When Edward Samuel Miliband, British Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, did a radio interview for the station “Ekho Moskvy” in Russia (together with his brother David Miliband, who is Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs), he did of course not expect to fing long-lost relatives. During the interview, a woman named Sofia Davidowna Miliband called and said “I am Sofia Davidovna Miliband, I am your relative; I am the only one left”. Despite the fact that the shows host cut her off, believing she was joking, Ed Miliband later met the 86-year old woman. It turned out that she was not joking: he remembered having known of Sofia’s existence when he was a child, and described her as “an amazing woman”.

Ms. Davidowna Miliband was once the leading expert on Iran at the Moscow School of Oriental Studies, and thought she was the only Miliband left at all. After some time of translating and calling back home, Ed Miliband found out that his great-great grandfather was the brother of Sofia’s grandfather, who had been born in Warsaw’s Jewish quarter as well. Mr. Miliband’s ancestor fled Poland in the 1920s, ended up in Belgium, and then fled to England with forged papers when Hitler’s army invaded Belgium.

The Secretary was so eager to meet his relative that he left a reception at the British embassy, to the amazement of the ambassador and dozens of guests and media

Photo: open eye communications

Hey folks, dynastree’s blog needs your help! As you might know, Family Tree Magazine is hosting a vote for the top 40 genealogy blogs again this year, the list will appear in the print edition in May 2010. Our blog made it into the list of nominees! We are really excited, and would like to thank everybody who submitted the blog.

Now the votes come in, and we need your support: please go to Family Tree Magazine’s website and vote for dynastree’s blog!

Furthermore, we’d like to introduce the new family tree view that has been added in the latest release: the Bubble-style view! It looks really cool, the profile cards are shown as bubbles, connected through lines, and details for the profile cards can be shown when you move your mouse cursor over the a profile card. Here’s what it looks like:

(Click on the image to enlarge it)

You can switch to the new view via the collapsible menu on the left, choose “Bubble” there:

Heraldy is an interesting aspect of genealogy, and many families have a century-old family crest. It has also become quite fashionable to create one’s family crest and use it in one’s letterhead, or on a business card. In this week’s blog we’d like to know if you have your own family crest as well!

We have just updated to a new version of dynastree! One of the main features is a newly designed wallpaper for the family tree PDF and poster, called “Retro”. It’s simple and reminds me of the 70s, very nice in just white and blue, check it out:

It can now be chosen in the shop for both family tree posters and PDFs!

Did you ever think that you might want to publish your own experiences in genealogy? It’s easier than you might think, both technically and in terms of what it takes to write and maintain a genealogy blog. We recently discovered this video, which shows a 15 minute interview with Lisa Louise Cooke and Thomas MacEntee of Geneabloggers. Thomas MacEntee explains how you can easily start your own blog, and also elaborates how he got into genealogy, it really is interesting, you don’t want to miss out on it!

For further information, you can also access Geneabloggers’ guide for genealogy bloggers, it covers pretty much everything you need to know if you would like to share your genealogy story with the community.

If you would like to take a look at what other blogs deal with and look like, check out the blog roll, it is quite an impressive list of over 650 blogs, dynastree’s blog has just been added, thanks!

Folks, Christmas is approaching! It will be there before you know it, even though it’s only early October… so we would like to know when you plan on doing your Christmas-shopping! A poster of your family tree makes a great gift, you can get it here (you need to be logged in).

Today’s blog’s subject takes us into the fascinating subject of human ancestry: the skeleton of a new species has been discovered and is believed to be the oldest ancestor of the modern human that has been discovered so far. The remnants were found in northern Ethiopia, in a river bed near the town of Aramis. Many groundbreaking discoveries have been made in this part of Africa, the skeleton of another potential human ancestor, Australopithecus afarensis, was found here in 1974 (it was named “Lucy” in reference to the Beatles-song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”).

The female was named “Ardi” and lived bout 4.4 million years ago, and belongs to a new species called Ardipithecus ramidus. This species lived in a key period of human development, shortly (well, in terms of evolution!) after the human species separated from the common ancestor of modern apes (such as chimpanzees) and humans, about 6.6 million years ago. It may have been the first early human to walk upright.

Ardi was about four feet (1.2m) tall, and weighed around 50kg, similar to the height and weight of a modern chimpanzee. While she was very adapt at moving from tree to tree, she could also walk upright on the forest floor.

You can find out more at The Guardian, or at The New York Times.

If you would like to expand your knowledge about genealogy and improve your research skills, you can attend classes at GenClass in October. The classes are held in English, scripts will be provided as PDF-files, and you can contact the instructors via Email. All instructors are professional genealogists, the list of teachers is really quite impressive!

Each class costs $29.50, and is held over 4 weeks. See the list of available classes below:

* Adoption Investigative Class
* African-American Genealogy – Part 2 (Intermediate) Before 1870
* Australian and New Zealand Genealogy
* Canadian Research – Internet Resources – Part 2
* Jumpstart your Genealogy!
* Salt Lake City: Part 2 – the Largest Genealogical Library in the World!
* Write Your Family History Step-by-Step

Please share your experience if you have ever visited such a class, either online, or in a “real” class