December 2019

Who are the adventurers in your family tree? On this day in 1899, Norwegian explorer and adventurer Helge Ingstad was born in Meråker, Norway. Ingstad and his wife, archaeologist Anne Stine, were the first to prove the Vikings had reached North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Image: Oslo Museum, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) In 1960, Ingstad and Stine found the remnants of a Viking settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada.The settlement dated… Read the full story

As 2019 comes to a close, we take a look back at all the wonderful things we have been able to accomplish in the past year. Over 10 million profiles have been added to the World Family Tree this year, meaning we’ll close out 2019 with nearly 140 million profiles connected to the World Family Tree! This year our team worked hard to provide the Geni community with new and better tools to help build the family tree faster… Read the full story

The following post was written by Ian Stone from Perth, Western Australia. A Geni user since 2010, Ian discovered his passion for genealogy after starting his family tree on the site nearly a decade ago. After sharing his submission for Geni’s Family History Month Giveaway, Ian asked for the opportunity to expand on his answer to the question, “If you could go back in time, which ancestor would you visit and why?” Ian had said that he would love to visit… Read the full story

Happy birthday to Taylor Swift! Today the music superstar turns 30. Swift was born on December 13, 1989 in Reading, Pennsylvania and was named after the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter James Taylor. Many years later in 2011, Swift would have the chance to perform on stage with Taylor during one of her concerts in Madison Square Garden. Music had always been a part of Swift’s life from an early age. Her maternal grandmother was a former opera singer and performed around the world as a member of… Read the full story

Save the date! MyHeritage, Geni’s parent company, has announced that MyHeritage LIVE 2020 will take place on October 25-26, 2020 in Tel Aviv, Israel. This one-of-a-kind conference brings together attendees from around the world and international genealogy and DNA experts for a full two days of fun and education. Read our recaps of MyHeritage LIVE 2019 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and MyHeritage LIVE 2018 in Oslo, Norway. The third annual MyHeritage user conference will be held at the Hilton Tel Aviv,… Read the full story