EXTRA...

America's forgotten founder; Nantucket ferry cancelled for today; World's oldest newspaper now online only

USA's forgotten founding father, Bartholomew Gosnold
Cape Cod discoverer founded Jamestown  13 years before Pilgrims

IPSWICH UK -  America is today preparing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its first English settlements - and East Anglia was at the forefront of its establishment. As the results of scientific tests on the bones of the Suffolk-born founder of the first colony are about to be released, Paul Geater looks at how founding fathers from this region helped establish what was to become the greatest power on earth.

For generations, schoolchildren on both sides of the Atlantic learned that north America was founded by the Pilgrim Fathers, who set up the first colony in New England after landing there in 1620.

However that is not strictly accurate - the first English-speaking colony in North America was Jamestown in Virginia, founded in 1607 (woodcut on right of Gosnold's landing there). And it was a Suffolk man, Bartholomew Gosnold, who led the way with the foundation of that settlement... He discovered Martha's Vineyard - which he named after his infant daughter - and Cape Cod in what is now Massachusetts. The stories his crew brought back from that trip attained immortality when they formed the basis of The Tempest, William Shakespeare's last play.

However Gosnold's trip to Virginia four years later was to be his last... Read the rest of this Evening Star story here.
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Nantucket Car Ferry cancelled today due to weather

UPDATE: According to the Steamship Authority, the car ferry to Nantucket is cancelled today.  All other passenger ferries from Hyannis to Nantucket are running on schedule today despite reports from Boston television stations earlier this morning. 

Boston television stations this morning reported that the Steamship Authority cancelled early morning (8am) trips to Nanucket due to severre weather conditions.  See weather bulletins here. The SSA telephone 508 477-8600 does not answer until after 8 so we could not confirm thiese report.
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World's oldest newspaper switches to Online only
A Distinctly Modern Demise for the World’s Oldest Newspaper

The Swedes, who jumped into the newspaper game back in 1645, are taking another great leap forward: what is said to be the oldest newspaper in the world has gone digital and is now available online, and online only.

The World Association of Newspapers says that the country’s Post och Inrikes Tidningar, or PoIT, is the world’s oldest newspaper still in publication... Read the rest of the New York Times story here or a similar story in the Malaysia Star with no registration required here.
EDITOR's NOTE:  Sweden's Queen Christina and her chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, started the paper in 1645. PoIT eventually broadened international and domestic news coverage, publishing weather observations, poetry and serialized novels as well, but never photographs or advertisements.  Its readership dwindled as rival newspapers appeared, confining PoIT primarily to publication of announcements from publicly listed companies, and financial and legal institutions. In recent times it has been essentially a government newsletter.