The educator and Head of Tuskegee College, Dr Booker T. Washington, died on 14 November 1915, aged only 59. Born into slavery in Virginia in 1856, Washington was the leading figure in the campaign (from 1890 to 1915) to gain civil rights for the African-American community. In particular, he represented those blacks in the former Confederacy who had been disenfranchised by legislature in the southern states, and whose lives had also been affected by the ‘Jim Crow Laws’. To commemorate …

It’s funny the ways in which so many breakthroughs in science and technology occur as a result of serendipity. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin is probably the most famous example of this discovery via serendipity ‘method’. Another instance of an unplanned scientific breakthrough that changed the world was Wilhelm Rontgen’s discovery of how to make x-ray images. As this newspaper obituary about Rontgen reports, Rontgen was actually carrying out an experiment on ‘the passage of electricity through gases’, when he …

It happens to the best of us… We do love the gossipy stories in the Archive that report on the passing moments of people’s lives – especially if it involves somebody famous. A wonderful example of such a brief encounter, is this story about Albert Einstein arguing with a Berlin tramcar conductor regarding the change given to him. We think this conductor sounds a rather formidable character. And we also love thinking about how this story managed to find its …

To celebrate the birthday of Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker, born on 8 November 1847 in Dublin, we’ve posted some newspaper reviews of his classic novel, ‘Dracula’. The novel was published in May 1897, so the reviews below were the first reactions to Stoker’s brilliant gothic horror. The Archive contains 100s of interesting stories about Bram Stoker and the ‘Dracula’ novel – just type the author’s name or the book title into the seaech box to find these stories. The Archive also …

Newspaper headlines that grab the eye and inspire the imagination… For lovers of words, the Archive is a fascinating place to study the protean nature of language. There are so many words in old newspaper reports that have found themselves in involuntary hibernation or have evolved to take on a completely new identity. Truly, we think it highly unlikely that a newspaper of today would run such a headline as ‘Hull Will Go Gay For Royal Visit’. More’s the pity… …

‘Remember, remember, the 5th of November…’ To celebrate the life of one of the more colourful and flamboyant characters to have entered the Houses of Parliament, we’ve posted below some stories about Guy Fawkes. We did a quick search for the name, ‘Guy Fawkes’, and there were 1,000s of results. But we thought it would be interesting to post stories across the years, so have chosen stories about ‘Guy Fawkes’ from 1777, 1849, 1892 and 1923. There are some fascinating …

We love hearing about what people are looking for when they’re busy rummaging around in the Archive. In particular, our bookwormy and cardigan-adoring nature means that we really like hearing about all the various book projects that people are working on. One such researcher and writer who got in touch recently is Angela Buckley, from Manchester. Angela is currently working on a book entitled, The Real Sherlock Holmes: the Hidden Story of Jerome Caminada, which will be published by Pen …