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 …
Sports
This week we’ve added 144,026 pages to The Archive and have now over twenty-seven million pages. This week we’ve added new years to five of our existing titles. The new additions include more years for The Scottish Referree one of twelve newspapers in our Sports Collection, and more years for The Music Hall and Theatre Review, which was the most recent addition to our Peforming Arts Collection. Also updated this week are the Liverpool Echo for 1989 and 1990, The …
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In the last week we have added new content to six existing titles on The British Newspaper Archive. These additions totaled 92,542 pages! Register now and view 3 pages for FREE New content added The six titles that have been updated can be seen in the chart below. You can click on the titles, which will take you to the title’s landing page. Title Years added Aberdeen Evening Express 1958-1965 Aberdeen Press and Journal 1963-1965 Athletic News 1878, 1900 Daily Telegraph …
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Sports news is a staple of any newspaper. And you will find sports news in all of our newspapers. We also have 22 titles dedicated specifically to sport. Whether your interests run to cricket, horse racing, athletics, or football we have the newspaper for you! We have sporting titles from England, Ireland, and Scotland dating from 1823 to 1979. Each sports title has its own title page. Title pages give you details about the history of the title and our …
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Throughout the month of June, The British Newspaper Archive is celebrating its numerous sporting titles. Today, we are taking a look at some of the sporting headlines from the newspapers during the month of June regarding tennis, racing, and cricket. According to the Illustrated London News, which published an extensive feature about sports as part of its 100th-anniversary edition, since the turn of the century, sports have become an international spectacle and a global passion. Throughout our lives, …
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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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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 …