British Library puts vintage newspapers online

LONDON - The newspaper coverage was troubling: London's huge international showcase was beset by planning problems, local opposition and labor woes - and the transportation was a mess.

It sounds like the 2012 Olympics, but this was the Great Exhibition of 1851 generating stories of late trains, unscrupulous landlords and dangerous overcrowding.

Coverage of the event is found in 4 million pages of newspapers from the 18th and 19th centuries being made available online on Tuesday by the British Library, in what head of newspapers Ed King calls "a digital Aladdin's Cave" for researchers.