Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

You may not believe it, at first glance, but this painting is among the most terrifying ever hung in a gallery in Ireland. It shows a supernatural force threatening a series of Irish men and women. Confused? We’ll return to the fear in a minute. The artist was a young man of twenty two from […]

Warrior puts on inflatable! Late medieval?

Progressive vs Moderate Thinker: so which are you?

1953, Atomic Test observed from Las Vegas: get into the hotel and hide under your bed!

Roosevelt in a wheelchair: 40,000 pics in Roosevelt presidential library, only two have Roosevelt in a chair.

At the trial for Duke of Norfolk, at the very end of Henry’s reign, Bess Holland, Norfolk’s mistress gave the following testimony about Henry VIII’s obesity. She claimed that the Duke had told her: That the king was much grown of his body and that he could not go up and down stairs and was […]

Heavy or light persecution of witches: note the Celtic fringe and Italy. It has been suggested that ‘highland’ areas attracted persecution.

This is an interesting reference to the mermaid business in 1878. As will be seen, a mermaid, caught in the West Indies, was sold to the Westminster Aquarium. It will be remembered that about two months since much excitement was caused by the landing of a West Indian mermaid at Glasgow by the ss Blenheim. […]

Mid October 1941. A man with a mustache walks up and down besides a train, while snow falls. He is conscious, all too conscious that he is about to make a decision that will change the direction of the war, perhaps even its outcome: a true hinge moment. And the decision? Quite simply should he […]

Children devour stories… Announce to three kids in bed, just before lights out, that you will tell the tale about ‘naughty Uncle John and the security guard’, or ‘how Daddy went to fox land’, or the one about the ‘biggest fish in Little Snoring’ and absolute silence will reign. The children will listen, crucially ask […]

Magnificent 15 cent French Book of Hours

Dear Reader, A tense January as efforts to get Italian citizenship run into problems: a middle name on a British birth certificate has already led to hundreds of euros spent on legal advice, consulate visits and general headbanging. Starting, though, the writing of a new book and that is a balm. There follow the most […]

***Sue got it – scroll down for the result*** The Index Biography is a quiz 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 offered up […]

Angela Merkel as a young woman with flares.

One of the grimmest statistics of the American Civil War is Nathan Bedford Forrest’s assertion that he had twenty-nine horses shot from under him: J. O. Shelby had a more modest twenty-four horses on his tally sheet. With great respect to these two Confederate warriors, there is always the fear that their claims are exaggerated: […]