Using GPS to Find an Outhouse

Today's genealogy-related post allows me to recommend to you the excellent Twelve Mile Circle blog. Among other things, it offers advice on how to find a bathroom at Old World Wisconsin.

A Page Right Out of Astronomical History

Astronomer Monty Robson visited Rutland, Vermont, to find out where William Page lived on Dec. 14, 1807—not for genealogical reasons, but because on that day Page witnessed a meteorite explode in the sky over Connecticut.

Page, after watching the explosion early in the morning of Dec. 14, 1807, recorded his observations with the help of neighbor and noted meteorologist the Rev. Samuel Williams.

"I never had any idea William Page had been involved in anything like this," said Jim Davidson of the Rutland Historical Society.

"The house had been moved three times, but he didn't need to know where the house was now," Davidson said. "He needed to know the GPS coordinates of William Page's yard in 1807. It was a different sort of request from what we're used to. Usually people are researching their family tree." [Link]

Get Your Descendants Off the Couch

Time in a Capsule is a website devoted to geocapsuling—a neat spin on geocaching. Instead of stashing treasures for fellow geocachers to find, you stash treasures for your descendants to find months, years, or decades from now.

Founders Alan and Nancy Bixby have thought of every contingency, like, what if your children have no interest in retrieving your cached items?

If your dead-beat progeny are jailed, or lazy, or ex-patriots or whatever, then a “fail-safe relative” will make a decision to give the information to someone else in the family who will likely relish this challenge. We’re just offering an opportunity for our descendants to enrich their lives. We’d even be happy to return to our drop site locations with them. They might ask other more adventurous friends or relatives to reclaim their containers if they are practicing sloths. Honestly though, they'd have to have the brain of a speed bump to ignore this curious opportunity. Someone at least will gain from the experience…as we have. [Link]