The Daily Mail is a British national newspaper, first published as a broadsheet in 1896 by Alfred Harmsworth, later made 1st Viscount Northcliffe. The newspaper was formed as the result of a merger between the Hull Packet and The Hull Evening News. Harmsworth and his brother Harold edited and managed the paper. From 1900 the paper was printed simultaneously in London and Manchester. By 1902 circulation had reached over one million, placing amongst the top-selling newspapers of the day.
The Daily Mail has been published by the Daily Mail and General Trust since 1922, when the trust was created to oversee the Harmsworth family's media interests. In 1929 Esmond Harmsworth, son of Harold, took over the Chairmanship, alongside the 2nd Lord Rothermere. Under their aegis the trust was floated on the stock exchange in 1932.
In the 1930s the paper supported fascism, with favourable reporting on Mussolini, Hitler and Oswald Moseley's Blackshirts - The British Union of Fascists.
The postwar years saw the launch of a Scottish edition of the Mail, in 1946. Initially printed in Edinburgh, then Manchester, the paper was moved to Glasgow in 1995.
The Mail went from broadsheet to tabloid format in 1971. In the same year it took over The Daily Sketch.
The 3rd Lord Rothermere, Vere Harmsworth, became Chair of the Daily Mail and General Trust in 1978. He was succeeded by his son Jonathan Harmsworth in 1998. This period saw the launch of a sister paper, The Mail on Sunday, in 1982. The Mail stopped being printed in Manchester in 1987.
Today the Mail is Britain's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its headquarters are currently at 2 Northcliffe House, London. Its online presence, MailOnline, reaches a global audience. Recent editors include Paul Dacre, and Geordie Greig, who succeeded him in 2018.
The Royal Air Force was created by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corp and the Royal Naval Air Service as an independent air service during the First World War.
Born 23 July 1886 in Glasgow, but educated in Manchester. Brown served an apprenticeship with the British Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company (later Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company Ltd) at Trafford Park, Manchester.
In January 1915 he gained a commission in the Manchester regiment and took part in the second battle of Ypres before being transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and trained as an observer. In November 1915 he permanently injured one leg when he was shot down over Valenciennes in France. He remained a prisoner of war of the Germans until he was repatriated in September 1917. He then worked in the aircraft production department of the Ministry of Munitions until the end of the war.
In 1919 Brown, visited Vickers of Weybridge seeking a post, shortly after the firm had decided to make an attempt on the first direct flight across the Atlantic for the prize of £10,000 offered by the Daily Mail. Brown was offered the position of navigator, alongside John Alcock as pilot.
After the flight, Brown returned to work for Vickers Ltd and then again for Metropolitan-Vickers. During the Second World War he returned to the Royal Air Force in order to train pilots in navigation and engineering, though he never flew again after Alcock's death in 1919.
He died at his home in Swansea on 4 October 1948 from an accidental overdose of veronal. A memorial to Alcock and Whitten Brown was erected in 1952, near the field from which they took off at St John's, by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. A memorial by William McMillan was erected at London Heathrow airport.
Date
1919 - 1939
Scope and ContentCollection of relating to Captain Jack Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, consisting of a Daily Mail newspaper from 1919 recording the achievement of the first transatlantic flight, flags used as bunting, Whitten Brown's diary, personal copy of 'Navigation for Students or Mariners Preparing to Take Examinations for Officers' Licenses' by George Holden (1926) and copy of the Royal Air Force Principles of Flying Instruction' 1st edition, June 1939.
First became interested in aviation whilst working at the Empress Motor Works, Manchester a year later he went to Brooklands to be a mechanic for the French pilot, Maurice Ducrocq. In 1914 joined the Royal Naval Air Service as an instructor, having held a flying certificate for two years. In 1916 he was posted to the Middle East, where he was a member of the Number 2 wing in the Eastern Mediterranean. Operating out of the base in Mudros, Alcock made many daring bombing raids.
He nearly lost his life in 1917 when his plane experienced engine failure and he and his crew were forced to ditch their plane at sea. When they swam ashore, they were taken prisoners by the Turks. After the armistice, he was released, and he left the Royal Air Force in March of 1919.
On June 14, 1919, Alcock, along with his navigator, Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, left St. John's, Newfoundland and flew across the Atlantic, a distance of 1,960 miles to Clifden, Ireland in 15 hours and 57 minutes. For this record-breaking flight he was created Knight Commander Order of the British Empire, by George V at Buckingham Palace on June 21, 1919.
On December 18, 1919, Sir John Alcock, KBE, DSC, flew to Paris to exhibit a Vickers Viking amphibian aircraft. On his landing at Cote d'Evrard he sustained a skull fracture. He was taken to a hospital in Rouen, but he never regained consciousness and he died that very same day.
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