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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…

Unfortunately, currently we only have the option to print whole pages. This can be a little frustrating as the original image is scaled down to print in your home printer (usually A4) so will make it quite tricky to read!I have a few tips for you. . .The best way to retrieve a readable copy of a particular article at the moment is to:1.  Rather than selecting ‘Print’, choose to ‘Download’ the newspaper page image from the viewer.2.  Once you…

Readers in Australia might be interested to know that Audrey Collins of National Archives UK is doing a lecture tour of the Eastern States of Australia in June/July.A leading expert in genealogy, Ms Collins will be attending events in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.Listed below are the venues, dates and times.– Brisbane (Queensland Expo); Monday 25 to Wednesday 27 June.– Sydney, full-day seminar at Parramatta RSL Club, Corner of Macquarie and O’Connell Streets; Friday 29 June, 9am to 4.30pm.– Canberra, full-day…

The 217-day siege at Mafeking finally ended on 17 May 1900, British forces led by Colonel Mahon fought their way through to the town.When news of the relief reached the UK, there was a massive outpouring of joy (some writers say there was an outbreak of mass hysteria) on the streets. Indeed, the word ‘maffick’ emerged at the time to describe the type of spontaneous celebrations that took place in ON 17 May 1900.Many of the newspapers at the time dedicated the…

The archive contains some amazing stories about the sinking of the Titanic.In particular, ‘The Western Times’ of Tuesday 23 April 1912, contains dozens of fascinating and amazing stories about the final hours of the ill-fated ship. The likely reason why these reports are so powerful is because they are stories told by people who were there at the time.We’ve posted two stories below (just click on the images to read them) that capture both the farcical and tragic elements of…

We’ve received a fair few requests from many of you who would like to read the newspaper hand-out that we gave away at ‘Who Do You Think You Are? Live’.To download a copy of this Victorian-style newspaper, (PDF, 3MB), click on the link below:http://fh1-fmp-wp01.dun.fh/newsletter/images/wdytya-handout-2012.pdf…