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... Volunteer Michael Scurr, recalled feeling butterflies in his stomach after he opened up the paper and realised what it was.
"I called over to my boss and said, 'I think you need to come and have a look at this'," he told BBC News.
Tim Muffett and Michael Scurr stand in a dark room, with a copy of the US Declaration of Independence in front of them.
BBC News correspondent Tim Muffett (left) being shown the recently found copy by volunteer Michael Scurr (right)
Following restoration works, the copy will be displayed in the archives' exhibition on the path to American independence, which opened last month.
Saul Nass, chief executive of The National Archives, praised the find as "an extraordinary discovery".
He added: "It's a vanishingly rare surviving copy of the Declaration of Independence, found not in America, but here in the UK."
The document was seized by the Royal Navy on Christmas Eve 1776 when the HMS Raisonable captured an American ship, the Dalton, off the coast of Portugal following a seven-hour pursuit.
Dr Graham Moore from The National Archives said the discovery is "one of the rarest forms of the Declaration we know about", adding that it was not meant to be preserved due to the intention to distribute it quickly. ...
