Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Beach recently revived one of his favourite tags, the duel and the dumb duel. Here is a doubtful sounding example reported in a British newspaper in 1890. The date of the duel itself should be about 1875, which means that an argument between provincial army officers had a lot of time to be exaggerated into […]

Beach has long considered himself duty bound to investigate all references to fairies, however strange and however obscene, and there have been, for a while, two references to London fairies that have irritated him because he can’t track them down: or at least he can follow them only into unattractive cul-de-sacs. First, from Carol Silver’s […]

William Paget (1506-1563) was a quintessential Tudor politician. He worked for Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary I: in short, he survived. He, also, like many of the best Tudor politicians, owed his office to his ability rather than his blood, which was not very blue. He had his share of peccadilloes, of course, but […]

Busy day here so Beach will just offer this short piece about the origin of the word ‘canard’. If true this is really a late eighteenth-century urban legend; if false it is a canard about a canard. First the basics, canard, the French for duck, came to mean any false story in nineteenth-century English. But […]

Marshal Ney was Napoleon’s greatest general and even those who, like Beachcombing, loathe old Boney, feel some regret when they read of how Ney was executed 7 Dec 1815. The great man stood in front of the firing squad and himself gave the order to fire after telling his soldiers: ‘I have fought a hundred battles […]

  This wrong pocket story sounds like an urban legend though there are a worrying number of exact facts. Beach is going to try and turn up the story elsewhere and see if it is repeated. Any help? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com During the running at the Cartmel (North Lancashire) Steeplechases Meeting on Whit-Monday, Mr. Ratcliffe. […]

Crimea is the Ukrainian or Russian peninsula that stretches down into the Black Sea and whose large bays make it resemble a famished fish about to eat a smaller prey. Crimea’s geography has made it a natural place for enclaves. In ancient times, the Greeks and Romans held colonies here, as did the Byzantines and Genoese in […]

Gonzalo Guerrero was an obscure Spaniard who played several interesting roles in his life. He was, in chronological order: a poor Andalusian; a servant of the Spanish crown; a Mayan sacrificial victim; an escapee; a Mayan slave; a Mayan war leader; a Mayan father and husband; and, finally, (if we can believe the stories) food […]

***Leif gets it, scroll down for the answer*** The Index Biography is a new form of biography pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We […]

Another immortal, this time from the Grantham Journal 20 Sep 1873. Note that vagueness about Afro-Americans’ ages was often pronounced in the late nineteenth century. Several of the ‘oldest American’ stories are about ex-slaves in the south. According to the Louisville Journal, a wonderful old negro is at present living at the farm of Dr. […]

Beach continues to enjoy pickpocket stories. This one was told of James White (skinny White) a pickpocket, who died in 1895 and who was ‘the cleverest pickpocket in Europe’. His obituary is willfully quiet about some of his exploits. It for example, tells us nothing of the ‘curious tales’ about his fun at Monte Carlo. […]

In 2008 that hoary old newspaper of the British right, The Daily Telegraph, all cobwebs and fox hunting, included a fascinating piece on a car-crashing ghost. Here follows a very brief edited version: Paranormal researchers are investigating the sightings of a girl in Victorian dress on a road in the West Midlands, which locals say […]

The lovemaking of other ages is often obscured from us. A natural reticence, which the twenty-first century has largely given up on, draws a veil around medieval or Tudor sex. Our few exceptions include some rare pornographic accounts and a handful of legal descriptions where sex was getting someone in trouble and needed to be […]

There have been a few cases of crocodiles being found in the Thames. In 1897 and 1933 crocodiles were retrieved from the river: alive in the first case (two feet), and dead in the second (five feet). Note that there are also several modern claims that crocodiles have been seen on the river. However, what […]

In Beach’s long and passionate searches through the annals of snowballing, he has come across many descriptions of mass snowball fights. However, this, from February 1865, is perhaps his favourite. It combines reckless youth, police brutality (to not from), and significant property damage: in short it is the essence of the Victorian snow-balling. Glasgow has […]