Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
Source: Wikipedia

According to The Times, the British Library is currently undertaking a project to digitize their collection of more than 65,000 nineteenth century books in an effort to preserve them and make them available for free for public consumption.

The only catch is that you must own an Amazon Kindle which is something I find incredibly disappointing. I do not like the Kindle or eBook readers. I suppose the best part about it is that I can still buy regular paper copies that mimic the original books.

Here is part of the article:

MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.

Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.

[...]

While the British Library books — which will include Dickens’s Bleak House, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge — will be available free online, the public will also be able to order printed copies from Amazon.

Like the onscreen versions, the paperbacks, costing £15-£20, will look like the frequently rare 19th-century editions in the library’s collection — including their typeface and illustrations. Originals of works by Austen and Dickens typically cost at least £250.

You can read the full article on The Times.

I will keep this theme up for a while and see how I like it while working out the kinks. The Links and Archives pages do not work quite right yet, but I will look into those soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the new theme and let me know what you think or if you think I ought to go back to the old theme.

I have some plans I want to enact with History Rhymes. Possibly in a the future I will turn it into some sort of online magazine or journal rather than just using at a blog. We will see however.

The History Blog is reporting that the remains of the two missing children of Tsar Nicholas II have been found. The bones belong to Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. In July 1918, the Russian royal family, who were at the time being held captive in Yekaterinburg by the Bolshevik revolutionaries, were lined up against a wall in the basement of a noble's house and executed via firing squad. The bodies were originally dumped into a mine shaft, but then were later removed for fear of the remains becoming a rallying point for the political enemies of the Bolsheviks as they ceased power in Russia. Once removed they were then mutilated. According to a 1934 report based on the words of Yakov Yurovsky, the leader of the family’s killers, the bodies of Alexei and a sister were buried in a pit while the rest of the bodies were doused with sulfuric acid and buried along a road. DNA testing has been done which confirms the identities of the owners of the bones.

The reaction in Russia has been a mixed one. Neither the Russian Orthodox Church nor descendants of relatives of the Russian royal family have commented on the find yet. A lawyer for the royal descendants, German Lukyanov, has said that the family should be "declared victims of political repression," but the Russian courts have instead declared them victims of premeditated murder.

You can read more about it at The History Blog, MSNBC or Yahoo! News.

Jennings was sifting through the Library of Congress’ one million archival photographs in its online Prints and Photographs catalogue when he encountered the picture captioned ‘Wash. D.C. Grand Review of Army,’ which was ostensibly of the two-day military parade in May 1865. A distinct line of soldiers with shouldered rifles stood amidst a crowd of hundreds of civilians. But, said Jennings, “the identification given didn't jive with what I was seeing.” After viewing the photograph at a higher resolution, he saw civilians pressed closely around the soldiers, not something that would occur in a military parade.

A day later, Jennings returned to the online archives and discovered two more photographs, each entitled “Inauguration of President Grant.” Both showed the same trees, townhouses, and soldiers as the first photograph.

The article is dated February 8, 2008, so this is a rather old story, but I hadn't read anything about it before. There was also apparently a CNN story about it as well.

You can find the full article here on AmericanHeritage.com.

You can also see the photos quite clearly on CNN's website.