Giovanni de Munari, a pharmacist from Tuscany (Italy) announced that he found the basis of longevity elixir in Chianti wine. The recipe is from the 18th century and was invented by his ancestors. He himself is the owner of the oldest pharmacy in Italy and found a recipe during refubishments of his house. The recipe was so interesting for him that he decided to prepare the elixir for himself. He said that the results of the tests were very good for the elixir and that he seeks to produce the wine in an industrial scale. We hope he is right!

At the weekend, the German Genealogy Convention in Bad Elster (Germany, of course ) will attract genealogists’ attention all around Germany (Link - page is in German only). We’ll be present in Bad Elster, too, to answer all kinds of online genealogy questions. We’ll also hold a lecture on online genealogy, so quickly book your flight and don’t miss it! Just in case that you can’t come: do you have any other proposals for genealogy fairs or meetings in your area? Feel free to publish them in the forum or comment on this blogpost.

You’d like to modify the birth order on the site? Unfortunately there have always been problems with the order of birth and therefore we’ve optimized this feature. To sort the brothers/sisters in the correct order, just select the profile of the person in position where she was born. When children are added for the first time, they will be sorted according to the order of integration, namely the child that was added for the first time is the number one and so on. 

Next Monday, the 2nd Monday in Octobre, is Columbus Day. On this day, Columbus’ discovery of the "New World" is celebrated in many countries all around the globe. Columbus, who was searching for India at that time, laid the foundation of many future international family relationships all around the world. Several nations followed Columbus to the "New World" and made the US what it is today: a "Melting Pot of Nations". The Columbus Day is celebrated under different names in the different countries such as "Dia de la Raza" or "Dia de la Hispanidad".

P.S.: Rodney Tryster has won the book! Thanks a lot to all the voters!

Last week, we found out that most of you know/knew between 20 and 50 persons in your family tree, but there are a lot of itsourtree.com users who know between 50 and 100 persons in their family tree. This week’s question is simple: How old are you? Yep, we’d like to know our user’s age. So, please be honest ( ), we won’t tell anybody…

In 1990, the UN made October 1st the International Day of Older Persons. 50 years from now, the number of older persons will nearly quadruple, growing from about 600 million to almost 2 billion people. The world grows older and everyone should be aware of this fact. So, if you haven’t already done it, speak with your elderly relatives about your family. They probably know a lot about the past and past generations. If you don’t think you can invite them to your family tree, take our family questionnaire with you to take down notes and enter the data yourself. Your children will appreciate your efforts!

The German magazine Internet World Business is looking for the best Internet Idea 2008 and our German "mothership" site verwandt.de is among the nominees! Now it’s upon you, the users, to click >>>here<<< to vote for us (We know, the site is in German, but it’s simple: just click on "Verwandt.de" in the left column, scroll down and click on the large red button that says "FÜR DIESEN UNTERNEHMER VOTEN").

Okay, you probably want to know how to win the great genealogy book 

After voting, leave us a note in this post’s comments and wait for us to tell you if you’ve won.

We’ll announce the lucky winner here on the blog next Monday.

And here’s some information on the prize:

"This updated edition of In Search of Your German Roots is designed to help you trace your German ancestry; not only in Germany but in all the German- speaking areas of Europe, from the Baltic to the Crimea, from the Czech Republic to Belgium. Like all books by Angus Baxter, it shows you how to conduct your research by correspondence and e-mail; how to work in your own home, at your computer, using the resources of libraries and archives or the records of church and state." More info here: Link.

Last week’s poll asked you how often you contact your parents, and 40% contact their parents daily, 36% at least once a week and 16% even many times a day! This week, we’d like to know: how many of the relatives in your family tree have you met personally?

Of course, you can’t sit in front of your computer all day adding information to your family tree on itsourtree.com. There are lots of interesting and helpful books on genealogy out there that can be complementary tools for your genealogical research. Strolling around Amazon may be fun but specialized bookstores always add to your search’s efficiency. RootsBooks.com (RootsBooks.co.uk for all english(wo)men among us) has to offer a lot of literature and software, especially matching genealogists’ needs. Basically, it’s just a filtered Amazon that Dick Eastman has set up, but the concentration on genealogy-related topics can help to find interesting results!

You’ve probably noticed our new navigation (any comments? Let the world know in the forum!). The new structure is topic-oriented ("Family", "Genealogy") instead of focusing on the functions ("Messages", "Photos").

The new menu items in detail:

HOMEPAGE

Here, everyone can personalize whether he wants to start with the Overview or the Family tree.

MY PROFILE

This is all about you: the Personal profile, the Calendar, your Messages, your Friends and the Invitations.

MY FAMILY

Features that concern all people in your family tree such as the Family list, the Map, the Name index and the Photos.

GENEALOGY

Here, you find features that can help you with your genealogical research: the Infocentre, the Forum and the Search function.

In most some cases, the first marriage partner is not the one you’re growing old with. To be able to distinguish between different relationships in the family tree, we’re showing the connecting lines in different colours. The first marriage is represented by a black line, the second by a green one and so on.

(Click image to enlarge)

Please note that this depends on the perspective. For the husband, it may be the second marriage, while it is the first marriage for the wife. In these cases, we show the appropriate colour for every partner. From the husband’s profile, the line is green as it is his second marriage and from the wife’s it’s black as it is her first marriage.

(Click image to enlarge)

In the "Independent", an Irish newspaper, Dick Eastman found an interesting quote that is quite a good thought-provoking impulse:

"Trace a line back 600 years and what you have is 16 million ancestors. Go back 80 generations and the figure rises to a trillion trillion (which is actually greater than the total number of people who’ve ever lived, but that’s maths for you).

The US National Centre for Biotechnology Information puts it as bluntly as it gets by pointing out that, if you trace the line back far enough, every single human on the planet would eventually be shown to be related."

Wouldn’t it be great to see your family relation to all your ancestors? It’ll probably take some time to add all these ancestors, and some information may be lost, but if you add as many relatives and ancestors as you can and invite all relatives you know, you’ll find out quite a lot about your ancestors (one of the largest trees in our database has more than 23,000 profiles!).