Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

This blog has frequently pioneered ‘wrong time’ objects: things that appear decades or generations before we might reasonably expect them to. Here is an instance (not our first, wrong time car readers might remember) of a motor car about one hundred and fifty years before the car was invented. We are in London in 1742 […]

Stressful days – just discovered our house is riddled with woodworm – are ameliorated by making lists. This is one I’ve been playing around with all afternoon: the demography of Victorian fancy dress parties. You know the drill. Invitation arrives with instructions to turn up on the Sunday afternoon in a costume and identity of […]

Humans adapt new technologies quickly to almost every imaginable use. This was true with flight. The first manned hot air balloon flew in 1782. The first military use of hot air balloons came at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794: France became the first nation to ever use air power in war. However, what about […]

Ok this is a bit of a cheeky addition to the list. It is not your typical mermaid, but then it is not your typical monster either. We are in 1742 in London. To be seen, at the Mitre Tavern, Charing-Cross. The largest Thames-Monster, or miraculous man-eater, that was ever in the World, taken on […]

   Introduction: Eyes like Saucers Eyes like saucers comes up again and again in accounts of the supernatural: ghosts sometimes have them, ditto demons and ‘black dogs’ almost always have them. But why? What do these descriptions mean? Where do they come from? Monsters Let’s start with some typical creepy saucer descriptions. A bogey at […]

This is one of these stories that snaked across Europe from newspaper of record to newspaper of record. We picked it up considerably downstream in the, erm, Framlingham Weekly News, 12 Sep 1903 (deep England, scones for tea, talk of Cathay and ‘the Turks’). Who knows if there was a genuine rumour behind this in […]

The Giant Sloth? The giant ground sloth is one of the most charismatic of extinct creatures. Dwelling in South America Megatherium was, when it tore down trees, and walked over the pampa, the size of a small elephant and was finally hunted out of existence about 10,000 years ago: one of the victims of homo […]

This record is dated ‘Exeter, November, 1737’, presumably it appeared in some local newspaper. It is rather rare to find a two legged mermaid, though they are not unprecedented. Some Fishermen near the city, drawing their Net ashore, a creature of two legs, having human shape, leapt out and ran away very swiftly. Not being […]

Pox or the Gallows The lines are certainly old ones. A mighty aristocrat offended by some commoner asks whether the man before him will die of the pox or on the gallows tree. The commoner shoots back ‘that depends whether I embrace your Lordship’s mistress or your principles’. No question that it’s memorable. But where […]

This story comes out of Kirby’s Wonderful Museum, vol IV, p. 359. Kirby claimed to have extracted it from a 1618 publication, The Abridgement of the English Chronicle. We are back to stupid sport bets. In this moneth [but which year?], John Lepton of Kepwick, in the county of Yorke, Esquire, a gentleman of an […]

This is an 1851 report from Lough Swilly, a long sea inlet on the coast of Donegal. This was a very poor area in the nineteenth century. A correspondent has solemnly assured us that the crew of a boat in Lough Swilly, on the 4th inst. [October], saw, within twenty yards of them, a real […]

Doppelganger and Familiar Robber This is a very unusual story and has two acts. Note that it is put here for the familiar robbers story in the second part: the subject of two previous posts, one from the US one from Spain. But is the doppelganger tale also an urban legend? The story is messy. […]

Lilly and the Fairies at Hurstwood In 1652 William Lilly (1602-1681), a wealthy London business man, bought Hurst Wood (aka Hurstwood), at Hersham, Surrey: in the late 19C OS map above note ‘The Hurst’. It was a substantial property including a house with thirteen hearths and eighteen acres of Parkland. So what did Lilly do […]

Why did the chicken…? ‘Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? To get to the other side.’ It is one of the most tedious jokes in history, but it is also one of the oldest in continuous use. Now, just how old and where does it come from? Knickerbocker Glory The earliest reference that has […]

This was, I believe, one of the fake letters that P.T.Barnum sent out when he took possession of the Fejee Mermaid in 1842: though I’ve found no other online version. The scallywag here claimed to be a doctor from Montgomery, Alabama, resident in the Indies. I have this day seen, handled, and very closely examined […]