Search engines and slavery

Historian Adam H. Domby (College of Charleston) reports that Ancestry has recently changed its search engine in ways that make it more difficult to learn about slavery from basic genealogical inquiries. "When searching for an individual’s name, Ancestry.com stopped including results from the 1850 or 1860 United States Census Slave Schedules." Some improvements have been made but reportedly the search function is still not back to what it was. Read much more here. His article appears in "Black Perspectives," the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS).  

Front-page news 101 years ago, or "we're not in Kansas any more"

FIRST AIRPLANE PASSES OVER WILLIAMSBURG

A large airplane coming from the southwest and going northeast passed over Williamsburg about 4:30 Saturday afternoon [30 November 1918]. This is the first airplane which has been near here, and people in and around the vicinity were able to get a good view of it, as it was going rather slowly. No report has been seen of it, so no one know why it was traveling over here.

(Williamsburg Star [Kansas], Thursday 5 December 1918, page 1, column 2)