The Wreck & Crash Mail Society

 

 

 

AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT DATABASES & ARCHIVES ON THE INTERNET

Compiled by Ken Sanford

 

ACCIDENT REPORTS

 

Complete ICC Reports on Accidents, Derailments, Explosions, etc. Incredibly fascinating & Detailed Reports on CD Rom. Pdf. Format, copies of the ORIGINAL government Train Wreck/Plane Crash Reports.  The normal price is $12.99, and they are sometimes on sale

 

http://www.mediasurplus.net/trains_planes.htm

 

Media Surplus

202 E 7th St.

Kearney, MO. 64060

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Aircraft Crashes Record Office

 

AirDisaster.Com: Accident Photo Gallery

 

Pan Am Accidents: 1932-1949

 

Plane crash info at Airfleets

 

Plane Crash Picture Index

 

Pan Am's Accidents

 

Aircraft Registration Database on Web

 

U.S. National transportation Safety Board (NTSB) - Publications

 

HISTORICAL AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT REPORTS – 1935-1965 - http://dotlibrary1.specialcollection.net/

 

Yahoo Directory of Airline Crash Information & Databases

 

World Airline Accident Summary, published by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). - London - 2 Volumes.  This is published for each year since January 1946, and provides quite a lot of information for each crash.  Contact the Air Accidents Investigation Branch for details.

 

Wikipedia Article on Aircraft Accidents & Incidents

 

NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM

 

There is a very good newspaper archive website at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/DailyPerspectiveHome.aspx

 

The cost is as follows:

 

Annual Membership

Greatest Value – $8.25/month

US $99.00 Billed Yearly

Quarterly Membership

Greater Value – $12.50/month

US $37.50 Billed Quarterly (3 months)*

 

Monthly Membership

Great Value – $16.50/month

US $16.50 Billed Monthly*

7-Day Pass

Good Value – $24.95

One-Time Payment of US $24.95

 

 

FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVE AVAILABLE FREE ON THE INTERNET

 

The world's oldest aviation magazine, Flight International, has just released its entire archive going back to 1909 free on the web: (http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/index.html).  If you are interested in any historical information on airlines and airliners, especially articles on crashes, chances are it's here.  A search on “Imperial Airways crash” resulted in 100 articles.  I sure could have used this when researching for my book “Air Crash Mail of Imperial Airways & Predecessor Airlines”.

 

“CHRONICLING AMERICA” OFFERS HISTORIC NEWSPAPERS FREE OF CHARGE

 

The following announcement was written by the Library of Congress:

 

The Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities today announced that "Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers" is debuting with more than 226,000 pages of public-domain newspapers from California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Virginia and the District of Columbia published between 1900 and 1910. The fully-searchable site is available at www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/.

 

"Chronicling America" is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress created to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with select digitization of historic pages as well as information about newspapers from 1690 to the present. Supported by NEH’s "We the People" program and Digital Humanities Initiative, this rich digital resource will continue to be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress.

Over a period of approximately 20 years, NDNP will create a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 from all U.S. states and territories. Also on the Web site, an accompanying national newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information directs users to newspaper titles in all formats. The information in the directory was created through an earlier NEH initiative. The Library of Congress will also digitize and contribute to the NDNP database a significant number of newspaper pages drawn from its own collections during the course of this partnership. For the initial launch the Library of Congress contributed more than 90,000 pages from 14 different newspaper titles published in the District of Columbia between 1900 and 1910.

"The Library congratulates all the partners in this extraordinary program to make historic newspapers available through our Web site," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. "The National Digital Newspaper Program provides access to one of our best sources of information about what was considered important to Americans at a given point in time."

"'Chronicling America' will allow students, teachers, historians -- in fact, all Americans -- access to some of our most important historical documents. It is one thing to read about historical events from the perspective of historians, narrated with the value of hindsight. It is entirely different to read the story as it was happening," said NEH Chairman Bruce Cole. "'Chronicling America' will be available to the American public for free, forever; and I hope Americans will visit the site and try to imagine the emotions and actions of their forebears as those stories went to print."

 

The following six institutions received the first NDNP grants to digitize papers in their respective states from the first decade of the 20th century:

 

- University of California, Riverside, $400,000;

- University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville, $320, 959;

- University of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington, $310,000;

- New York Public Library, New York City, $351,500;

- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, $352,693; and

- Library of Virginia, Richmond, $201,226.

 

New NDNP awardees will be announced later this summer.  The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. Its more than 134 million items -- books, newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, photographs, films, sound recordings and digital materials – are accessible through its 21 reading rooms on Capitol Hill. The Library’s newspaper collections have grown to comprise more than 1 million current issues, more than 30,000 bound historical volumes and more than 600,000 microfilm reels.

 

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities.  NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge, and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions, and programs in libraries and other community places.

 

What does this mean for collectors of wreck mail?  It means you might be able to find newspaper articles on ship & train wrecks, or airline crashes that occurred during the early part of the 20th century, for free.  Articles are available online from various newspapers, like the New York Times, but there is a charge of $4 or $5 per article.

 

 

 

 

 

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revised 16 Dec. 2014