Watch a million minutes of history, all on YouTube

Newsreels on YouTube

The Associated Press and British Movietone have teamed up to post over 550,000 videos of archival digitized film footage to YouTube.

AP says it will be the largest upload of historical news content on the video-sharing platform to date, with film footage going back to 1895 up until present day.

"At AP we are always astonished at the sheer breadth of footage that we have access to, and the upload to YouTube means that, for the first time, the public can enjoy some of the oldest and most remarkable moments in history," said Alwyn Lindsey, AP's director of international archive.

An archive for everyone

The videos are available on YouTube on the AP Archive page, while the news agency has also created playlists which will be "continually updated."

Playlists included Accidents and Natural Disasters, Iconic Moments in History, and Movietone Highlights, which includes footage of the Titanic and the Hindenburg disaster from 1937.

"It's an historical treasure trove that will give YouTube users around the world a moving window into the past and I can't wait to explore it," said Stephen Nuttall, the director of YouTube in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

And because we can't stop watching it, here's a video of people dressed as pandas doing Tai chi in London for Panda Awareness Week, filed in the Weird and Wacky playlist.

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