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We saw this excellent infographic that explains the origins and meanings of Irish surnames, and thought it would be of interest to people who use the British Newspaper Archive to research family ancestors from ‘the Emerald Isle’.– http://www.goireland.com/craic/irish-family-names.htmWe have several historical Irish newspapers available in the Archive.For people looking to research ancestors in the Belfast area, there is ‘The Belfast News-Letter’ from 1828 to 1900.For the Cork area, we have the ‘Cork Examiner’ from 1841 to 1926.For Dublin, there is…

On 10 July 1925, the famous ‘Monkey Trial’ started in Dayton, Tennessee, as science teacher, John Thomas Scopes, went on trial accused of teaching the theory of evolution in high school.The trial was one of the legal sensations of the 20th Century, and attracted national and global attention. Indeed, even Hollywood was interested, with the trial acting as a muse for the film, ‘Inherit the Wind’.The verdict was returned on 21 July 1925.We won’t spoil the story by telling you what…

The Anglo-Scottish Family History Society is holding a meeting in Manchester on Saturday 21 July, from 2pm to 3.30pm.At the meeting, people will share their knowledge about which websites they find most useful for their family history research.The meeting will be held in the Research Room at Clayton House at 59 Piccadilly, Manchester.All are welcome and attendance is free.– http://mlfhs.org.uk/…

We’ve been reading some of the stories about the Olympic Games in the Archive, and have been fascinated by many of the stories.We noticed that the first political defection at an Olympics took place at the 1948 Games in London, when Marie Provaznikova of Czechoslovakia decided not to return home.As it’s a report that, as well as highlighting a very moving personal story, also captures the start of ‘the Cold War’ era, we thought we’d post the article here.…

With the Wimbledon men’s final taking place today, we thought we’d have a look in the Archive to see what stories we could find. Once again, we weren’t disappointed!We found this report of the first men’s singles final – or as the newspapers originally called it, the Gentlemen’s Singles Final. We much prefer it being described as the Gentlemen’s Singles Final’ – the Men’s Singles Final just does not have the same appeal to it.We note that the prize money…

We love the old days when acrobats and circus performers had prefixes like ‘The Great’ and ‘The Amazing’ in front of their surnames. Truly, it was a golden age (sic transit gloria mundi).One such artiste was the tightrope walker, Charles Blondin (his real name was Jean Francois Gravelet-Blondin), who was known as ‘the Great Blondin’.We were thinking about Blondin just the other day when reading newspaper stories about ‘aerialist’, Nik Wallenda, who tightrope-walked across Niagara last week.‘The…

To celebrate the solstice and Midsummer’s Day and Night, we’ve posted two stories that muse on the traditions, legends, myths and science of this magical day.The newspaper archive contains 100s of fascinating stories about the summer solstice, from the 18th Century right up to the middle of the 20th Century.So why not go all druidy and celebrate ‘the Golden Dawn’ by reading reports of this ancient tradition in newspapers from a bygone age?Western Daily Press – Thursday 24 June 1948…

Read a Free Story About the Battle via the Timeline on the BNA HomepageOn 18 June 1815, British and Prussian forces defeated Napoleon and his army at the Battle of Waterloo.If you go to the homepage of the British Newspaper Archive and look at the content in the Timeline (located below the map of the UK), then you can then read a free story about the famous battle.Just click on the ‘Battle of Waterloo’ link in the Timeline to…

Queen Victoria, the Queen’s gg-grandmother, was the only other UK monarch fortunate enough to celebrate a diamond jubilee, back in June 1897.We did a search for ‘diamond jubilee’ in the newspaper archive and found some fascinating stories, letters (not all of them complimentary, interestingly), images, exhibitions and adverts. To give you a flavour of the 1897 celebrations, we’ve posted some images from the newspapers of the day.If you’d like to see more, including a news report of the day’s celebrations,…

The ‘Fife Heritage Day’ takes place at the Lomond Centre in Glenrothes on Saturday 26 May.A large number of local and family history groups will be attending this event, so it promises to be a grand day out for all types of history researchers.Organised by the Workers Educational Association, the event runs from 10am to 4pm.All are welcome and admission is free.– http://www.weascotland-fife.org.uk/Index.asp?MainID=14527…