When writing a family history you may want to include some historical events and indicate how they might have affected your family. For example during World War II many families were very aware of the Allied Invasion of Italy that began in September of 1943. Many members of the military participated in the invasion that certainly affected the lives of many people.
You can of course consult history books, online encyclopedias and online history websites for information about the invasion and other historical events that may have affected your family history. This is how most of us read about history - by reading the analysis of historians who have read primary sources of information.
Today, as never before, we can go online and read newspaper reports that were written and published at the time of the invasion of Italy and other historical events. It is not necessary to rely on the historians' reports of historical events that may affect your family history.
We visited NewspaperARCHIVE.com to search its historical newspaper collection. We entered the search terms "invasion" and "Italy" and indicated the beginning and ending years for the search as 1943.
We received the search results and then read copies of the actual 1943 newspaper articles online. Here is a very small sampling of what we learned from our search of the historical newspapers:
Victor Gordon Lennox wrote on July 10, 1943 that Sicily had been invaded and the invasion of Italy Plan was taking shape.
Edward Kennedy, at the Allied Headquarters in North Africa, wrote on September 3, 1943 that British and Canadian troops landed successfully on the toe of Italy before dawn and that this was the first of several expected invasions.
James Marlow and George Zielke wrote on September 7, 1943 about the invasion of Italy and Italy's need for coal.
Edward Kennedy, at the Allied Headquarters in North Africa, wrote on September 9, 1943 that American and British force surged ashore in the vicinity of Naples, a third of the way up the Italian boot.
On September 19, 1943 this newspaper reported that a Chicago man, as soon as his ship had completed its part in the invasion of Italy, went to his superior officer and purchased $700 in war bonds.
See our discussion, Newspapers, Books and Optical Character Recognition (OCR), to learn more about searching Historical Newspapers.
Think of an historical event that affected members of your family - like World War I, World War II or other military conflicts. Or perhaps the 1918 flu pandemic (the Spanish Flu) that killed over 50 million people worldwide.
More and more historical newspapers are now indexed by keywords. So just enter the historical event that interests you and search the historical newspaper database.
See more Search Tips for Searching Historical Newspapers.