Our first press release hit the wire this morning. You can see it here, at PRWeb, and also on Library Technology Guides. I’m not sure if we’ll be able to find all the places it appears, so if you see it somewhere, please do let us know.

On September 2, 1925, the USS Shenandoah (ZR-1), a rigid airship, was destroyed during a squall in Ohio. Fourteen of 53 people on board died in the crash. This was the 57th flight for the airship, so it certainly wasn’t a problem with the newness of the ship. Instead, weather was the problem.

It’s worth noting that there are a few non-maritime “ships” in the database, such as Shenandoah. Of course, looking at the link for Shenandoah, one sees a range of vessels — a Confederate cruiser/raider, a post-Civil War steamship, a schooner, a post-World War II tender, and, of course, the airship in question today. While they’re not as extensively  listed, you will find these other vessels (and even a few imaginary ones) in the database, so check it out — even if your “ship” doesn’t float.

On this day in 1768, Capt James Cook set sail from England aboard Endeavor, bound for the Pacific Ocean, with plans to explore and map portions of the Pacific. Cook had been hired by the Royal Society in 1766 to map the Transit of Venus. On this voyage, his first of three, he became the first European to provide descriptions of native Australians.

This story from CNN Europe tells of a guy who found a pocketwatch on an old shipwreck, and spent several years trying to track down descendants of the proper owner. It turns out the watch was lost from the ship Barbara in 1881.

Of course, with a very random name like “Barbara,” the vessel that the watch’s owner sailed on might not be one of the “Barbaras” currently in the database. On the other hand, you never know what the mention might actually be — it might not be about a whaling vessel, even though the resource is about American whaling, for instance.

It can often be worth tracking down each of these citations, just to see if they might lead elsewhere.

Yeah, I’m sure you loved our retro, 1993-core previous website, but we thought it was time to bling it up, so we did. Introducing our spanking new website with real live images and CSS and all that great modern 21st century web technology.

We had a bit of dust to shake off ourselves but now we’re at it with a vengence – look out, we’re changing our middle name from atrophy to … uh… I dunno, something less sad. Please suggest ideas in the comments, kthx.