Mercedes Gleitze (1900-1981) was the first British woman to swim the English Channel, and the first person to swim the Straits of Gibraltar. In an amazing career that spanned the 1920s and 1930s, Mercedes captured the imagination of the British public and became a household name. Born to German parents in Brighton, Mercedes was one of three sisters. Skilled in languages, she moved to London where she worked as a secretary and stenographer. Whilst living in London she began swimming …
Irish Sea
Following on from reaching our wonderful milestone of 50 million newspapers pages last week, which you can read more about here, we have added an incredible 534,520 brand new newspaper pages to The Archive over the last seven days. Making up a portion of these half a million brand new newspaper pages are seventeen brand new newspaper titles from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, whilst we have also updated 102 of our existing titles. So read on to find out more about all of our new newspaper titles of …