, where are the black leaders? King is gone and no one has come to take his shoes.” Read article and watch video here.
Voice Recognition Software – a review
Here is a review of voice recognition software. Click here.
Toowoomba’s “Wonder Years”
TOOWOOMBA'S wonder years – a time when the Bee Gees were just kids, playing to packed out crowds at the Helidon Spa. Back then, a few influential people made sure Toowoomba was on the national music circuit and all the big names made the trip up the range for gigs – bands like Johnny King and The Kingmen, Ronnie and The Ramblers and The Beaumen. For full story, click here.
The Manhattan Project
During World War II, Phil Gardner traveled more than 100,000 miles to recruit workers for the secret project at Hanford, having not the slightest idea what was being built there. He and other recruiters scattered across the nation would get Western Union telegrams at the start of the week from Pasco forecasting the new labor requirements at Hanford, a key site in the U.S. effort to produce an atomic bomb before Germany developed one. For full story, click here. There is also a link to the website here.
Christmas conversations
David Isay from StoryCorps has some suggestions to get the conversation going and learn more about your relatives. Click here for full story.
Postmaster knows her village
Lillian Salisbury, now 87, spent her postal career ensuring that mail operations flowed smoothly in this former mill village by the Pawtuxet River (USA). Sorted, stamped and delivered, in timely fashion. Customers treated with respect. So too, did Salisbury’s grandfather, grandmother and mother: a succession of postmasters whose collective service dates to 1918; nearly a century all told. For the full story click here.
A bank collects clients’ oral histories
Wells Fargo Abbot Downing is embracing a basic principle of good business: When you find a winning strategy, run with it. That's one way to explain the bank's decision earlier this year to create family histories for all of the very wealthy clients served by its Abbot Downing division. For full story click here.
Ask your family before it’s too late
Why didn’t I ask when I had the chance? The problem is that we don’t know how much we don’t know until death takes away the parents and grandparents who were the repository of all these unknown things. For full story click here.