Number 501

Having reached 500 blog stories, I'd like to thank some of those who have made it possible.

I'd like to thank the friends reading this who have helped and encouraged me - they will know who they are.

I'd like to thanks those people and institutions whose work has been my main sources of information - those responsible for Papers Past, the Auckland Museum's Online Cenotaph, and the online content of NZ Archives - espicially the first-mentioned.  Were I not able to search, find and copy from the massive resource that is Papers Past it would not be possible to have the immense enjoyment I've derived from finding the stories I have.

I'd like to thank the descendants of many of the subjects I have found for their kind words.  I hope that, in some way, they have been made alive again.

I'd like to thank those long departed journalists for their work.  One of the things I most enjoy about reaching back into the past and finding an incident or character is the freshness of their writing.  Journalists write for their present, their next day's publication, with not much thought, it seems, for how "history" will see their efforts.

A word about typos and spelling mistakes.  The scanning and digitising of old newspapers is not a 100%  exact process, and "Blogspot" has no function to correct spelling.  Therefore, much of the time I spend in blogging is going through what I have copied and pasted to the draft blog page and correcting the spelling and punctuation back to fit with the image on the "Papers Past" page. I know that there is much I have missed.

And, finally, I'd like to thank the subjects of the stories I have compiled and presented. Many of them, of course, were not nice people.  And many were.  I have regretted my inabilty to meet many of them, and, of course, been grateful for the gulf of years which separates me from others.