On 28 June 1914, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. It was an incident which was to set a chain of events in motion, culminating in World War I. Not quite a month after the assassination, around 20-23 July 1914, the French President, Raymond Poincaré, made an
Those of you who read my blog might have seen this post that I wrote about my grandmother, who was born on a Thursday. I compared her life to the prediction in the nursery rhyme “Monday’s child”, which suggests that those born on a Thursday have far to go. The
Searching for information on my maternal grandfather, Pavel Voronov (Paul Woronoff) uncovered more material than I ever thought possible and I have written quite a few posts about him. However, moving one generation up the tree and the information is more difficult to come by. Naturally, if I could read
In another century what will historians, anthropologists and researchers make of the wealth of material we are producing today? Will they speculate at the news stories and marvel at the immaculate Instagram images? Will our emails and text messages stand the test of time? What will social media say about
The Corona Virus, or COVID 19 as we are being told to call it, is everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean reports of it are on every news channel and social media site. It is now officially a pandemic. Contagious by nature, the fear of it is contagious
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once wrote, “Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.” If I can make a judgement from this comment alone, my parents, especially my father, left me a very substantial way to remember them. The tub in the photo only holds