I saw this on Twitter, but the British Library has stated that the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi, created between 1025-1050 AD, is public domain, i.e. out of copyright in every country apart from the UK. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/anglo-saxon-world-map
I hope this is a mistake, as even Disney could not argue copyright on an item that is at least 969 years old
It is a legal technicality because the map is previously unpublished in the UK. It applies to all unpublished texts and images, even centuries old texts but a copyright claim could never be served on it.
You get this with historic archives a lot, do you not? Scottish Canmore site has hundred of cool photographs that are really expensive to buy licenses to use (I looked into this), even though the photos are old & clearly not in copyright. They don't claim copyright over the original photographic images themselves, though they do seem to be able to hold rights over their own digitised images; which, online, is what people are often using.
Getty is the most obvious example of an organisation which eschews this kind of litigious approach.
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