Newspaper articles from February 1788 reporting on the death of Prince Charles Edward Stuart in Rome ‘The Young Pretender’, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, died in Rome on 31 January 1788. Known in Scotland as ‘the King O’er the Water”, ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ led the Jacobite forces in the 1745 Rising, which ended in a terrible [...]

On 30 January 1889, the bodies of Archduke Rudolf and his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera, were discovered in the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling. The official verdict is that the star-crossed lovers died in a suicide pact after Rudolf’s father, Franz Joseph I of Austria, demanded that he end the relationship. However, there are theories [...]

‘The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion’ Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, on 29 January 1737. There are 100s of interesting stories about Thomas Paine in the Archive. But to celebrate his birthday, we picked this sad, poignant, quirky and utterly fascinating story [...]

18th Century newspaper reports about Mozart’s visit to London in 1765 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756. So to celebrate Mozart’s birthday, here are some wonderful descriptions (taken from a fascinating 2-page account, published in a newspaper in 1771) of Mozart’s famous visit to London in 1765. When not astonishing [...]

We very much liked the professional medical advice offered in this advert from 1930 – we’re sure that many over-worked businessmen will be thrilled by this free medical advice. Next time we’re at the doctor’s, we’ll be asking the doc to write out a prescription for this magical, cure-all stuff. Nottingham Evening Post – Wednesday [...]

A newspaper obituary from August 1796 reporting on the life, death and funeral of Robert Burns To celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns, we thought we’d post this newspaper article from 1796, that reports on the life, death and funeral of Scotland’s Bard and ‘peasant poet’ (hmm, it can be debated if he was a [...]

We’re delighted to announce that the BNA Team will be attending ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Live 2013 at Olympia, London, from Thursday 22nd to Sunday 24th February. We had a grand time meeting folk at WDYTYA? Live last year, so are looking forward to meeting more BNA visitors (and also some old acquaintances, [...]

Newspaper story from April 1822 reporting on Lord Byron (apparently) becoming involved in a scrape in Italy As Lord Byron was born in London on 22 January 1788, we thought we’d post this very interesting story about the ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’ Romantic poet, apparently becoming involved in a fight in Italy. We [...]

Newspaper obituary published in ‘The Western Morning News’ for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin – Wednesday 23 January 1924 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the country lawyer who became a revolutionary, died at his estate at Gorki settlement on 21 January 1924. We’ve looked at several news stories in the Archives that report on Lenin’s death, and they are [...]

Newspaper story from February 1813 reporting on the retreat in Russia by Napoleon’s Grand Army Brr! And brr, again! The weather has gone all ‘retreat from Moscow’-ish! And yet things could certainly be a lot worse… Just to prove the point, here is a newspaper story from February 1813, reporting on the epic retreat of [...]