It's thrilling' Nearly 300 years of pioneering newspaper go online

There was a packed news agenda on 3 October 1738. The father of the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin had been arrested after being found with a stolen horse.

- Michael Savage

Cannon fire rang out in St Petersburg to mark a Russian victory over the Ottoman Empire.

In America, four families had been killed in Virginia in clashes with Native Americans. Meanwhile, a horse fell in the Thames, nearly causing a drowning.

Welcome to the pages of the Belfast News Letter, where updates on the French Revolution run alongside adverts for brandy and the American declaration of independence was reported as a contemporary event.

The 3 October copy has a special place in newspaper history - it stakes a claim as the oldest surviving edition of the world's longest continuously published English-language daily newspaper. In fact, the paper is so old that it predates the switch to the Gregorian calendar. The edition would have been published on 14 October according to modern dating.

For the first time, the News Letter's coverage of the most momentous events of the past three centuries can now be accessed free by anyone with a library pass or an online subscription, after the completion of a project to digitise its surviving editions. Everything from the Crimean war to the Troubles in Northern Ireland are covered, thanks to the joint project between the Northern Ireland Office, the British Library and the online platform Findmypast.