Nearly one hundred years ago athletes Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell took the Olympic Games and the world by storm, their heroics on the track immortalised in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire. But how were Abrahams’s and Liddell’s record-breaking feats reported on in the newspapers of the time? Were they celebrated in, say, the same way we celebrate our sporting heroes of today? In this special blog, we will explore the headlines behind the real Chariots of Fire, and in the …
1920s
This week at The Archive we have added a century’s worth of news, spanning the headlines from 1864 to 1964. We have added 90,176 new newspaper pages in all, with six brand new titles joining us from England and Wales over the past seven days. So read on to discover more about our new titles, from Hastings to Harborne, from Neath to Stockton, as well as to find out which of our existing titles we have updated during the past week. Using our new …
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‘Plastic surgery, born in one war and perfected in another,’ had been practiced before the First World War, but it took this global conflict, and a second one, to develop plastic surgery as we know it today. The Sphere | 20 May 1933 In this special blog, using newspapers taken from The Archive, we will trace the development of plastic surgery, from the work of Harold Gillies in the First World War, to its move into the cosmetic mainstream in the …
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‘Sea shanties are having a great vogue right now,’ reports the Leeds Mercury in January 1927. The writer may well have been describing the sea shanty trend of the present day, as the haunting harmonies of traditional sea shanties once again have captured the popular imagination. And one hundred years ago, during the 1920s, sea shanties were also incredibly popular. You could listen to them on the radio, or on your gramophone, and they were even performed by MPs. Sailors turn the capstan …
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We’re welcoming the New Year at the British Newspaper Archive with a swathe of brand new titles, eight in all, as the presses have continued to whirr over the Christmas period. Over the past fortnight we have added 180,462 brand new pages, with new titles spanning England, Scotland, Wales and beyond. So read on to find out about the 115 years’ worth of headlines we have added, as well as to discover which new titles have joined our Archive, and how …
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Anna May Wong, born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905 to second generation Chinese-American parents, is widely considered to be the first Chinese-American Hollywood star, and certainly the first Chinese-American actor to win international fame and attention. The Bystander | 27 May 1931 After gaining success in such films as The Toll of the Sea and The Thief of Baghdad in the 1920s, and fed up with the stereotyped roles she was given (the Coventry Evening Telegraph in 1961 remembers her as the ‘slinky …
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This week on The Archive we have added 63,650 brand new pages, giving us a total today of 39,709,184 pages, as we move ever closer to that spectacular landmark of 40 million pages available to view. With one brand new title added this week, covering the county of Somerset, we have updates to regional titles from across England, from Yorkshire in the north to Plymouth in the south, by way of Birmingham and Shropshire. So read on to find out which new title we have added this …
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In 1948 cinema attendance peaked with a staggering 1,650 million visits recorded in Great Britain throughout that year. This was the height of the golden age of cinema going, something that had begun in the 1920s and burgeoned throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The Regal, Altrincham, known as ‘the cathedral of cinemas’ | The Bioscope | 24 June 1931 In this special blog we will explore this golden age of cinema going and what contributed to its overwhelming success and popularity, using …
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As we continue to celebrate Black History Month at The Archive, in this special blog we will take a look at six pioneering Black British sporting heroes and their amazing stories. Using pages taken from the British Newspaper Archive, we will take the opportunity to tell the inspiring stories of these Black British sportsmen, whilst attempting to understand the prejudice they faced and overcame in pursuing their different sports. From left to right: J.E. London, Arthur Wharton, Len Johnson and …
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This week at The Archive we are delighted to have added 115 years’ worth of historic headlines, with two brand new titles joining us over the past seven days. In total, we have added 103,686 new pages, with substantial updates to one of our national titles. Read on to discover more about this week’s additions. Register now and explore the Archive Kicking off our new titles this week is the Runcorn Weekly News. Published in the Cheshire town of Runcorn, this ‘politically independent’ publication …