We will be hosting a meeting of Footnote.com users at the National Genealogical Society Conference in Richmond, Virginia on Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 10:00 AM. Footnote users who live near Richmond or who will be attending the 2007 NGS Conference, are welcome to attend. We will discuss future plans, solicit user opinions, give out door prizes, and have fun with Dick Eastman and Beau Sharbrough. Anyone who is interested may attend. Seating will be limited. If interested please contact Elizabeth.

Ray Bradbury once said, “I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.” Bradbury’s bent for creative destruction through literature gave the world not only a fun read but ideas for what the future should be.

Most detractors of ideas seem less interested in preventing a future than underestimating the capabilities of people. As proof, check out the blog Thought Mechanics offers some of history’s more egregious prognostications. Some favorites:

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

“The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.”

Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project.

Until recently, interest in Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) seemed to be waning. But lately they appear to making a comeback - especially in Canada where this year they have become more conspicuous. According to a study mentioned in the Toronto Star:

Aliens and spaceships are a bit passe these days, but 736 reported UFO sightings across Canada last year shows an “underlying, real phenomenon” going on, according to one of the country’s top UFO researchers.

Interest in UFOs seems to be growing worldwide from Northeast China to Chicago to France where, last month, the French government created a stir when its space agency published more than 1,600 reports online from its archives relating to UFOs and sightings of other unexplained phenomena.

If you’re interested in examining the evidence for UFOs, you can now access for free the Project Blue Book report documents compiled by the US Air Force from 1947 to 1969.

A little more than half of the 130,000 documents are available now but we’re hard at work to bring the complete NARA collection to the web for the first time.
In the meantime, we’ve enjoyed browsing the latest images. Here are two recent favorites to get you started:

If you’re looking for the full Footnote UFO experience, try out our enhanced viewer by clicking on any of these search results.