National Archives

Latest

  • A photo illustration shows the suspended Twitter account of U.S. President Donald Trump on a smartphone at the White House briefing room in Washington, U.S., January 8, 2021.  REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/Illustration

    The National Archives won't be able to host Donald Trump's tweets on Twitter

    by 
    Igor Bonifacic
    Igor Bonifacic
    04.07.2021

    Twitter won't allow the National Archives to host an archive of Trump's tweets on the social media network.

  • NIST

    NIST preserve JFK assassination bullets with 3D scans (updated)

    by 
    Igor Bonifacic
    Igor Bonifacic
    12.05.2019

    The 56th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination was last month. Early next year, you'll be able to see, in almost nauseating detail, the bullets that took his life. The National Archives will upload high-definition 3D images of the projectiles to its online catalog.

  • Live-tweets narrate the D-Day landings exactly as they happened

    by 
    Matt Brian
    Matt Brian
    06.06.2014

    To mark the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Western Europe on June 6, 1944, one Twitter account is sharing the events exactly as they happened exactly 70 years ago. The UK's National Archives has thrown open official army war diaries, RAF squadron records, government cabinet papers and messages sent to Prime Minister Winston Churchill to describe D-Day events in real time. Tweets laden with photos and snapshots of documents provide additional detail, giving us a valuable insight into the decision-making processes and endeavours of British and Commonwealth forces over the course the Normandy landings. Google is also honoring the event by launching a new collection on its Cultural Institute website, which features 470 documents and images from Operation Overlord. Some messages are hard to read, but others provide a little light in what was otherwise a dark time for Allied servicemen and women.

  • UK's National Archives now saving tweets and YouTube videos as historic media

    by 
    Matt Brian
    Matt Brian
    05.08.2014

    Already home to the UK's most iconic national documents from the last millennium, The National Archives is expanding its digital collection by going social. It's begun archiving tweets and YouTube videos published by the UK's ruling parties over the last decade, permanently preserving them as the official public record. Unlike in the US, where the Library of Congress has set about archiving all of America's tweets (and has already collected more than 170 billion messages), the National Archives' sights are firmly set on government accounts. While that may include mundane social updates from the Forestry Commission, HM Revenue and Customs and the Office of Fair Trading, the Archive will also preserve moments of national pride: events including the 2012 London Olympics, the birth of Prince George and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee have all been saved in the digital vault. Right now, the collection includes 7,000 YouTube videos and more than 65,000 individual tweets -- it has the capacity to collect 3,200 tweets at any one time, though, allowing you to trawl announcements of past environmental heath issues, premium bond interest rates and possibly a future British Wimbledon winner at your leisure.