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This week sees the anniversary of the Sykes-Picot agreement. A secret agreement between the Triple Entente signed on the 16th May 1916, it would divide the Middle East and the surrounding areas that were currently controlled by the Ottoman Empire. The plan was exposed by the new Bolshevik government of Russia in 1917 and printed in the UK newspaper the Guardian the same year.

On a perfect day in June 1937, Mrs F. W. Stone and her family left Ashtabula, Ohio, on the shores of Lake Erie and set out by air conditioned Pullman coach for California. Originally the trip was designed to visit a sister, who had long been neglected, but it was also a chance to really ‘see’ the West. As she put it, “For some reason American people do not take trips to see their own country in the same way they take European trips. They will go to the West to visit a friend or relative, spend two or three weeks with them, come back and apparently have not seen much of the country.”

In the 1880s, Italians started to migrate en mass abroad. In particular, during the period spanning from the beginning of the twentieth century to the outbreak of World War I. To begin with, it was mostly Southern peasants who contributed to the number of those departing and the United States became the main magnet of Italians, while Sicily and Campania (the region of Naples) were the location of the most numerous regional groups to emigrate.

On my recent business trip to Australia, I happened upon a rather touching monument outside the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney. Of course in cities such as Sydney there are numerous statues and memorials that line the streets and parks, but this one was conspicuous but its unusual subject matter.

It’s been a dramatic 2 weeks of triumph, teamwork and towering feats of sporting achievement during the 31st Olympic Games, and after years of planning, the eyes of the world were firmly on Rio de Janeiro.

In his classic 1893 the frontier thesis – first delivered at the St Louis Worlds’ Fair – the historian Frederick Jackson Turner gave an analysis of how the experience of this contested space creates a particular culture and forges aptitudes, democracy, mentality, self-reliance, and so forth.

Despite economic depression the 1890s had an air of optimism and progression that led social commenters to name it the “Gay Nineties”. One advance that captured both the enthusiasm and the technological advancement of this era was the booming popularity of bicycles.

Two hundred years ago the massive warehouses and imposing façade of East India House were a constant reminder to onlookers of the power and influence of the East India Company in London. Most of the physical evidence of the East India Company's presence in London has disappeared, so few Londoners today are aware of the Company’s importance in their city's history. Yet a large body of written evidence does survive in the India Office Records held at the British Library. Through these documents we can begin to understand just how influential the Company was in shaping London.

The revolution which brought the Islamic republic to power in Iran 38 years ago this week was a singular event in the twentieth century, and is still considered something of an enigma by many scholars. Our resource 'Foreign Offices Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981' contains British diplomats’ detailed reports and opinions on the upheavals, among them despatches from early 1979 when, as in Russia in 1917, a short-lived, half-forgotten government tried and failed to establish power before being swept away by the regime that eventually, and famously, consolidated its hold.

Founded in 1937, Mass Observation sought to explore the "anthropology of ourselves" and, to this day, illuminates societal sentiments throughout history. This pioneering social research organisation conducted a survey in 1938 surrounding the subject of happiness in everyday British lives.

On Thursday 24 August 1848, the Ocean Monarch entered the open seas, leaving Liverpool for Boston, Massachusetts with almost 400 souls aboard. Six miles from the Welsh coast, perhaps 25 miles out of Liverpool, the wooden steam-powered barque caught fire. Attempts to control the conflagration quickly failed, and passengers panicked - some throwing themselves overboard clutching their children.

By 1889 the name of ‘Thomas Cook & Son’ was no stranger abroad. From its humble beginnings in 1841 through to railway journeys to the Great Exhibition in 1851 and the first European excursion in 1855, the company had grown into a trusted household name, refining the idea of the organised, inclusive holiday. It is therefore no surprise that in 1889, Thomas Cook & Son organised excursions from both Britain and the US to the next great spectacle in the European cultural calendar; the opening of the Eiffel Tower and the Universal Exhibition in Paris.

Enumerating the reasons why San Francisco rather than New Orleans should receive federal sanctioning for the 1915 exposition celebrating the completion of the Panama Canal, this illustrated pamphlet urged readers to acquaint themselves with the wonders of the Pacific Coast and to “See America First”. As the first global gatherings of mass audiences, expositions – or world’s fairs – assembled the world in a single site. Designed to showcase the host nation’s progress and achievements, world’s fairs also played an important nationalising function; a task of particular significance for a nation of relative youth like the United States.

After the guns fell silent on 11/11/1918 and the global conflict now known as the First World War drew to a close, millions of servicemen could look forward to returning to their countries of origin, being reunited with their families and resuming the lives they had held before enlistment. For many however, this return to pre-war normality seemed a physical impossibility. According to contemporary data from the French and British governments, around 1 in every 7 soldiers was discharged after receiving lifechanging and debilitating injuries during the war. Rapid developments in innovative technologies of destruction such as the machine gun, explosives and chemical weapons had left tens of thousands of soldiers permanently maimed and disfigured.

Summer holidays are in full swing at Adam Matthew with road trips to Germany, honeymoons in Italy and sailing in Croatia. It’s always an interesting time of year to find out what plans people are making, instilling wanderlust in the rest of us. After hearing a few of my colleagues’ holiday plans it inspired me to delve into Mass Observation Online to see what holiday plans people were making in 1949 (and Leisure, Travel & Mass Culture for some nice visual aids).

Ninety years ago this week, a rollercoaster called the Cyclone opened in Coney Island, on the Atlantic coast of the New York borough of Brooklyn. I am no particular rollercoaster fan – though not a tall man I’m always convinced I’ll be decapitated in the tunnels; in the merry photos taken at the end I’m the pale one hunched over – but when I found myself in Coney Island a few years ago I felt obliged, since the Cyclone is still there, to toddle along (fortified by a Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog) and have a go.

The words that Nathaniel Kinsman hastily penned to his “dearly beloved Wife” aboard a fast boat that carried him against the current of the Pei-ho River, from Macao (Macau) to Canton (Guangzhou) in China, reveal how Americans experienced China in the nineteenth century. They are emblematic of stories that reveal the human side of the Old China Trade, and lie beneath the conventional narrative that regales in opium sales and opium wars, pirates and typhoons, and, of course, tea, porcelain and silk.

The Colonial Office 5 records cast useful light on high-level administrative aspects of the American Revolution. However, not all who documented these events were as well-placed as colonial governors and secretaries. CO 5 records reveal glimpses of much more obscure figures, too.

One of the most common remarks about life as a soldier in the Second World War, from those who experienced it first-hand, is that when you weren’t scared stiff you were bored to death. For many, the episodes of fighting were interspersed with long and tedious months of waiting around for orders, or being shipped to and fro between different bases, wondering what was coming next.

There was a time in Britain when fish and chip takeaways were clad in unused newspapers, prompting the wry saying that today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping. In a small twist on this, these items from American history below give us an instance of today’s wallpaper becoming tomorrow’s news plus an interesting symbol of the disparity in resources between two sides of a civil war.

To celebrate the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Professor Denise J. Youngblood introduces the 1958 film October Days. Directed by Sergei Vasiliev, the film was produced in the USSR to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution and makes for a fascinating case study in Soviet memory.

Today, 26 January, is Australia Day, which is all the excuse I needed to spend some time on a grey Monday digging though the Australia material in our Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture resource. I was anticipating bright photographs and stylised posters of beaches, and while these were present there’s also some more unexpected content.

The J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America archive provides an exceptional record of consumer culture over the past 100 years and among the many fascinating and mind-bending concepts that the documents of this advertising agency explore is one illustrated by a company-produced pamphlet entitled Advertising: Manipulation or Persuasion?. This is one of the central questions relating to advertising and consumer culture: how powerful is advertising in shaping our behaviours, practices and even identity?

The royal wedding last weekend prompted me to delve into one of our latest releases Service Newspapers of World War Two to explore the headlines that were sent from home to battlefield to report on the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh (i.e. Queenie and Prince Philip).