Daily History Picture: Bomb Berlin! May 5, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical PicturesThe Manufacture of Chinese Wildmen May 4, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
This comes from a British newspaper and 1892. It appeared in a curiosity column along with an item on marrying trees (really!). All this to say that this material should probably be treated with circumspection if not downright superstition. Or perhaps someone recognizes an obscure Chinese custom or institution: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beach would […]
Hono Heke, A Maori Chief from Ireland?! May 3, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
In the Middle Ages the Irish were for ever finding Gaels in surprising parts of the world. The soldier who pierced Christ’s side on the cross was Irish, Simon Magus was an Irish druid, etc etc. It is a shock to find, though, that this endearing habit lasted into the nineteenth century. In June and […]
Self Serving Capital Punishment May 2, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
Where are our modern executioners? Most people would have problems answering this because there are no modern executioners as such, at least in the US. There are guards (who get overtime), there are governors, there are wardens, there are doctors and, outside some death chambers, there are members of the general public and journalists. It might […]
Beachcombed 59 May 1, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Beachcombed
Dear Reader, Beach is knackered. An appalling month of business, exams and worst of all an audit that has driven Mrs Beachcombing to desperation. There is talk of 40,000 euros to be paid back…. Christ! Yesterday was the last exam, thank the gods, and today a headache and corrections, but almost there. Beach has been a […]
Daily History Picture: Mannerheim at Odessa April 30, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
The hero of Finland just as the revolution is beginning in his adopted homeland, Russia, recuperating at Odessa.
Searching for Mrs S***k*n*us April 30, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Can anyone please help with this one? Beach will send a 75 Euro voucher for the first person who manages to get a convincing candidate in a British census return. ***note this has now been solved*** Walter, My Secret Life, is an eleven volume work of pornographic autobiography describing a Victorian gentleman’s ‘romps’. As the ‘gentleman’ in […]
Daily History Picture: Luxembourg Liberated April 29, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical PicturesMan vs Horse: Pheidippides and his Missing Mount April 29, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
***Inspired by Little Miss Beach and Tacitus at Empire*** http://detritusofempire.blogspot.it/ When Beach recently described, at table, Pheidippides’ heroic 300 mile round trip from Athens to Sparta little Miss Beach looked at her father contemptuously and asked ‘why didn’t he just get on a horse?’ Beach prepared to gently put his daughter down, not wanting to crush her […]
Daily History Picture: Medieval Golf April 28, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical PicturesThe Hanging Bed April 28, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Ohio’s premier anomalist, Chris Woodyard has just put up a post on an unusual method of execution in the nineteenth-century press, the cone of death, and she has two earlier posts, including the needle mask, praying to death, squeezing to death and smothering to death. Every ‘funny’ bone in Beachcombing’s body tells him that there […]
Ash Magic April 27, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Your little boy is ill. The doctors can do nothing (this is the nineteenth century) and money is, in any case, short. What on earth do you do. Well, the folk answer, and one that is almost certainly as efficacious as Victorian medicine, is to look for an ash tree. This account comes from Somerset […]