Ages ago I put together a post on the loss of the USS Shenandoah, a rigid airship of the US Navy, over Ohio in the 1920s. I did so simply because dirigibles fascinate me and the end of the Shenandoah’s career is a whale of a yarn. After I crafted that original post, the wisdom of the internets began to produce a truly amazing stream of Shenandoah-related information, from remarkable first-person anecdotes of the ship in flight and/or the wreck to photos taken on the day of the ship’s end by curious locals to songs, sheet music, and lyrics.

Today, out of the, um, clear blue sky, a correspondent forwarded a cache of family pictures showing the tail section of the ship on the ground. The pictures are tremendous, in my opinion, and I need to do some research to do justice to them. I am so interested in how this sort of thing happens. I post about something I’m intrigued by, and from nowhere, from everywhere, people with direct first hand knowledge and amazing family heirlooms share them with me, and by extension, with you.

The nation, and the world, is filled with striking events which generated news and passed into history. Each one of these events affected countless lives and families directly. I’m deeply affected by the multiple opportunities I have been afforded to act as a catalyst for the gathering of such histories. Every time a new contribution bubbles up, I’m overjoyed and amazed.