An ancient copy of a newspaper from 145 years ago featuring a man who died after falling out of bed, two suspects standing before a court to face charges of bigamy and Abraham Lincoln's attempts to abolish slavery has become the 500,000th item to be added to The British Library's groundbreaking Digital Library System.
The eight-page Birmingham Daily Post, from Monday, December 19 1864, was scanned as part of the centre's 19th century British Library Newspapers project, which has made more than two million historic newspaper pages available online.
It reports the tragic demise of an 82-year-old who met a slumbering fate when he fell to the floor, as well as "roughs" of the town who pelted churchgoers with snowballs in the fierce Midlands winter.
President Lincoln's appeal to the US congress to pass a constitutional amendment bringing an end to the slave trade was also reported.
Steve Green, Head of the Digital Library Programme at the Library, said the landmark was "an indication that our digital capability is maturing."
"The task of collecting, preserving and providing long-term access to the nation's digital assets is in many ways a daunting and complex undertaking," he reflected.
"The Digital Library Programme has made huge progress in the past few years and we now have the foundations of a robust and fully scaleable system that can handle large quantities of digital items."
Green's aim is to create a "hybrid" of digital and print collections from the e-journals, sound recordings and digitised books currently held by the Library.
Organisers are also aiming to increase public access to the collection at the Library's St Pancras Reading Rooms.
