Daily Mail history

The planned issue was 100,000 copies but the print run on the first day was 397,215 and additional printing facilities had to be acquired to sustain a circulation which rose to 500,000 in 1899.

In 1902, at the conclusion of the hostilities between the British and the Afrikaners, the Daily Mail published the terms of the peace treaty as a world exclusive, even before the announcement was made by the British government.

In 1906 the paper offered £10,000 for the first flight from London to Manchester, followed by a £1,000 prize for the first flight across the English Channel.

The Daily Mail had begun the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908.

In 1909, the first Englishman to fly across the English Channel claimed a Daily Mail prize as a reward.

Punch magazine thought the idea preposterous and offered £10,000 for the first flight to Mars, but by 1910 both the Mail's prizes had been won.

On 21 May 1915, Northcliffe criticised Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, regarding weapons and munitions.

The paper was critical of Asquith's conduct of the war, and he resigned on 5 December 1916.

In 1919, Alcock and Brown made the first flight across the Atlantic, winning a prize of £10,000 from the Daily Mail.

Light-hearted stunts enlivened Northcliffe, such as the 'Hat campaign' in the winter of 1920.

When Lord Northcliffe died in 1922, Lord Rothermere took full control of the paper and it would subsequently pass down through the generations of his family.

From 1923 Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail formed an alliance with the other great press baron, Lord Beaverbrook.

In 1927, the celebrated picture of the year Morning by Dod Procter was bought by the Daily Mail for the Tate Gallery.

In 1928, the newspaper established an early example of an offshore radio station aboard a yacht, both as a means of self-promotion and as a way to break the BBC's monopoly.

By 1929 George Ward Price was writing in the Mail that Baldwin should be deposed and Beaverbrook elected as leader.

Shortly after the Nazis scored their breakthrough in the Reichstag elections on 14 September 1930, winning 107 seats, Rothermere went to Munich to interview Hitler.

Baldwin's position was now in doubt, but in 1931 Duff Cooper won the key by-election at St George's, Westminster, beating the United Empire Party candidate, Sir Ernest Petter, supported by Rothermere, and this broke the political power of the press barons.

His son Esmond Harmsworth (2nd Viscount Rothermere) was appointed Chairman of Associated Newspapers in 1932.

Rothermere's 1933 leader "Youth Triumphant" praised the new Nazi regime's accomplishments, and was subsequently used as propaganda by them.

In December 1934, Rothermere visited Berlin as the guest of Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The Daily Mail began to print headlines and news stories on the front page from 4th September 1939, which coincided with the outbreak of the Second World War.

On 5 May 1946, the Daily Mail celebrated its Golden Jubilee.

Since its formation in 1969, the company's Euromoney Publications has become one of the leaders in providing electronic business information through its development of various databases, and its website on the Internet.

Esmond was then succeeded by his son Vere Harmsworth (3rd Viscount Rothermere) in 1971.

The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982 as its sister paper.

In 1987, printing at Deansgate ended and the northern editions were thereafter printed at other Associated Newspapers plants.

In 1988, the company left its headquarters at Carmelite House on Fleet Street, the traditional site of British publishing companies for hundreds of years, and relocated to new quarters at Northcliffe House in Kensington, West London.

Following the death of Vere Harmsworth in 1998, his son Jonathan Harmsworth (4th Viscount Rothermere) became Chairman of both Associated Newspapers and its parent company, The Daily Mail and General Trust.

The Mail maintained the event until selling it to Media 10 in 2009.

In late 2013, the paper moved its London printing operation from the city's Docklands area to a new £50 million plant in Thurrock, Essex.

In August 2016, the Daily Mail began a partnership with The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party.