Happy Dictionary Day!

Hello, I’m Moray Teale and I am the Europeana Rise of Literacy Project Coordinator at the National Library. Today, October 16th, is National Dictionary Day in the United States! It celebrates the birth of Noah Webster, the most famous American lexicographer. Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1828 but it was not […]

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Charity Bazaars in Scotland

The word ‘bazaar’ was first used to describe a sale of work in 1813 in London and spread throughout the developed world in the 19th century. By the 1870s they were huge extravaganzas lasting several days, with entertainments, such as puppet shows, theatrical performances and displays of novelties such as electric light,

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Iolaire ….continued

After my previous blog, Niall Iain Macdonald from Stornoway got in touch with an interesting and moving footnote to the Iolaire disaster. This is about the ‘real Iolaire’, whose name was temporarily taken by the Amalthaea when it replaced it for naval duties in Stornoway, and was the yacht which tragically sunk. His email is […]

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The Iolaire disaster

It has been described as the blackest day in the history of the Western Isles when more than 200 servicemen returning from the First World War died as their ship went down in sight of Stornoway harbour. Despite being Britain’s worst maritime disaster since the Titanic, the loss of the Iolaire remains little known beyond […]

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More Gaelic Books Digitised

We have reached the first milestone in digitising all our out-of-copyright books in Gaelic: the first 50 are now freely accessible and can be read in full on our website about Early Gaelic Book Collections! The digitised books were published between 1631 and 1900 and cover mostly literary and religious subjects from poetry and songs to translations […]

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