The British Newspaper Archive is 3 years old

It’s hard to believe, but The British Newspaper Archive has now reached the grand old age of three. We launched on 29 November 2011 with 4 million fully searchable historic newspaper pages and have come a long way since then.

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A treasure trove of information

You can now search more than 9 million pages, from over 300 British and Irish newspaper titles, spanning 1710-1954. Reading all of those pages would be no mean feat – we’ve estimated that it would take you 237 years (with no tea breaks)!

One of the things we’re most proud of is that in our recent survey, 95% of you said you’d found something interesting at The British Newspaper Archive. We’re glad the newspapers are proving so useful and hope you continue to enjoy using them.

You can see some of the fascinating articles that have been uncovered on our blog, including the revelation that Facebook existed in the Edwardian era and that the first top hat caused a commotion in 1797.

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Revealed: the 5 most popular searches

To celebrate The British Newspaper Archive’s birthday, we used website analytics to work out our five most popular newspaper titles and search terms.

Our most popular titles, based on search volume were:

• Hull Daily Mail
• Aberdeen Journal
• Dundee Courier
• Bath Chronicle & Weekly Gazette
• Nottingham Evening Post

We enjoyed seeing some of the more unusual things you’ve been looking for (such as ‘winning cocktail recipes’ and ‘eyes with red hot needles’!), but these were the five most common search terms:

• Football
• Murder
• Death
• Jack the Ripper
• Railway

What have you been searching for? We’d love to learn about what you’re researching and how you first heard about The British Newspaper Archive. Help celebrate our birthday by telling us about your experience in the comments section below.