The Globe and Mail features Stephen MacGillavray's interview with Kaye Chapman, a centenarian who at the age of 5 witnessed the Halifax Explosion 99 years ago today.

Nearly a century ago, five-year-old Kaye Chapman said goodbye to her four brothers and sisters as they rushed out the door of their north-end Halifax home. She collected her Bible and ( Read more... )

The Toronto Star's Paul Hunter describes how one street in the Annex was devastated by the loss of its young men in the First World War.

They grew up on the same West Annex street, a few doors from each other; boyhood pals, then teenaged running mates. Four of them attended Harbord Collegiate together ( Read more... )

• blogTO shares some photos of Toronto in the gritty 1980s.
• The Dragon's Gaze links to a paper examining the habitable zones of post-main sequence stars.
• Far Outliers notes the ethnic rivalries among First World War prisoners in the Russian interior, and examines how Czechoslovakia got its independence.
• The Map Room Blog looks at the mapping technology ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg notes that Brexit might drive British migration to Australia, suggests Russia's recession might be coming to an end, looks at carbon emissions from dead trees, and reports on Guiliani's liking for Blackberry.
• Bloomberg View notes Israel's tightening restrictions on conversions and looks at how Putin has become a US election issue.
• CBC notes ( Read more... )

The Waterloo Region Record's Jeff Outhit notes that, exactly one hundred years ago today in the middle of the First World War, the southwest Ontario city of Berlin had its name changed to Kitchener against the will of its inhabitants. (Via James Nicoll.)

Residents voted narrowly to change Berlin's name in the midst of the First World War to prove ( Read more... )

• The Dragon's Gaze reports on speculation that the Fermi paradox can be answered by assuming extraterrestrial civilizations have died already.
• The Dragon's Tales looks at the climate of early Mars.
• Far Outliers takes a look at ethnic divisions among Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war in Russia.
• Joe. My. God. reposts his essay on gay pride parades, in ( Read more... )

• Antipope's Charlie Stross considers the question of how to build durable space colonies.
• blogTO notes that the musical Hamilton might be coming to Toronto.
• The Dragon's Tales notes that European populations are descended from Anatolian farmers, not local hunter0-gatherers.
• Far Outliers notes the plight of Czech and Slovak migrants in Russia following ( Read more... )

• Bad Astronomy notes the proposed names for new superheavy elements.
• Dangerous Minds examines the lost music of the Human League, neglected unjustly on the charts.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes a young hot Jupiter being eroded away after only two million years, and links to a paper suggesting high-metallicity stars preferentially form gas giants.
• The Dragon' ( Read more... )

• Dangerous Minds looks at the oddly sexual imagery of zeppelins entering their births.
• The Dragon's Gaze notes a paper looking at ways to detect Earth-like exomoons.
• Imageo notes unusual melting of the Greenland icecap.
• Language Log shares an extended argument against Chinese characters.
• The Map Room Blog notes the hundredth anniversary of the Sykes- ( Read more... )

Katie Daubs wrote for the Toronto Star about the lone Canadian death in the Easter Rising, an Irish-Canadian teenage soldier mysteriously shot on a Dublin street.

While he was on leave in the U.K., Neville Fryday arranged to visit his mother Elizabeth, who was living in Dublin at the time. Fryday was born in Ireland, but the family lived for a ( Read more... )