New research tool: Searchable Google archives of Life Magazine

This is a cool tool for history buffs: Google unveiled a vast, searchable archive of Life Magazine for all 1,860 issues from 1936 to 1972.

Run a search for “San Antonio” and you’ll find all kinds of stories and photos:

A 1938 feature story about Thomas Jefferson High School, with photos of its ROTC classes and “manners” courses for female students;

Photos of Fiesta in 1950, which the magazine described as a “seven-day civic binge;“

A story in 1971 about the long-forgotten protests about the construction of U.S. 281.

Here’s Google’s original blog post about this new research tool. “This is part of a broader effort across Google to help bring offline content online and allow people to find it with a simple Google web search,” wrote Google’s product manager Brandon Badger. Hat tip to Marilia Martins who tweeted about this today.

Read more about searching Google: How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques