On 30 September 1860, the first tram service in the UK started operating at Birkenhead on Merseyside. The tram service was the idea of the (aptly named) George Francis Train, an American entrepreneur who was a pioneer of innovative transport systems. To mark that historic day, here is a newspaper story from October 1860 that reports on the opening of the Birkenhead tram service.
Here’a a very interesting and aesthetic newspaper article from 1874, which celebrates famous women aged over 30. Truly, even during the Victorian era, there was still life even after one had crossed the ‘turned 30’ and ‘the big 40’ demographic rubicons! Tamworth Herald – Saturday 19 December 1874 Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000484/18741219/033/0003 The Graphic – Saturday 20 January 1877 Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000057/18770120/012/0012
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Louis Pasteur, the French chemist and microbiologist who gave his name to the pasteurisation process, died at Marnes-la-Coquette on 28 September 1895 – he was 72. Here is a newspaper obituary – published two days after his death – that pays tribute to his brilliant achievements. Edinburgh Evening News – Monday 30 September 1895 Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000452/18950930/071/0004 Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser – Monday 30 September 1895 Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. …
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On 27 September 1825, George Stephenson opened the Stockton and Darlington Railway by driving the engine, ‘Locomotion’, between the two towns, and delivering a cargo of coal and flour. The train also carried 1,000 passengers, who, according to this newspaper report from 7 October 1825, ‘were highly delighted’ by the novel exhibition. Start your newspaper journey by registering today
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We’re fascinated by all the newspaper reports about women munition workers during the First World War. In addition to the news and personal stories, there are some terrific adverts for hiring workers (we always like to know how much money our ancestors were earning) and the clothes that they needed for their work, etc. Included below is an advert for the overalls that munition workers required, and also a story about the opening of a hostel in Newcastle in 1916 …
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Service Announcement – BNA search service maintenance this afternoon That’s keyword search back up and running. Until two years ago (i.e. pre launch of The BNA!) there wasn’t an option to search these old newspapers by keyword – we certainly missed it for that short maintenance period : ) Enjoy! Best wishes, Team BNA
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Service Announcement – BNA search service maintenance this afternoon We are currently upgrading our search service. This means that you will be unable to search by keyword/s for a short period. However, you can still browse all pages! Specific keyword search functionality will be back very soon. Best wishes, Team BNA
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More content, more quickly. An update on progress. We now have almost 7 million pages and with our new processing system we are going to be able to add around another 4 million pages in the next 12 months. Compare that with the (although rather impressive if we do say so ourselves), 3 million pages processed in the past 20 months since launch! However, in order to support this great improvement in production throughput, we have been very busy modifying …
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More content, more quickly! The BNA tech upgrade – an update We hope that you have all been enjoying the lovely Summer weather lately? You may have noticed that there has been a slow-down in the number of pages added to the site recently. There is a fantastic reason for this . . . [drumroll please] . . . We are delighted to announce that we have been busy working on upgrading our newspaper ingest and post-processing system. Once we’re …
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We are excited to be hurtling towards the 7 million page mark! However, you may have noticed that our page counter and ‘Recently Added Issues’ has slowed down over the past few days . . . We are currently working on upgrading our newspaper ingest system which means that there will be a slow-down in terms of the number of pages that we add to the site over the next week. We apologise for this but are looking forward to …