File under 'Cool'

A collection of more than 12 million historic photographs, capturing scenes from the Boer War to the D-Day landings, was published on the Internet Monday.

The images, which date back to the turn of the 20th century, have been captured from the archives of the British Pathe newsreel, a cinema news service that pre-dated television.

Peter Fydler, archive marketing director at Britain's Independent Television News, which owns British Pathe, said the collection should provide a powerful learning aid and a trip down memory lane.

"By using the newsreel archive to create a huge collection of still images, people can have access free of charge to printable pictures which will add to their enjoyment of history," he said.

The collection can be accessed at www.britishpathe.com. This morning the link was very slow, I suspect due to the amount of traffic trying to reach it. The quotes above come from a story accessed via Yahoo! News, which has more details.