As we continue to explore all things space and the stars this month at The Archive, we thought we’d delve into a more unexplained aspect of our night sky – UFOs. Standing for ‘Unidentified Flying Objects,’ a term coined by the United States Air Force in 1953, the term ‘UFO’ can be applied to any aerial phenomenon that cannot immediately be explained or identified. The appearance of UFOs is often linked to speculation around the existence of extraterrestrial life, and sightings of …
Headlines from History
On 1 December 1900 the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette reported on ‘The Death of Mr Oscar Wilde:’ The Paris correspondent of the Dublin Evening Mail telegraphs that Mr Oscar Wilde died yesterday at three o’clock in the Latin Quartier. He had been suffering for some time. Two days ago he became unconscious. Six weeks ago he underwent an operation, which appeared to have been successful, but a complication which followed proved fatal. The death of the poet, playwright and novelist …
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In March 1954 news broke that former Second World War fighter pilot and racing driver Roberta Cowell (1918-2011) had become the first known British transgender woman to undergo gender affirmation surgery, an important part of British LGBTQ+ history. Roberta Cowell, or Betty as she was known to her friends, soon became the ‘most talked of woman in England,’ making headlines across national and regional newspapers. And the way that Roberta used print media to tell her own story is a story in …
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The events of the early hours of 28 June 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York, where LGBTQ+ patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back against police violence, would reverberate not only across the United States, but the world, and mark an important turning point in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights. The Stonewall riots in turn led to the birth of the Pride movement, where members of the gay and lesbian community took to the streets to demand an end to …
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In the decade after the Second World War had come to an end, and indeed beyond, many communities across the United Kingdom were faced with very vivid reminders of the conflict: bomb sites, the country’s ‘war scars.’ In this blog, we will examine how people in Britain lived alongside bomb sits in the 1950s, using newspapers taken from The Archive. We will explore how communities adapted to live beside bomb sites, and how they transformed them into gardens and playgrounds. …
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In late August and early September 1958, the London area of Notting Hill was the scene of racially motivated riots, in which white, working-class, ‘Teddy Boys,’ and others, displayed hostility and violence to the Black community in the area. These riots took place ten years after HMT Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury Docks, carrying 492 Caribbean migrants. Since that moment in history, more and more migrants arrived in Britain from the Caribbean, and they would come to be known as the ‘Windrush Generation.’ …
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Reading like a tabloid’s dream, or the script of a film noir, the shooting death of racing car driver David Blakely at the hands of his model girlfriend Ruth Ellis revealed the seedy underbelly of 1950s society. From the smoky, dim-lit cocktail bars of West London, to extramarital affairs and illicit weapons, this is the story of a young woman and what drove her to shoot her lover in broad daylight on Easter Sunday, 1955, as told by our newspapers. …
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This week has been another mammoth week here at The Archive, as we have added 1,861,031 brand new pages, with 20 brand new titles joining us over the past seven days alone, from Ashby all the way to Wallasey. Meanwhile, we have updated 148 of our existing titles from across the United Kingdom, meaning that you have a feast of new pages to enjoy this week. So read on to find out more about all of our new titles of the week, which include a …
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Disaster has befallen the giant German airship, Hindenburg. She was blown to pieces in a mysterious explosion when about to moor at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the first anniversary of her maiden flight to America. A third of her reported total of 97 aboard have died. Latest death toll of the disaster is 35. So reported the Lincolnshire Echo on 7 May 1937, a day after the German airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire as it attempted to land in New Jersey. News of …
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The 1930s were a decade of aviation records. Airmen and airwomen from across the globe pushed their aircrafts to the limit, travelling thousands of miles in pursuit of world firsts and fastest travelling times. And these men and women became the superstars of their day, bona fide celebrities alongside the stars of stage and screen. Chief amongst the royalty of the air was Amy Johnson, Britain’s answer to Amelia Earhart. In this special blog, as part of aviation April on …