Tuesday 1 February 2011

Save the Workhouse

NEWS

The race is on to save the Cleveland Street Workhouse in London, which campaigners say is well worth rescuing from its imminent fate - and I'm sure most of us genealogists would agree.  See here for more information, and a chance to sign the online petition.

Good news for Derbyshire researchers who subscribe to FindMyPast, with the release of more than 2million new records - see here.

ON THIS DAY

Birth of...
Boris Yeltsin, 1st President of the Russian Federation, in 1931.

Death of...
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, English novelist, in London in 1851, aged 53.  She died after many years of illness - probably as a result of a brain tumour.

Saint's Day:  St.Brigid, one of Ireland's three patron saints (the other two being Patrick and Columba).  Some versions of her life story have her being saved from an unwanted marriage by the loss of an eye and, therefore, her beauty.

1811:  Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the east coast of Scotland, fires its light for the first time:

The day long wished for, on which the mariner was to see a light exhibited on the Bell Rock, at length arrived. Captain Wilson, as usual, hoisted the Float’s lanterns to the topmost on the evening of the 1st of February; but the moment the light appeared on the Rock, the crew, giving three cheers, lowered them and finally extinguished the lights.

Find out more at http://www.bellrock.org.uk/ .

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