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Hot Off The Press – New Pages This Week

This week sees the addition of 155,862 brand new pages to our collection, with significant updates in particular to national daily newspaper the London Daily Chronicle. Meanwhile, from Lichfield to Liverpool, from South Wales to Wexford, we have updated eight of our newspaper titles this week. So read on to discover more about all of our updated titles of the week, and also to explore what holidays were like one hundred years ago. Register now and explore the Archive Our

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The Theft of The Mona Lisa As Told Through Our Newspapers

The theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911 is one of the art world’s most sensational crimes. The Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece was taken, almost in plain sight, from its place in the Louvre, Paris, with very few clues as to the identity of its thief left behind. In this special blog, we will tell the story of the theft of the Mona Lisa through our newspapers, as the crime filled newspaper columns across the world. We will draw on

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Newspapers from the Pandemic – Reporting on the Spanish Flu

What began as rumours from Spain was soon to become a nightmarish reality, as the Spanish flu pandemic began to take hold in the United Kingdom, where it would go on to kill approximately 250,000 people, and 50,000,000 globally. Staff from the Michie Hospital | Graphic | 26 July 1919 In this special blog, as part of medicine month on The Archive, we will take a look at how newspapers from the time reported on the deadly disease, from those first rumours,

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Women and the First World War

First Worls War women firefighters

During the First World War (1914-1918), the role of women in Britain was massively altered and the women’s sphere was enlarged in every direction. Some historians mark the First World War as a watershed moment in women’s history when women were looked at less as fragile creatures and more as robust figures.  A single blog post is not enough to explore all the contributions of women during the Great War, but we have combed through The British Newspaper Archive and

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Alfred Dreyfus – Degraded and Sentenced to Life Imprisonment on ‘Devil’s Island’, 5 January 1895

‘Tell all France that I am innocent’ – Alfred Dreyfus In Paris on 5 January 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on ‘Devil’s Island’. Here is a newspaper story published on 7 January 1895 entitled, ‘The Degradation of Dreyfus’, that reports on the utterly humiliating ceremony at the Ecole Militaire to strip Dreyfus of his rank and dignity. The words that Dreyfus shouts immediately after the degradation ceremony are very poignant,

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The Execution of Marie Antoinette – 16 October 1793

Portrait of Marie Antoinette as painted by Madame Vigre Lebrun

‘Pardon me sir, I meant not to do it’ – the last words of Marie Antoinette (after stepping on the foot of the executioner) On 16 October 1793, Marie Antoinette, the widow of Louis XVI, was executed at the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris – she was 37. The Hampshire Chronicle published the details of the event on 28 October 1793.  

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