It costs £7,500 to buy the 60-volume print edition or £200 for an annual online subscription to the contents - but for the next two and a half days, you can explore the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography's 55,000 entries for free, writes James Sturcke.
The dictionary has been opened up for the weekend to mark the first anniversary of its publication. It profiles people who have influenced life in the British isles from the 4th century BC to the beginning of this century (a person has to have died before December 31 2001 to qualify for entry).
Once registered, you could start off by searching for people you share your name with – none in my case, but my maternal granddad, Arthur Wilson, shared his with both an Elizabethan historian who saved a maid from drowning in a moat and a Victorian naval officer who served with distinction in the battle of Canton during the second opium war.
You can also search for both births and deaths by place names. You'll find 81 people died at the Tower of London, starting alphabetically with Anne Boleyn, while another dozen – including William Penn, who went on to lead the Quaker movement and found Pennsylvania - were born there.
Once you start getting the feel for it, you can search for famous people – Jack Straw, for example, was a possible alias of the Peasant Revolt leader, Wat Tyler - or have a bit of fun with adjectives.
The word cantankerous is a case in point - it pulls up five pages of grumpy people.
