The Human Dynasty

I’ve come across three very different websites this week which you might like to visit.
Firstly reader Clare Gibson has launched The Army Children Archive (TACA) at http://www.archhistory.co.uk. The Archive was established to collect, record and preserve details of the unique aspects of growing up as the child of a soldier in the British Army. Although it is still in its infancy, she hopes that "the Archive and the website will eventually provide a useful source for social and military historians, and particularly that it will interest former and current army children, who, on the one hand, may find that it ignites some sparks of recognition that in turn trigger a string of memories or, on the other, may enjoy the sense of having a rich history all of their own". At present she has posted a number of interesting pages and of course Clare would welcome contributions if you came from an army family or your ancestors did.
Weather has a profound influence on the lives of our ancestors, particularly those less well off who were particularly affected by harvest failures and the resulting high price of bread. Even in late-Victorian times heavy snowfall could throw tens of thousands out of work. http://www.booty.org.uk/booty.weather/metindex.htm has pages about weather over the centuries presented in various ways from timelines comparing historical events to the weather at the time to summaries of weather extremities and oddities from the Stone Age almost to the present.
Outside work I’ve been working on a proposal for a book about crime between the two world wars. One topic I have been researching is the gangs of young men, particularly those which caused trouble in working class communities in Sheffield and Glasgow. I stumbled across an excellent website – The Glasgow Story – which explores the history of the "Empire’s Second City" in great detail (although there is not much about gangs). There are pages and pages of well-written history plus an extensive photographic library and indexes to the Valuation Rolls for 1913-1914 which provide details of the city’s ratepayers – in effect a surrogate census. http://www.theglasgowstory.com