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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…

Many members of the British Newspaper Archive Team are obsessively following the Brian Cox ‘Stargazing’ programme that’s running on BBC2 at the moment.Suitably inspired by the ‘Muse of Starstruckness’, we went looking in the newspaper archive for historical stories about discoveries in astronomy in the 18th and 19th Centuries.And what was the result of our searches? Well, there appear to be as many stories in the archive about astronomical discoveries are there are stars in the sky. Well,…

It’s exactly 100 years since Captain Robert Scott and his comrades started their ill-fated return journey to the ‘Terra Nova’, after reaching the South Pole.To mark the centenary of this historic episode, we’ve created a gallery of old newspaper stories that look at the tragedy from various viewpoints.To read these stories, just go to our Facebook page.http://www.facebook.com/TheBritishNewspaperArchive…

With so many excellent TV programmes, newspaper/magazine articles and new biographies about the life and art of Charles Dickens, it can sometimes be difficult to think up a new angle to study the life of Boz from.Luckily, the British Newspaper Archive contains 100s of stories about Charles Dickens – ranging from reviews of his novels and his reading tours to his love for ‘Grip’, his talkative and clownish pet raven (and muse for the raven in ‘Barnaby Rudge’).So as…

though not both things in the one telephone call, just in case you’re wondering…We’ve found some interesting techie and scientific stories in the British Newspaper Archive over the last week, which we’ve posted on our Facebook page.The first story is rather amusing (and a touch surreal), and reports on the demo of the telephone that Alexander Graham Bell gave to Queen Victoria at Osborne House in 1878. Especially interesting is the musical pieces that were played down the phone…

Members of the British Newspaper Archive Team will be attending the ‘Who Do You Think You Are? Show at the Olympia Centre in London, from Friday 24 to Sunday 26 February 2012.The biggest family history event in the world, we will be attending ‘WDYTYA Live’ to give demos of the newspaper archive website, and also to help people who are looking to trace their ancestors using archive websites.Once we know the number of the stand and our location in the exhibition…

We’ve recently started to offer people a glimpse of what the newspaper archive contains, by uploading some content to our Facebook page at:http://www.facebook.com/TheBritishNewspaperArchive As the archive is likely to appeal to a large number of different audiences, we’re striving to choose content that will appeal to these different audiences.Our Facebook page already includes stories and illustrations on a number of different subjects – ranging from terrific images of the Great Exhibition of 1851 to assassination attempts on Queen Victoria.We’re…