Fantastic find in a newspaper!

I've always loved using newspapers for family history. Mostly this has meant looking at old newspapers, online, on film or even in hard copy - which reminds me, I must pay a fond farewell visit to Colindale before it closes later this year. More and more titles are being made available online all the time, revealing new details and sometimes astonishing breakthroughs for researchers.

But this time it is a current newspaper that got me and my family excited. On 27 July the paper in question ran a feature to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty of Panmunjom which brought the Korean War to an end. My aunt is a regular reader of the paper, and was interested in the feature because her late husband, my uncle Tommy, had served in that war. She got the surprise of her life when she looked at picture of a group of soldiers and right in the middle of the picture, there was Tommy!

She rang the newspaper and asked if she could have some copies of the picture, which she was perfectly willing to pay for, but instead they said they would send her a couple of copies, free of charge! We are a big family, so quite a few of us wanted copies. Technology to the rescue; you can take pretty good pictures with a mobile phone, so a copy of the photo has now been emailed around (it took me about half an hour on the phone instructing my mother, step by step, how to forward an email to me, but we got there eventually).

I've chosen not to show the picture, because the copyright belongs to the paper, and I haven't named the paper either, because they might not appreciate being 'outed' as a paper that gives away free pictures. Sorry about that. So you have a nice generic picture of the badge of the Black Watch, my uncle's regiment. I thought the story was worth telling, though, because it shows how you can find pieces of family history in surprising places, and when you are least expecting them. So remember to keep your eyes peeled, folks