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The Cult of the Cruise – A Look at the History of the Cruise Holiday

In May 1844, the below advertisement appeared in the Cheltenham Chronicle: A Six Weeks Tour, by Steam, to Athens, Smyrna, and Constantinople, calling at Gibraltar and Malta – with the option of visiting, en route, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, and Gibraltar.  The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s well-known splendid Steam Ship ‘Tagus,’ 900 tons and 300 horse power, will start from Blackwall on Thursday, 20th June, for the above ports. Time occupied in the Passage, out and home, about six weeks

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Journeys Through Time webinar Q&A

The British Newspaper Archive travel and migration webinar

On 20 July 2017, many of you joined us for our webinar, Journeys Through Time: Discovering Travel & Migration in Old Newspapers.  In the webinar, we reviewed how to find passenger lists, emigration notices, letters from abroad, and so much more.  If you were not able to attend the live webinar, you can watch it on demand through our You Tube channel.   The theme of this month’s webinar was travel, thus we received many questions about early passport requirements.

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On this day, an arrest at sea

Dr Crippen

On 31 July 1910, Hawley Harvey Crippen, better known as Dr Crippen, and Ethel Le Neve, his typist-turned-lover, were arrested on board the Montrose while trying to flee west to Canada. On top of being a sensational case and arrest, it was the first example of an arrest aided by wireless telegraphy. A cross-Atlantic chase of a fleeing couple is an apt ending to our July theme of travel and migration. When you ask yourself why your ancestor or the

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Using the Archive for Travel and Migration Research

Old newspapers regularly featured passenger lists, news from abroad, foreign destination guides and other travel-related musings, making the British Newspaper Archive the perfect research companion for anyone interested in how people moved around the world in days gone by. Register Now and View 3 FREE Pages Whether you’re a genealogist having trouble pinpointing your family’s voyage to another country or a student doing a thesis on historical migration patterns, the Archive may hold a key piece of information for your research. We’ve

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On this day, 30 June – Yosemite Valley Grant Act

Yosemite Valley

On this day, 30 June, in 1864, American President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Valley Grant Act.  The Act gave the Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Big Tree Grove to the state of California, ‘upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation’.   Today, more than 4 million people visit the site every year, which has become both a national park and World Heritage Site.  We have rambled through the pages of The British Newspaper

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The Death of Isabella Bird, Explorer and Writer – 7 October 1904

Miss Isabella Bird

Isabella Lucy Bird, explorer, natural historian, writer and the first woman to be elected a Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society in London, died in Edinburgh on 7 October 1904 – she was 71. Included below are two, contemporary newspaper tributes that report on her remarkable life and achievements.                

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