It’s hard to believe, but The British Newspaper Archive has now reached the grand old age of three. We launched on 29 November 2011 with 4 million fully searchable historic newspaper pages and have come a long way since then. Please click the image to enlarge it A treasure trove of information You can now search more than 9 million pages, from over 300 British and Irish newspaper titles, spanning 1710-1954. Reading all of those pages would be …
football
Uruguay’s Luis Suarez has hit the headlines once again, having been accused of biting an Italian player during last night’s World Cup match. The British Newspaper Archive can reveal that biting isn’t a modern phenomenon in football matches. An article describing Sunderland football team’s experience in Germany has been discovered by one of our customers in a copy of the Dundee Courier from 1913. 100-year-old Dundee Courier reports that ‘biting is allowed’ The Dundee Courier included a shocking report …
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Ever wondered what happens behind the scenes at The British Newspaper Archive? We sat down with Product Director Ian Tester to find out who he is and what he does. What does your job involve? I’m responsible for growing the business in all its myriad forms. My role covers marketing, building a better product, tweaking the pricing, choosing newspapers that we think will be of most interest and generally keeping everything running smoothly. Less excitingly, it also involves balancing …
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England took part in the World Cup for the first time in 1950. Like this year’s tournament, the football matches were held in Brazil. The English national team met the United States in the group stages and suffered a shocking 1-0 defeat. The game has gone down in football history and has a rather interesting urban myth attached to it. Many say that English newspapers reported a 10-1 win, assuming that there had been a typing error in the message they received …
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The FA Cup final on Saturday 17 May 2014 will see a showdown between Arsenal and Hull City. This is the first time Hull have reached the final. Hull City’s greatest achievement in cup competitions up to this point was in 1930, when they reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup. Rather strangely, they also faced Arsenal in that match. The British Newspaper Archive is a great place to research football history as you’ll find original match reports and reactions …
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We absolutely love this quirky story! Anyone who has ever had a problem with eccentric neighbours who won’t return a ball when it lands in their garden will enjoy reading this story. Derby Daily Telegraph – Monday 18 April 1887 Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000327/18870418/005/0002
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‘The following resolution was carried: That is is advisable a Football Association should be formed for the purpose of settling a code of rules for the regulation of the game of football.’ On 26 October 1863, 11 football clubs and schools from London met at The Freemasons’ Tavern to form the Football Association and to agree on a code of football rules. We thought we’d mark this historic day by posting three contemporary newspaper stories that report on this momentous …
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John Thomson, the Kirkcaldy-born goalkeeper for Celtic and the Scotland, died on 5 September 1931, after suffering a fractured skull in an accidental collision with Sam English of Rangers – Thomson was 22 years old. Around 30,000 people attended Thomson’s funeral in Cardenden, Fife – many of whom had walked the 55 miles from Glasgow. To mark one of the saddest days in the history of Scottish football, here are some photos of John Thomson. Quem di diligunt, adulescens moritur. …
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On 30 November 1872, Scotland played England in the first ever official international football match. The match was played on St Andrew’s Day at the West of Scotland Cricket Club ground at Hamilton Crescent in Partick, Glasgow, and 5,000 fans watched the game. Although the game ended 0-0, those of a tartan persuasion will very likely tell you that Scotland should have won by a barrowload and that, indeed, it was grand ‘moral victory’ for Scotland. Hmm, perhaps. Included below are some …
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In The British Newspaper Archive we found the first ever English match to be reported in a newspaper – the match between Sheffield FC and Hallam FC at Bramall Lane Cricket Ground on 29 December 1862. Played according to ‘Sheffield Rules’, the match sounds like it might have been a little rough in places, with ‘waistcoats’ being thrown off, as the intensity of the match heightened. It seems that the long interval at half-time also caused some raised eyebrows among …