THE Associated Press and British Movietone, one of the world's largest newsreel archives, have just released one million minutes of historical footage from 1895 onto Youtube - including hundreds of Manchester.
At AP we are always astonished at the sheer breadth of footage that we have access to
From the opening of Manchester Airport in 1938 to the aftermath of the IRA bomb in Manchester city centre in 1996, Bobby Charlton's last match in 1973 to the Manchester Marathon of 1969.
Hosting a collection of 550,000 video stories across two Youtube channels, it is the single largest upload of historical news content on the video-sharing platform to date.
The archive includes:
- Manchester Airport opened by Sir Kingsley Wood - 1938
- RAF Manchester Bombers go into service - 1941
- The Queen in Manchester - 1951
- Manchester's biggest fire since the blitz - 1957
- Miss Manchester takes the Miss England crown - 1965
- Euro'96 fans arrive in Manchester - 1996
- Preview of the Commonwealth Games - 2002
Users can also see footage from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, exclusive footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marilyn Monroe captured on film in London in the 1950s and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.
Alwyn Lindsey, AP’s director of international archive, said: “The AP archive footage, combined with the British Movietone collection, creates an incredible visual journey of the people and events that have shaped our history."
"At AP we are always astonished at the sheer breadth of footage that we have access to, and the upload to YouTube means that, for the first time, the public can enjoy some of the oldest and most remarkable moments in history.”
The release comes only weeks after the British Film Institute (BFI) launched its Britain on Film project, also revealing a tremendous cache of previously unseen and forgotten films of British life from 1895 to 2015 - including hundreds from around the North West - see here.
