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 defeat on Culloden Moor. If you’ve ever been out drinking with a Jacobite, you’ll have noticed that that when a toast is made to one …
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 that Rudolf was murdered (Mary’s body was smuggled out of Mayerling in the middle of the night and Rudolf was described as being ‘mentally unbalanced’) …
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‘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 (from 1809) about how, even on his death-bed, he would not submit to the advocates of organised religion. Cheltenham Chronicle – Thursday 24 August 1809 …
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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 his audience with his virtuosity and composing skills, it seems the genius galloped about the room pretending he was riding a horse. Well, he was …
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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 29 October 1930 Image © Northcliffe Media Limited. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000321/19301029/011/0004
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To celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns, we found a newspaper article from 1796 reporting on the life, death, and funeral of Scotland’s Bard and ‘peasant poet’ (hmm, it can be debated if he was a ‘heaven-taught ploughman’, as we suspect he read quite a bit whenever he had time!). As two of Burns’s most famous lines are: O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!
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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, we hope) at this year’s show. As happened last time round, the aim is to help with look-ups on the website, listen to feedback and …
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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 do love these quirky types of stories in the Archive that highlight seemingly obscure (although it would not have been ‘obscure’ in 1822) incidents in …
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Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the country lawyer who became a revolutionary, died at his estate at Gorki settlement on 21 January 1924. We trawled through The British Newspaper Archives new stories that reported on Lenin’s death, and the reports are far from complimentary – which is, of course, revealing in itself. Reflecting on Lenin’s death, Churchill wrote: ‘Their worst misfortune was his birth, their next worst – his death’. There are hundreds of interesting stories about Lenin’s death in The Archive. We have pulled out …
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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 Napoleon’s Grand Army in the Russian winter of 1812-13. 624 x 1488 Chester Chronicle – Friday 05 February 1813 Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. …