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Fittingly for our brand new platform, this week we are delighted to welcome five brand new titles to The Archive, with a total of 261,496 pages joining us in all. That's not it either, from across the UK and Ireland and even further afield, we've updated 46 of our existing titles. And as we voyage into these new waters, using our brand new shipping title, we explore the launches of some notable liners and merchant vessels from the late 19th and early…

We’re delighted as we march on with The Salvation Army to welcome another of the worldwide Christian church and registered charity’s titles to our ranks, namely the Young Soldier. The longest running continuously published children’s periodical in the world, alongside this fascinating publication we’ve also added five other new titles, and updated 22 of our existing titles from across the UK and Ireland. In all, we’ve added 207,356 brand new pages to The Archive over the last seven days.And this week,…

This week at The Archive we are sounding a War Cry, as we welcome the main UK and Irish periodical of The Salvation Army, the worldwide Christian church and a registered charity, to our collection. And that’s not all, as we’re also delighted to host updates to another The Salvation Army title, the Social Gazette. In all, we have 71,299 brand new pages for you to enjoy this week.In this week’s blog, we’ll take you through the fascinating history of…

This week at The Archive we are delighted to welcome a brand new title from the sunny south coast, the Bournemouth Times and Directory, as we take a moment to remember the devastating Bournemouth Blitz. In all, over the last seven days, we’ve added 366,686 brand new pages to our collection, whilst we’ve updated 25 of our existing titles from across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.So, from Buckingham to Burnley, from Dingwall to Driffield, from Mid Sussex to Mid Ulster, read…

In March 1935 the seaside resort town of Bournemouth was shaken by a sensational murder. Retired architect Francis Mawson Rattenbury, aged 67, was found dead at his home, Villa Madeira, on Manor Road. Accused of his murder were his younger wife Alma Rattenbury, and her lover, 18-year-old gardener George Stoner.This case would end in further tragedy, and in this special blog, using pages from the British Newspaper Archive, we explore how murder came to the genteel town of Bournemouth in the…

One of the features of The British Newspaper Archive is the OCR editing tool.  This allows every user to contribute to the improvement of The Archive.  OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition– the process we use to transform millions of digitised images into searchable text.   The computer takes an image of the page and then turns each line into text.  However, as many of us have encountered, the text is not always correct and needs improvement.  As a group, we…

As we welcome a new month, we at the Archive take the opportunity to delve into historical events that have occurred in the month of May over the years.Lewis and ClarkOn 14 May 1804, Lewis and Clark departed St Louis on their expedition west. It was the first American expedition to explore the western half of the United States. The expedition was ordered by President Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase to, in part, map this newly acquired territory. The journey…

The Lusitania arrived in New York on 13 September 1907, after completing the crossing of the Atlantic in 5 days and just under two hours – thus just missing out on ‘the Blue Ribbon’, then held by ‘The Deutschland’.To mark the day, here is a newspaper report about this historic event.Read our blog post about the sinking of the Lusitania…

Historical newspaper reports on the sinking of the LusitaniaOn 7 May 1915, the Lusitania was hit by torpedoes fired by the German U-boat U-20, and sank in 20 minutes with the loss of 1,198 lives.To mark the day, here are some newspaper reports about the tragedy.…