Anglesey
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Anglesey. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an'gl-se, an island in the Irish Sea. It is separated from the mainland of North Wales by the Strait of Menai. It is about twenty miles long by seventeen broad, and is very productive, raising large crops of oats, barley, turnips, and potatoes. The central or more elevated portion of the island yields valuable copper, lead, and silver ores, besides limestone, marble, asbestos, marl, and granite. The interior affords excellent grazing for cattle and sheep. Welsh is the language of the peasantry. Anglesey, or rather the harbor of Holyhead, is the terminus at which railroad passengers from London take ship for Ireland. Trains cross Menai Strait to Anglesey, through the famous tubular bridge, a remarkable piece of engineering. The railroad track is laid inside of a huge steel tube supported on piers of masonry at a great height above the water. One of the finest suspension bridges in the world also crosses the strait. Its roadway is 580 feet in length from pier to pier and swings 100 feet above high tide . Large sea-going ships are able to pass under both bridges. The island of Anglesey was an ancient seat of the Druids. A Druidical pontiff lived in security here, and a Druidical college was located on the island. Agricola subdued the Druids in the year 85 A. D. See British Isles
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or ANGLE- SEA ("the Angles island"), an island and county of north Wales, in the Irish Sea, separated from the mainland by the Menai strait; 20 miles long and 17 miles broad; area, 275 square miles. The chief agricultural products are oats and barley, wheat, rye , potatoes, and turnips. Numbers of cattle and sheep are raised. Anglesey yields a little copper, lead, silver, ochre, etc. The chief market-towns are Beaumaris, Holyhead , Llangefni, and Amlwch. The county returns one member to Parliament. Pop. about 51,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 praise of the "famous tubular bridge" describes something that no longer exists in that form: a fire in the tarred roof of Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge in May 1970 destroyed the wrought-iron tubes, and the crossing was rebuilt as a two-deck arched structure carrying rail below and the A55 road above. Telford's 1826 suspension bridge, the other crossing both entries admire, still stands, though it needed a long closure for cable repairs in 2022-23. The copper, lead and silver of the "central or more elevated portion" — Parys Mountain, once the world's largest copper source in the 1780s — are no longer worked commercially; the island's big industrial employers of the later 20th century were instead RAF Valley and the Wylfa nuclear power station, which generated from 1971 until 2015. Collier's population of "about 51,000" has grown to roughly 69,000, and the county is now officially the Isle of Anglesey, Ynys Môn, where Welsh remains a majority community language as Aiton's note about "the language of the peasantry" hints.
Written for this edition, 2026.