History Shorts: snippets of local history

3 Lombard Street, Margate, late 1890s? Mystery finally solved! , a photo by whatsthatpicture on Flickr. I just discovered this Flickr photostream via a HistoryPin tweet on Twitter - it caused me to delve a little more into some of the other photos available on the stream. The one I've selected above literally made me go Wow! As one of the comments state, this is an example of Flickr at its best. It's really a type of crowd-sourcing or, to borrow a phrase, citizen history. Terrific local history debate from several contributors in the comments section, and it makes me even more determined to scan the old photos that I have!

Kilburn Grange Cinema , a photo by bishib70 on Flickr. Wanting to indulge in some first-hand historical sources, I once bought an old photo album off a well known online auction site. I still have no idea to whom it originally belonged - frustratingly, there are no names attached and I can't identify most of the places in the photographs. A couple of images immediately stood out however: the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, and this shot of Kilburn Grange cinema in London. I scanned the image to try to establish what films were showing - the only title I can identify is Passions of Men , a short film released in 1914, the very year the cinema actually opened! I have also scanned and posted the Radcliffe Camera photo to my Flickr account, but hopefully I will soon find the time to look through and possibly publish some of the other photos from the album - my contribution to Flickr Commons, hopefully with the blessing of whomever originally took the photos!